NANCY SITU
<Senior Editor-in-Chief>
It’s not every day that a Western-financed North Korean fiction feature shows in a Yonge-Dundas theatre on a breezy Tuesday night. It’s not even every day that North Korean fiction films can be Western-financed. In fact, Comrade Kim Goes Flying was the first ever. The “light-hearted romantic comedy” is about a perky young Korean coal miner/construction worker who dreams of becoming a circus acrobat in the big city. Directors Anja Daelemans (Belgium) and Nicholas Bonner (United Kingdom) swear that Comrade Kim was born out of a bottle of whiskey and wasn’t meant to make a statement – but I don’t think anything out of North Korea can be devoid of politics, least of all a film that was at least 60% propaganda.
With dialogue like “we, the working class, can do anything if we put our minds to it”, gratuitous shots of food and drink at every turn, and characters with eerily chipper dispositions, I felt like I was watching some bizarre combination of anime, the first half of Mulholland Dr, and a puff piece for the North Korean government. Granted, the filmmakers were walking the fine line between explicit irony and straight up propaganda to be compliant with North Korean regulations. The government would only approve a script that (I’ll say this euphemistically) reflected their cultural values. Not only did this mean an unnerving adoration of grueling hard labour, it also meant that this “romantic comedy” displayed about half the amount of passion I have for my favourite notepad. “There has never been a kiss in the history of North Korean cinema,” said Bonner. “Except once, but they did it behind an umbrella.”
The interesting point the directors made was that this film was not really made for us i.e. a Western audience. For North Koreans, Comrade Kim is not ironic, has no political agenda, and isn’t any kind of social commentary. But I don’t know if I can comfortably attribute that to cultural differences rather than the thoroughness of North Korean brainwashing.
I’d recommend Comrade Kim to those who are too busy to make it to Toronto After Dark next month. It’ll be the scariest movie you’ll see all year.