Review

In a small mountain town in Hunan, China, a boy named Gong Youbin lives with his grandparents and father. His father lost an arm in an accident, and his mother abandoned their family. The adults around him pin their hopes on Youbin, believing that a brighter future depends on his success in school. At school, Youbin is introduced to poetry as a means of self-expression, and he begins to discover its power. The documentary Always follows his journey from childhood to adolescence, told through the poems written by students at his school. The director, who returns to the mountains over the years to capture Youbin’s life, presents an intimate portrait of a boy who carries a quiet loneliness. His inner world comes through vividly in poetic lines like: "The wind blows the sea away / makes the world abundant / but what’s left is only empty space." (Quiet Wind, Gong Youbin) Rather than relying on dialogue, Always lingers in the silence of vast natural landscapes, portraying the lives of people who seem as much a part of their surroundings as the landscape itself. The loneliness expressed by the young poets becomes the very frame through which nature’s presence is felt. In the latter half of the film, Youbin—once a carefree child, running through the fields—now works alongside his aging grandparents and disabled father. This transformation, captured with quiet restraint, carries a deep, lingering sadness. Always won the DOX:AWARD, the top prize at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, in March of this year. (MOON Seok)

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