Review: The Red Chapel

A (self-described) unscrupulous journalist, and a Danish-Korean comedy duo (one who is mentally disabled and wheelchair-bound) spend two weeks in North Korea with the stated agenda to perform for the residents of Pyongyang in a show of respect for Kim Jong Il. But in actuality they are there to make a guerilla-style expose of the ruthless police state. Under the careful eye of their state-assigned hostess Ms. Pak and each night submitting their footage to the state's "video specialists" (who edit out any material that might impugn the Dear Leader) and Mads Brügger's documentary directorial debut The Red Chapel was born.

The Danes travel around the nation's sparsely populated capital, hobnobbing with officials by day and performing their comedy routines to crowded auditoriums of polite but understandably confused audiences at night. Part of the gag of Red Chapel (which toggles with some discomfort between agit-prop and deafeningly ironic meta-comedy ala Borat -- maybe more like Bruno) being that the duo's act could not be considered by any rational person to be funny or pre-meditated. The routines are a haphazard mash-up of fart jokes, badly recounted Hans Christian Andersen yarns and singing Beatles tunes on an acoustic guitar. Brügger trains his lens on audience reactions then dubs in his own narration of conspiratorial thoughts that must be running through the minds of the Koreans.

To say that the film tests the boundaries of documentary ethics would be a thundering understatement. The Red Chapel challenges every documentary ethic known to the film-making world. Putting Pak at the center of his narrative, Brügger describes her as a military interrogator based only her use of rudimentary English (nevermind the question, who in Korea is teaching English besides state propagandists?) He also takes her to a monument built in Kim Il Sung's honor and while she silently weeps, overdubs that she must be performing an unspoken, but constant sadness as a patriotic ruse. This is at least such a blatant substitution of the film-maker's expressions for the subject's that it says more about him than her. But the fact remains, if the North Korean government got ahold of The Red Chapel all of Brügger's subjects' lives would be endangered. And considering the astounding work that must be involved with visiting North Korea as a quasi-journalist from a Western country, the film dwells a great deal on flatulence, in-fighting and mocking Ms. Pak. An extended joke about gifting Jong Il's staff with a pizza stone that he probably won't share ('Millions of people are starving to death! LOLz!') feels brutally infantile.

But even ill-conceived documentaries, made up of censored footage, helmed by someone who admits to having no moral qualms about misrepresenting himself to his subjects -- is still exposing a broader audience to the issue at hand. American film-makers tend to train their lenses on North Korea as a personal crusade (Kimjongilia) which tends to produce martyr-as-storyteller adventure tales that can cause a brain-damaging amount of eye-rolling. Coupled with the fact American audiences want to see Kim Jong Il as a morally corrupt clown who appears only occasionally on the world stage to shoot off failed nukes and amuse us with his platform shoes and pompadour hairstyle (and "The Daily Show" is more than happy to oblige this narrative). But for as didactic, silly and potentially hazardous as The Red Chapel can be, it never strays from letting the viewer know: behind the surreality of the situation, millions of people are living in a constant state of terror because a mentally ill dictator (who inherited the job from his dad) controls every facet of their existence. Brügger's intentions are heartless and intellectually bankrupt, but his outcome is a stronger document of the North Korean situation than anything of its kind.

The Red Chapel is screening January 21-31 at the Sundance Film Festival.

UPDATE: This film has also been screening with the title Kim Jong-Il’s Comedy Club.

 

Comments

[Erin Donovan]

hey GFD,

You're right, he's not mentally handicapped. He was described as "spastic" in the film but that's such a commonly misused term in the States that I (incorrectly) noted that he's mentally handicapped. Thanks for the clarification.

[GuyFromDenmark]

I felt I had to clear this up...

... Danish-Korean comedy duo (one who is mentally disabled and wheelchair-bound) ...

That is not correct.

He is a "spastic", which means that his handicap is physical only. He is perfectly well mentally, and actually does comedy shows professionally in Denmark.

[GS]

Thanks for adding the new information, as well as your analysis. This is why your blog is one of the few I read that I also ever bother to comment on. I don't do it to hear myself talk - I do it because I know you actually listen.

[NPCR]

I want a movie made after 1990-ish that's not supernatural-related and is just a really good horror movie. I've seen Halloween and Saw. They were pretty good but not the best. My all-time favorite horror movies are the three Scream movies, and The Last House on the Left.

[Jordan1]

It is nice one, the pic is very cool.

[AJ]

The content of your blog is exactly what I needed, I like your blog.

[michael D]

Where would one be able to find this documentary??