March 19--"The reason 'The Interview' is not very good," my colleague Michael Phillips wrote last year about the Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy, "has nothing to do with its decision, which Sony surely regrets, to name names and kill off the North Korean leader on camera. Rather, the movie is simply lazy."
Fair enough. What did produce a few laughs, he noted, was Randall Park's portrayal of Kim Jong Un as a "fawning, starstruck despot."
That characterization is pretty much in line with American perceptions, isn't it? Funny haircut. Self-regarding. Famine monger. Fascinated with Dennis Rodman. And so completely mired in a narcissistic hall of mirrors that he would launch a massive cyberattack against a movie studio that dares make him the object of ridicule -- or so the speculation goes, even as proof remains elusive.
This is North Korea as caricature -- and caricature is the stuff of which pop culture is made. But if neither the drama surrounding "The Interview" nor the movie itself reveal much about what life is actually like in this country on a day-to-day basis, curiosity was surely stoked.
"Songs From the North" is a corrective of sorts with its collage of film clips and documentary footage from South Korean-born filmmaker Soon-Mi Yoo (who lives in the U.S., where she teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston). She comes to the Siskel Film Center with the film next week.
The doc contains no voice-over accompanying the images. But every so often Yoo cuts to text, white words on a black screen. This is where she expresses her thoughts, and these portions feel like stream-of-consciousness chapter breaks.
She filmed the landscape, inside theaters and malls and, in a spare and haunting sequence, footage of people far off in the distance below (perhaps shot from the vantage of her hotel room window?) as they scurry across a snowy, desolate plaza. The sky is gray, and propaganda blares from loudspeakers. And then she he cuts to a slide: "Do you even hear the loudspeakers anymore? Or do you only hear your frozen footsteps as you run from the minus-26-degrees wind?"
The film has no formal narrative. Instead it unspools in snippets and glimpses that were filmed during three trips Yoo made to North Korea between 2010 and 2012. She also folds in clips from North Korean cinema and documentaries that she found at the library of Harvard University, as well as from North Korea's official YouTube channels.
"I grew up in South Korea during a period when rhetoric about North Korea was especially fierce," she said by email from the Canary Islands, where she was attending a film festival. "North Korea was a 'Land of Evil,' yet at the same time North Koreans were our own brothers. My father also spoke frequently about his experiences during the (Korean War) and about close friends who went North. 'Songs From the North' was inspired by my long exposure to this public and private discourse about North Korea."
I asked if she was monitored during her trips, and if that made filming difficult.
"It was not easy to shoot in North Korea since all visitors are accompanied by 'minders,' state appointed 'guides' and drivers who accompany and closely monitor you at all times. In my case, my minders also took real interest in what and why I was shooting, and would often ask me to stop shooting. I learned to dodge the minders by shooting those in-between moments, as we traveled between sites on the official itinerary, or turned the camera on them."
The film includes an exchange she has with one of these minders. "Guide comrade," she says as they drive through the city of Pyongyang one night, "you don't live on Changjon Street, do you?" (The street has been the site of new construction and an increase in retail offerings in recent years.)
"I can't," he tells her, "because I haven't done enough for my country."
It is a sentiment that feels closely tied to later footage of an overtly patriotic musical production featuring children (dressed in matching uniforms of navy blue shorts or skirts, white button-down shirts and a red scarf tied at the collar) assembled on stage, visibly crying and overcome with emotion as they sing about their love for their leader. Their devotion is almost cultlike.
The power of the film lies in its contrast of images with Yoo's observations. "Is North Korea the loneliest place on earth?" reads one slide. "A country without friends, without history. Only myths, repeated endlessly from morning to night."
Or this: "The trauma of separation continues to haunt North Koreans. They are obsessed with unification, unlike South Koreans."
As for her thoughts on "The Interview" -- by far the most high-profile depiction of North Korea in an American movie -- Yoo told me she had been meaning to see it but "after reading a description of the film as 'cinematic waterboarding' I have been dreading watching the film.
"I do believe in free speech," she added. "As much as I disagree with the filmmakers' approach and their cynicism about cinema and North Korea, I believe they have the right to make a terrible and offensive film. ... (But) what is strange about the whole discourse around the hacking was the way these filmmakers were suddenly treated as the victims. The fact that Sony was hacked does not exonerate these filmmakers or make them heroes. They deliberately made a cynical film and they should not be considered heroes."
As "Songs from the North" draws to a close, Yoo reveals that one of her guides has asked: "Why don't you return to the Fatherland?"
"I thought he meant North Korea and I tried to come up with a polite answer," reads the slide. "But he stopped me and said, 'No, to the South.'
"Less a question than an accusation, a verdict."
"Songs From the North" screens at 6 p.m. Thursday (March 26) at the Siskel Film Center, followed by a conversation with the director. Go to siskelfilmcenter.org/songsfromthenorth.
Thor, with a backstory
Marvel's "Thor" from 2011 will get some analysis this weekend courtesy of Anne-Marie Andreasson-Hogg, a professor at North Park University who specializes in Scandinavian studies. The screening and talk is part of the Music Box Theatre's Cinema Science series (which seems like a bit of a stretch, but hey). The character is based on Norse mythology -- a "space Norse fish out of water," in the words of Tribune critic Michael Phillips, "in need of a comeuppance before he can become a true hero." The screening is at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at the Music Box. Go to MusicBoxTheatre.com/collections/field-trips-cinema-science-with-the-field-museum.
Horror fest
Among the films in the lineup for this weekend's Indie Horror Film Festival is "Solitude," a story of a man discovering a bit of creepy family history that dates back to 1939; the movie comprises six chapters, each set in a different time period and shot in a style of each era's horror films. The fest runs Saturday and Sunday at Schurz High School, 3601 N. Milwaukee Ave. Go to indiehorrorfest.com.
Sci-fi shorts
A showcase of sci-fi shorts, the 2nd Juggernaut Film Festival (co-produced by Otherworld Theatre Company and Chicago Filmmakers) includes "The Gunfighter," a terrifically funny comedy-Western (shot on the same ranch as "Deadwood") from director Eric Kissack (who has spent the bulk of his career as a film editor, working most recently on "Horrible Bosses 2"). It features an unseen narrator voiced by Nick Offerman who can be heard by everyone in the story. "Who's sayin' that stuff?" the hero says, looking around: "Please quit doin' that, I just want to have a shot of whiskey in peace." The fest runs Saturday (at Chicago Filmmakers) and Wednesday (at Columbia College Chicago). Go to chicagofilmmakers.org.
nmetz@tribpub.com
