Super Citizen Ko

This is what the Germans call a Trauerarbeit: a labour born of unassuageable sadness. Ko (Lin Yang) was one of many victims of the fanatical anti-communist White Terror of the 1950s; imprisoned for his membership of a political study group, he was wrecked physically by prison tortures and destroyed mentally by a mixture of guilt, fear and incomprehension. In old age he stumbles through a Taipei he no longer recognises, trying to make sense of the past and to patch things up with his near-estranged daughter. The story is in essence a political melodrama, but Wan turns it into a dignified elegy for dead ideals and hushed-up crimes against the heart and mind.