Man in Black (2023) review

Eighty-six-year-old composer Wang Xilin, without a stitch of clothing on, stretches, sings, plays the piano and then talks about his past in the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord (in Paris): how he joined the People's Liberation Army at a young age, studied at the Shanghai Conservatory but came to reject the beliefs of the Communist Party, was tortured, wound up in a sanitarium ... and then channeled his anger into his music.  Filmmaker Wang, who usually makes documentaries five to ten times longer than this, provides an intimate portrait of an artist as a broken-down senior citizen (cinematographer Caroline Champetier examines his sagging body the same way Lucian Freud might have done while painting) who has proven his resilience over the decades.  It seems a little disrespectful to play songs extremely loudly when his subject is speaking - thank goodness for subtitles - but the minimal approach is still effective, and it's good to know there are individuals from China that are willing to openly mention their disgust with the government....