By Jake Howell jake.howell@utoronto.ca

The Torontonian Reviews: Comrade Kim Goes Flying

Posted Saturday, September 15th, 2012 - 2 Comments »
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Comrade Kim Goes Flying is unique in the truest meaning of the word: it is the first ever Western-financed film to be made entirely in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The comedy of a blue-collar coal miner pursuing her dreams of becoming a trapeze artist, Comrade Kim arrives in the West as wacky cultural camp with a side-order of historical significance.

According to Comrade Kim Goes Flying, North Korea is a happy place; a utopia where everything is possible, everything is colorful, and everything is great. Of course, as our uncensored Google searches reveal, this is an expectedly false representation of the totalitarian state: the regime has a horrifically poor record on human rights, and the hardships endured are very real and very awful. In other words, to see this dystopia depicted so positively makes for some extremely bizarre cinema.

Regardless, the film is still a film – something to critique and watch and enjoy and discuss. In that sense I liken Comrade Kim Goes Flying to Triumph of the Will, where peripheral, international audiences understand the film’s context from an informed perspective on global affairs, while local subjects (at the time of its release) whoop and cheer from beginning to end. Watching Comrade Kim feels like voyeurism, but this film has been exported overseas in hopes that it will renew faith in North Korean values. It doesn’t, obviously, despite the film’s hardest attempts to show infectious smiles, bountiful cornucopias of delicious food, serene pastures, and an invigorating nightlife. The world has never seen North Korea and its people so cheerful and inviting.

We watch films like these with two pairs of eyes: one to consume the film as it is, the other to go wide in disbelief. Like Triumph of the Will, the world won’t watch Comrade Kim for entertainment. The laughs – the ironic scoffs of “yeah, right” – occur mainly whenever a character mentions the potential of the working class, moments where protagonist Kim feels down or unable to accomplish her goal. This is modern-day propaganda meant to inspire the lowest class of North Koreans, not captivate audiences privy to the oppression.

Based on its intended merits, Comrade Kim is a banal, over-the-top comedy. As North Korea isn’t known for its cultural critiques or social satire, the “real” jokes are all physical, never straying from slap-stick humor or silly gesticulations. Knowing audiences will laugh elsewhere, as the film features some “hilarious” meta-comedy when it reinforces the strength of the working class. The message here is clear: labor and effort will always prevail, and anyone with the motivation to become something bigger will succeed in the end. This is the American dream in a North Korean nightmare, but that’s okay: with no swearing, violence, or otherwise negativity whatsoever, the film is (twisted and ironic) fun for the whole family.

Had TIFF placed this film in its “Midnight Madness” programme, a section reserved for visceral horror flicks and genre mash-ups, I imagine the take-home response would have been a welcome respite from the average thrills and chills those audiences have grown accustomed to. Comrade Kim is no average movie: its “WTF” impression is stronger than most anything screened in cinema’s witching hour, as real-world oppression is masked here as something idyllic.

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Posted in MCN Originals, Movie City News, TIFF Originals, Toronto Film Festival | 2 Comments »

2 Responses to “The Torontonian Reviews: Comrade Kim Goes Flying”

  1. Libby B. says:
    September 16, 2012 at 4:19 pm

    Two thumbs up!

  2. Rex says:
    September 18, 2012 at 6:13 pm

    For those interested, here’s the links to the TIFF intro and Q&A for Comrade Kim Goes Flying, with co-directors Nicholas Bonner and Anja Daelemans. Oddly enough, fellow director, and North Korean, Kim Gwang Hun, was not in attendance (har-har). Bonner in particular is quite candid about the country and its problems, and his prior documentaries, which are NOT propaganda, are essential viewing to understand the importance of this film in spite of its old-fashioned message, necessary lies, and 1930’s “let’s-put-on-a-show” acting style.

    Intro:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWizwkJ9r2g

    Q&A (2 parts):
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLOlhXL_QSs
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ol5NLOscfw

    The Q&A for this film was easily one of the best among the 20 I attended at TIFF this year, largely thanks to these engaging directors who weren’t afraid to address audience questions about the reality of North Korea head on.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon