(UK, 98 min.)
Dir. Rob Cannan, Ross Adam
 |
| Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures |
Who knew that Kim Jong-ill wanted to be Adolf Hitler, Joseph
Goebbels, and Leni Riefenstahl rolled into one? North Korea’s notorious supreme
leader is at the centre of the fascinating documentary The Lovers and the Despot, as is his unexpected love for film that
fuels this enthralling story. This stranger-than-fiction docu-thriller unravels
a wild tale. It’s a thrilling cinematic caper, but also a uniquely revealing
glimpse behind the curtain of one of the most secretive countries in the world.
This doc by Rob Cannan and Ross Adam recalls the Oscar-winner Searching for Sugarman in that it takes an absorbing, captivating, and entertaining story that is almost too good to be believe, and then finds a handful of great storytellers to unfurl the tale with gripping gusto. The film tells the true crime yarn of director Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee, a husband-and-wife power team in the South Korean film scene. They’re riding high with a string of hits gaining international fame, doing their nation proud on the festival circuit, inspiring their compatriots, and becoming idols.
As is the case with many famous couples, though, the
marriage didn’t last. Choi recalls in interviews how she left Shin (who died in
2006 and appears only in archival footage) and continued her career on her own
despite walking away from a once-great relationship. However, their divorce
wasn’t a final separation personally or professionally as The Lovers and the Despot reveals how Chin was abducted from a
hotel room and smuggled into North Korea by boat. There, she became the welcome
guest (re: hostage) of Kim Jong-il, who wanted to use her stardom to make movies
that could speak to the masses while elevating North Korea’s stature on the
international scene.
Cue Shin, who himself is taken into the bizarre plot. The
lovers must make films for the despot and they ultimately create propaganda
where they used to create art. The various talking heads in the film—spies,
film critics, historians, and family members—offer recollections of the story
that conflict or don’t entirely add up. Some say Shin was abducted, for
example, while others say he entered North Korea willingly to offer himself to
Kim to ensure Chin’s safety.
Similarly, The Lovers
and the Despot reveals how differently two people might react to the same
situation. Chin resists Kim’s charm and jokes, and she instead notices the
regimental ordering of her diet and dress that signals a dangerous captor. Kim,
however, seduces Shin with his enthusiasm as a producer. The film explains how
Shin’s ambitions in South Korea often outpaced his means, so Kim’s willingness
to throw money at his propaganda mission delivered budgets bigger than those
that the director could ever imagine south of the border. The artists and the
dictator crank out movies faster than Woody Allen makes them, producing a
whopping 17 films in under eight years.
Kim isn’t much of a producer, but his interest lets this Argo-ish caper expose a character rarely
caught on film. Interviews fuel the intrigue while a healthy amount of stylised
re-enactment footage gives the doc the pulse of the thriller as the Sin and
Choi escape death, Hollywood-style.
The value of The
Lovers and the Despot comes not so much through its entertainment value or
white-knuckler of a story. Rather, Cannan and Adam find a wealth of material
that shows what Kim was like as a man and a leader. Choi recalls episodes in
which she and Shin captured conversations and evidence on a tape recorder to
document their ordeal. These audio tapes offer invaluable soundbites of the
Korean dictator in action. Even the spies who appear in The Lovers and the Despot speak of encountering the man’s voice
through these tapes. The recordings offer Kim a surprising level of humanity as
he speaks of his dream and vision, but they also reveal a troubled man, which
the first-hand accounts from Choi further as he speaks of escaping his regime.
The Lovers and the
Despot illustrates the creation of a false national identity through art as
images without an element of humanity create god-like figures. Snippets of the
iconic footage of North Koreans in states of hysterical mourning for Kim
Il-Sung show the effects of brainwashing through iconography and propaganda,
and the power that images play when people have so few alternatives to
counteract them. This doc is a suspenseful tale, but also a telling one about
the films we love and the dreams they may inspire.
The Lovers and the
Despot opens in Ottawa at The ByTowne and in Toronto at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on Friday,
September 30.
