Fantasia Review: ‘Detention’ Blends Bone-Chilling Aspects from History and Beyond
“Everyone is RESPONSIBLE for reporting espionage. To conceal it is also a crime. Severe punishment to those who incite rebellious thought. For subverting the government, the penalty is death.”
“We’re the best in East Asia!” chant a monotone crowd of students with an equally-dull marching band accompanying them a half-step off the beat. The whole school has assembled in the early morning to salute the flag and sing the anthem in the courtyard. The chanters arrive in lockstep and in uniform. Girls in white shirts with black skirts. Boys in all khaki. The first time they assemble for their national salute, we notice their lack of enthusiasm. The second time they are interrupted.
“Government kills!” an exclamation loud enough to stymie the momentum of the marching band. It comes from the school’s teacher, Mr. Huang, as he is led away by uniformed guards in a disciplinary manner. “Government kills! Government ki…” Mr. Huang is unable to complete his last sentence before a nightstick lands on the back of his skull with a thud. The guards carry his crumpled form beyond the view of silent onlookers in the courtyard. They do not seem to care each and every student just became a witness to their blatant assault. With some prodding the crowd resumes. “Glorify our nation/Make a better world/Remember those who built the nation in hardship.” Thus begins John Hsu’s directorial debut and the film adaptation of the video game of the same name, Detention.
In 1962, Taiwan found itself in its 13th year of martial law under the Republic of China, a period characterized by mass imprisonment of political dissenters and stifled speech. In total, the 38 years of unrest were deemed the White Terror where an estimated 140,000 people were imprisoned and around 3,000 people were killed. Detention takes this nation-wide, authoritarian evil and moves it to a smaller, more personal scale. It stays largely within the walls of the Taiwanese school where student Fang Ray Shin and teacher Mr. Zhang Ming-Hui face the ever looming threat of imprisonment by the same government that forces them to recite their hollow pledge. But the evil that manifests itself in Detention is more mysterious than your typical historical drama.
Mr. Zhang has founded a secret club dedicated to hand-copying banned books, mainly old philosophy texts centering on the nature of freedom. The club is triumphant and dedicated, telling each other they would never betray one another if they were caught and tortured for information. Even though their actions are punishable by death, learning about freedom is worth the risk to the club. That is until Mr. Zhang disappears. In his absence people feign ignorance of even knowing he once taught there. Fang, who has also become smitten with Mr. Zhang, sets out to discover the truth of his vanishing. Suffering from a mild form of amnesia, her search within the walls of the school begins to uncover supernatural monsters committing traumatically violent acts. Is it tied with Mr. Zhang’s disappearance? Is it all in Fang’s head? Detention keeps its cards close as it blends the bone chilling aspects from history and beyond before it reveals its hand.
Detention itself is a film dedicated to the idea of freedom, but almost the entirety of its runtime lacks much of it. Instead, paranoia creeps into the void left by the teachings and books and thoughts that are no longer allowed under the White Terror. We are reminded how difficult every part of life is under these circumstances. How can freedom return if there are not those to cultivate it in its absence? With corruption everywhere, in every sense of the word, how do you not succumb to it? Chances are whatever freedoms you currently have someone died striving to protect them. Do we honor those freedom fighters as much as we cherish the rights they stood up for?
These questions found in Detention are embodied by the supernatural. Each monster and traumatic act discovered is familiar to the audience because it is based on the crimes or fears of the recent past. For example, another teacher (not Mr. Huang or Mr. Zhang) is shown heavily mutilated after finding out he was unknowingly complicit in an insurgent plan. His face is left gaping where an instrument was presumably used to murder him. Suffice to say, Detention goes to great lengths to show that this victim is not a part of the natural world. Instead, the supernatural is utilized to highlight the crimes inflicted on dissidents that went unseen, acts undocumented in the annals of history. This supernatural decay is a striking distillation of the evil in a way that the historical numbers and story could not be. At times, it’s a tricky line to walk for Detention, but it has its moments and attains symbolism that would otherwise be difficult to convey if the story were relegated to a single genre — that is to say, choosing between horror or historical drama.
For every person that succumbs to the corruption of power and the status quo, we grow in admiration for those who survived this period and carried the baton for those who couldn’t. With freedom, we remember the best attributes of those we lost fighting for it, and conversely, we remember the worst in the individuals and systems that tried to take it away. These are the stories that define nations and are handed down because they have meaning. John Hsu and co. have made every effort to make Detention not just a piece that commemorates their freedom fighters, but also a film that encapsulates the struggle and horror of surviving such a terrifying time.
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