ReelBob: ‘One Child Nation’ ★★★★★

By Bob Bloom

“One Child Nation” is a disturbing movie that shows the devastating toll of government policy on China’s people. The movie centers on that country’s “One-Child Policy,” launched in 1979, written into the Chinese constitution in 1982 and finally abandoned in 2015.

Survival was the reason China’s leaders gave for adopting this desperate program. They believed that the nation simply had too many mouths to feed, and if the population continued to grow, then famine and starvation would decimate the country.

So, through a massive propaganda effort, government regulations and complicit officials at every level of the Communist Party machine, this inhumane system became practice.

Filmmaker Nanfu Wang shows the widespread and devastating impact of the plan on everyone from simple villagers to some of the minor party officials — mostly women — who had to carry out this inhumane practice.

Thousands of women who already had a child were forced to abort their fetuses or were sterilized to keep them from having more children.

Complicating matters was China’s patriarchal society, in which males were more highly valued than females.

Thus, many families either killed or abandoned newborn girls in marketplaces or simply by the side of roads.

In turn, this created a black-market industry in which “matchmakers” would travel the countryside to find abandoned babies, sell them to orphanages that, in turn, sold them to foreign couples for adoption.

And, as a byproduct, orphanage officials would lie to foreign adoptees telling them these babies were orphaned — rather than the truth of their circumstances.

Some scenes in “One Child Nation” will sicken you, especially the pictures taken by a Chinese photographer of discarded fetuses — many of them nearly at term — dumped in trash heaps under bridges or in other out-of-the-way corners. Surprisingly, many older Chinese continue to support the program, but as Wang points out, it is not clear whether their beliefs were shaped by the massive indoctrination program or were their own feelings.

Many low-level village officials excused their actions by claiming they could not defy official orders and, despite their own feelings, carried out this inhumane process.

A former village midwife who performed abortions and sterilization procedures is so wracked with guilt that she now helps couples trying to conceive as a way to atone for her past actions.

“One Child Nation” is a movie about a war — one that a government perpetrated upon its own people to ensure its longevity. This barbaric and ruthless feature will leave you cringing.

The film is an oral history told by those trying to explain or defend the inexplicable. It’s a condemnation of a hierarchy that did not value human life and placed the good of the state above decency and humanity.

“One Child Nation” will not only open our eyes to this dark and disgusting chapter in China’s history, but it will preserve these atrocities so they cannot be buried and forgotten.

I am a founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My reviews appear at ReelBob (reelbob.com) and Rottentomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com). I also review Blu-rays and DVDs. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com or on Twitter @ReelBobBloom. Links to my reviews can be found on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

ONE CHILD NATION 5 stars out of 5 (R), disturbing content and images, language

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMcJVoLwyD0