Salina Art Center

At the age of 11, Li Cunxin was plucked from the poverty of his rural village to begin a grueling training regimen in ballet at the famous Beijing Dance Academy.  As a young man, he became one of the first Chinese dancers to visit the United States, as part of an exchange program with the Houston Ballet.  Like many international artists (including his idol, Mikhail Baryshnikov), Li faces a choice: break ties with his homeland and defect, or live with the certainty that his artistic growth and creative expression will remain limited by cultural and political forces beyond his control.  It’s a situation that can be whipped up into a one-dimensional, jingoistic celebration of America, a Cold War thriller wherein we (the good guys) score a victory when an artist or genius from a Communist nation “sees the light” and joins our side.  Director Bruce Beresford doesn’t fashion Li’s best-selling autobiography into that type of movie.  Perhaps because Beresford is Australian, and certainly because of his intelligence, humanity, and respect for all people (shown in films like Tender Mercies, Driving Miss Daisy, and Breaker Morant), Mao’s Last Dancer isn’t a shallow feel-good story about Li choosing the U.S. over China because of our freedom… and material advantages.  Li’s inner struggle is much more complex, more nuanced, so that moviegoers get a sense of what it means to separate from one’s country, one’s family, and essentially one’s past.  It gives viewers a new respect for Li and other artists who have made that decision.  Beresford uses a fairly classical filmmaking style but doesn’t tell the story in strict linear fashion, showing Li’s childhood and teenage years in flashbacks in order to convey what Li is about to lose—and provide subtly humorous or emotional contrasts between his life in China and his life in the United States.  Li’s older incarnation is played by Chi Cao, who himself was born in China and is now a principal dancer with the Birmingham Royal Ballet; though his acting is a little raw, it suits the character of a precocious young creative genius whose physical training took precedence over his emotional development.  And more importantly, Chi is really able to make the ballet sequences—which include sequences from The Rite of Spring and Swan Lake—to really take flight, providing spine-tingling jolts of pure aesthetic pleasure and showing that Li is first and foremost an artist, and his ongoing journey to improve himself and fully realize his ability will be the factor that ultimately motivates his heartrending decision.  The more polished acting is provided by Bruce Greenwood as Ben Stevenson, the hearty, outgoing director of the Houston Ballet; Joan Chen and Shuang Bao Wang as Li’s loving parents; and Zhang Su as Li’s instructor, who recognizes the talent within his pupil and nurtures it as best he can.  There is suspense, too, when Li defects—he marries his American dancer girlfriend (Amanda Schull) in order to stay in the country—and American and Chinese officials escalate the tension with saber-rattling, political grandstanding, and an attempted kidnapping.  But the core of Mao’s Last Dancer is the bittersweet story of a man who has to adapt to a new way of life by giving up everything he knows, the good along with the bad.  Beresford’s film is as graceful as ballet itself, effortlessly navigating the highs and lows of Li’s story without manipulation or pandering.  It’s a small gem of a film, another of Beresford’s finely-drawn portraits of heroes who try to come to terms with their environment and their uncertain future.