For viewers astonished by the barbaric massacres at Seediq Bale I’s climax, this second half of Wei Te-sheng’s historical epic may come as a bit of a shocker: the great divide between our modern values and the protagonists’ belief system is going to grow even further apart. Picking up immediately after the events of the first film, Seediq Bale II plunges back into the aftermath of the surprise attack that the Seediq clans have sprung on Taiwan’s Japanese occupiers in 1930, when the latter’s army prepares to retaliate under the leadership of General Yahiko Kamada (Sabu Kawahara). Essentially an extended action film with minimal character development and only one possible outcome, this second installment follows the aboriginal warriors as they fight a losing battle against their far mightier enemies.

While it opens briefly to some intriguing developments, such as a variation of the Empty Fort Strategy, the film takes a dramatically tragic twist in the forests, where many of the Seediq women and children commit mass suicides to free the men for the war. As the Japanese move in with their massive firepower (complete with poison gas), the brutal guerrilla warfare, though impressively shot, turns progressively numbing; and the movie itself, like the Seediq warriors it follows, soon looks distracted and has seemingly nowhere left to go. For all its flaws, the two-part Seediq Bale is nevertheless a faithful portrayal of a culture believing in the cleansing power of bloodshed. Wei deserves credits just by bringing this history onscreen – in all its ambivalent, and certainly undiluted, glory.

Edmund Lee

Dir Wei Te-sheng, category IIB, 132 mins, opens on Dec 1, in Seediq and Japanese with Chinese subtitles only

More on Seediq Bale:
Review of Seediq Bale I
Interview with director Wei Te-sheng