THE LOVERS AND THE DESPOT
Magnolia Films
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya
Grade: B+
Director: Rob Cannan, Ross Adam
Written by: Rob Cannan, Ross Adam
Cast: Shin Sang-ok, Choi Eun-hee, Kim-Jong Il, Paul Courtenay Hu
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 3/29/16
Opens: August, 2016
North Korea is such a bizarre country that a documentary filmed within its confines looks like an unbelievable sci-fi film. Isolated with the world’s longest-running dictatorship, this Communist nation depends on the support of China, which has become increasingly wary of the cultish leaders. Though the only remaining, truly Communist state left, it is actually like a monarchy, with its despots passing the reign to their sons, as Kim Il-sung handed the baton to Kim Jong-il who in turn gave up his throne to the current nutcase, Kim Jong-un. Their powers are absolute. Anyone who crosses them disappears or winds up in an Asian gulag: the dissenters and their families as well.
As strange as North Korea is, the story behind Rob Cannan and Ross Adam’s “The Lovers and the Despot” could trump (no pun intended) all. If this film did not have a plethora of talking heads, you might think it was yet another sci-fi melodrama, complete with kidnappings and escapes and involving the CIA, North Korea, South Korea and ultimately Hollywood.
As anyone who follows politics already knows, Kim Jong-il, the son of the founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, was a movie fanatic. I use the word “fanatic” rather than the common abbreviation “fan,” because how else can you describe a guy who owned a collection of more than 20,000 video tapes and DVDs (so much for the Communist ideal against private property). His favorite pics included anything dealing with James Bond; also “Friday the 13th,” “Rambo,” “Godzilla,” and Hong Kong action cinema. Sean Connery and Elizabeth Taylor were his favorite male and female actors. (What? No “Last Year at Marienbad” and “Hiroshima Mon Amour”?)
Not content with grooving on these in-the-can pics, Kim followed his dream. He wanted to “own” a film maker and an actress of his own, so what the hell—why not have his agents in Hong Kong kidnap two of the most successful movie people from the South while they were Hong Kong meeting with a producer? The aim: to build a terrific film industry in his own country, one which depended on same ol’ scripts or heroes dying for their leaders and nothing dealing with love. And North Korea was feeling Kim’s success by allowing the screening of the first film from the West, “Bend It Like Beckham, watched by 12,000 people at the 2004 Pyongyang Film Festival.
But back to the kidnap. In 1978, on Kim’s orders, South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee were abducted. Shin was a prolific South Korean film producer and director with more than one hundred producer credits and seventy director credits. For her part Cho Eun-hee is a South Korean actress, one of the biggest stars in Korean film. Their marriage broke up in 1978 when Shin was found cheating on her. Kim had Shin locked up for five years on what Kim later called a misunderstanding, then released him, giving him even more creative freedom than Shin had in his native South, making seven films for the dictator. At one point, Shin escaped on a train and was imprisoned.
The highlight of the documentary are the actual recorded phone conversations that Shin had with Kim, which he smuggled out to prove that he did not defect from the South. The major part of the film is testimony from 89-year-old Choi, her commentary backed up by both archival film about Pyongyang society and some melodramatic reconstructions. Among the reconstructions, the most exciting, and in fact the only aspect of “The Lovers and the Despot” that make the audience pulses speed, is the couple’s break in Vienna when they packed small bags, took advantage of the their two security guards’ involvement in a card game, and taxied to the U.S. embassy in Vienna, followed by a white taxi presumably manned by the guards.
Though I have an antipathy to talking-heads documentaries, preferring the comic works of Michael Moore (“Sicko”) and Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”), I was intrigued by Choi’s sharp memory, enjoyed the shots of bizarre actions in Pyongyang such as the massive crying hysteria each time the two leaders had died, and watched the country’s rubber-stamp parliament unanimously break into tears when they saw the Dear Leader doing just that.
It’s too bad that Kim chose, like Bashar al-Assad in Syria, to use his inheritance to take a gig as his country’s authoritarian leader when he could have been a dandy film producer. The film is nicely edited by Jim Hession with often suspenseful music by Nathan Halpern and shot by a number of cinematographers. The doc is certainly informative, giving us in the West a look at an isolated country, with a subject, kidnapping, that has become a significant sub-genre of narrative films.
Unrated. 90 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – B+
Acting – B
Technical – A-
Overall – B+
