One Second is as much a tribute to the struggles of a man whose life has stolen from him as it is to a bygone way of looking at movies.
It’s the fleshed-out first segment that best presents characters with actual lives, as compared to the thinly veiled talking points of the film’s second half.
It’s the unlikely third-part arrival in a widescreen, English-speaking Australia in 2025 that proves to be Jia’s undoing.
The doc is beholden to the same plethora of taboos, half-truths, and outright lies traded en masse by mainstream conservatism for the last seven years.