‘CORONATION’ REVIEW: AI WEIWEI CONFRONTS THE PARADOXES OF CHINA’S CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE

Indie Wire logo ‘Coronation’ Review: Ai Weiwei Confronts the Paradoxes of China’s Coronavirus Response

As an installation artist, Ai Weiwei is a larger-than-life character so adept at mocking China’s authoritarian extremes that it led to his exile; behind the camera, that personality recedes to the background. From “Stay Home,” his portrait of HIV struggles in China, to the sprawling look at the refugee crisis in “Human Flow,” Ai treats cinema as a pure humanitarian vessel. That makes him well-equipped for “Coronation,” which has bragging rights as the first documentary feature released about the coronavirus lockdown in China. It casts a wide net: The movie puts a human face on a global health crisis by finding many of them all across this troubled country.

It also brings new urgency to the concept of the found-footage movie. Produced in secret, shot by amateur citizens, and released without warning last week, “Coronation” confronts the paradoxes of China’s coronavirus response in fragments of angry residents, eerie medical processes, and a whole lot of red tape. A scattershot portrait of the last several months, the nearly two-hour movie pits the sophistication of the nation’s response against the forces of propaganda and bureaucracy that resulted in countless deaths and societal dysfunction.