NAKED NATIONS: TRIBE HONG KONG is said to be filmmaker Scud's last film. If it truly is then it is ending his career with a bold provocation to the Hong Kong authorities. Less a conventional film then a thumb in the eye to the city's rulers and their main land masters it is a giant FU to the draconian rules that have been put in place.
Nominally this is the story of a filmmaker and his circle who are buckling under the super restrictive covid measures that the Chinese government used to seize total control of the population. As the filmmaker decides to get the hell out of Dodge, his friends and colleagues must make the choice as well.
It's a long loud scream at authority that opens with bizarre sequence that echoes A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, but instead of the Beatles being chased by fans while the title song plays, we get a bunch of naked guys running around Hong Kong while Paul Mauriat's instrumental version of Blue Blue My World is Blue plays. It ends with another needle drop where one man walks on the beach alone.
I'm going to be completely up front and say this film is a mess. There are some truly great things in it, and some WTF things and even more that spans the two extremes. It's one part documentary, one part narrative, and another part political manifesto. It breaks your heart one minute and makes you laugh the next and then scratch your head the next. It's as if Scud's mind didn't know what to do so it took some espresso and blew itself up on the screen. And there are lots of buff naked guys running around for a large chunk of the film.
It's a film that is truly one of a kind...at least as far as recent films go. Truthfully I haven't seen anyone try to make anything remotely like this since the late 1960's when you would get experimental political films that went all over the place.
I don't know if it's good or bad. I don't know how to critique it. It's a film that is so personal and so not interested in being conventional or being anything other than a political statement, that you can't judge it on any conventional scale.
I love the audacity of the film, and the balls of everyone to fart in the general direction of the Chinese government. But at the same time I don't know who is going to want to see this more than once? Yes there are some wonderful moments, but the rest is so all over the place.
Should you see it? If you want to give support and see a one of a kind film, absolutely, but don't expect it to play anywhere other than a festival, or a streaming platform that can handle something special.
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