The Violinist Review (TIFF 2026)
Ervin Han and Raúl García’s The Violinist is almost like the evolution of Ervin Han’s The Violin, which makes sense given that the former has been in the works for a decade. A brand new Singaporean animated film, it follows the journey of two friends who play the violin from Singapore in the 1930s to the Japanese invasion of Malaya during World War II and onwards.
Kai, one of the two protagonists, is an orphan who gets adopted by the househelp of Fei, the other protagonist. As Kai watches Fei play the violin, he too starts picking up skills, which leads to Fei’s violin teacher also teaching Kai how to play. One day, Kai has to step up to take over Fei’s partner’s spot and play in front of the Governor, which leads to a rich man gifting him a violin, which is the heart of this story.
This violin is at the center of everything, as it’s the one thing Fei holds onto when Kai leaves to join the Anti-Japanese forces during the Japanese invasion of Malaya, and eventually it’s what she uses to play and send coded messages to the Anti-Japanese movement so they can bomb Japanese ships and fight back. It’s also what she continues to play on as she goes around Southeast Asia to search for Kai, who disappears during the war.
To start things off, I think the music is the real highlight (and as it should be, the film is centered around a violin). There’s a lot of memorable music throughout, and I really liked how it managed to maintain itself as the emotional center that everything around it rotates around. However, I do wish the narrative had a little bit more teeth. While Kai and Fei have chemistry, I wish we got to see their romance build up, I wish we got to see them actually fight beyond the one time they do because he has to leave for the war. The way their arc resolves left me a little confused, because it tries to create ambiguity while also having a definite conclusion. At the premiere at TIFF, Han said that the ending is left ambiguous on purpose, but he does have his own answers.
The imagery in the sections about the Japanese occupation certainly does have bite to it, there’s a lot of harrowing images – from when the town they live in gets bombed so Fei has to start living under martial law in the rubble, to Kai running away while getting fired at by soldiers. The narrative surrounding it is strong too, but I find it just a slightly bit cowardly. When Fei’s actions lead to Japanese ships getting bombed, she quits working with the resistance but she never faces any repercussions for it, it’s just that moment for regret. There’s a death of a soldier too where I wish it just went the distance in terms of questioning the assertion of “the good soldier” (or “the good cop” in other instances) but it doesn’t quite go there, and I wish it did.
The animation… is fine. Admittedly, it is an indie production that they worked on for 10 years, but for a team that big I wish it was more inspired than being something right in the middle of Japanese animation and American animation – it’s almost a better version of the DC animated films. However, where it does shine is the animation of playing the violin, which looks to me like it’s animated accurately to the sounds that a violin would make if played the same way in real life, and in the post screening QnA, the directors said that it was a key goal for them to ensure that.
Even so, I think The Violinist worth watching. I enjoyed it, I just wish it had a little more bite.
