By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 1 cat
Director: Anja Daelemans | Nicholas Bonner
Starring: Gwang Hun Kim | Han Jong-Sim
Country: belgium, north_korea, united_kingdom
Year: 2013
Running time: 81
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379424/combined
Kyle says: “COMRADE KIM GOES FLYING received its New York Premiere and was hailed by ‘Film Comment’ Editor Gavin Smith as the first North Korean film ever presented at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The occasion was greeted with considerable good will by a very receptive audience, amazed that a film about female empowerment made its way out of North
Korea and onto the screens of international film festivals. I was similarly filled with eagerness and curiosity, ready to cheer on Kim’s ambitions to get out of the coal mine and onto the circus trapeze. Imagine: ‘Female Power’ in North Korea — a movie popular in the totalitarian nightmare of a Kim Jong-un, wherein an attractive young woman battles sexism, role rigidity, male entitlement and incidentally an entire political system to achieve fulfillment as a trapeze artist. The always-enjoyable program booklet enthused: ‘Only the most joy-hating grump could criticize this fun, retro, and giddy flick, and within its context it’s also quite touching.’
“Alas, I confess to exposure as a grump. This insipid drivel reminded me of nothing more interesting than features about Soviet farmers harvesting wheat and toting up the quota, or a Soviet technician repairing a tractor while making googly eyes at a comely fellow tractor factory comrade worker. Of the opposite sex, of course: Same sex relationships do not exist in such regimes, at least according to official spokespersons. Having seen numbers of these films, I don’t know why I expected something different from this one. Perhaps it was the overly enthusiastic producer/director, who equated dealing with the
regime to an adventure on Mars, and admonished the audience to judge with different standards, which had me immediately suspicious. He failed to warn us of dialogue on the order of, ‘We concentrated on coal production but didn’t see your acrobatic talent.’ Or ‘ We the working class never give up!’ To put it another way, this is a piece of crap, whether the actors are all followers of the Great Leader or not, whether it was filmed in Pyongyang or Poughkeepsie. After about a half hour of relentless smiling spunkiness on the part of realpolitik trapeze artist Han Jong-sim, I found myself on the side of the male workers who wanted to thwart her sunniness and send her back into the coalmine. Worse, I became more interested in seeing one of director Kim Gwang-Hun’s military propaganda movies. 1 cat
“Friday, July 5, 2013, New York Asian Film Festival at the Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York.”