LFM Reviews Dear Pyongyang

By Joe Bendel. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, Japan’s Korean population sharply divided into camps aligned with the North or the South. At the time, the DPRK-supporting Chongryun ran circles around their counterparts, convincing many Koreans in Japan to “return” to the North. As a co-founder of Chongryun, Yang Yonghi’s father encouraged many such “returnees,” including her three older brothers. In retrospect, this was a mistake. Yang examines the disconnect between the ideology she was born into and the reality of life for her North Korean family in Dear Pyongyang, which screens this Sunday as part of Extreme Private Ethos, the Asia Society’s latest film series surveying provocatively intimate Japanese documentaries.

Yang was truly a red diaper baby, raised by her ardently Marxist father to revere the “fatherland” and the “Great Leader.” Although she attended one of the DPRK funded “Korean” schools in Japan, she was also a young person coming of age in an open society. As a result, she had some context to help her question the propaganda she was steadily fed in class. However, her first class trip to Pyongyang and her brief reunion with her brothers clearly began her ideologically questioning in earnest. As the years passed, her parents would ship more and more provisions to their sons, simply to keep them alive. Yet they never backed down from their allegiance to the rogue state.

Without question, Yang is profoundly disturbed by her parents’ apparent self deception, but she is rather circumspect in pressing the issue on-camera, for obvious reasons. Indeed, it is fascinating to read between the lines in Dear Pyongyang. She implies quite a bit about the miserable conditions there, but leaves much unspoken. After all, she has family in the North. On a more personal level, she also worries her father will consider any criticism of the DPRK as a rebuke of his life’s work. Just the same, she cannot ignore what she sees with her own eyes on each trip to Pyongyang.

Evidently, Yang successfully walked her tightrope, since she was able to make a follow-up film focusing on her niece Sona, whom she identifies with for living the life she might very well have led, had her parents also “returned.” She also was able to get her father to seriously take stock of many fateful decisions he made, on camera, before his health issues put an end to such discussions late in the documentary.

Understandably, an atmosphere of regret hangs heavily over the entire film. While Korea remains divided by circumstances beyond their control, Yang’s family is divided by choices they made. To her credit, she examines their implications as forthrightly as was prudent, given the nature of the Communist regime. Deeply personal but also highly relevant, it is an intriguing, frustrating, and forgiving film.  Definitely a highlight of Extreme Private Ethos, the respectfully recommended Dear Pyongyang screens this Sunday afternoon (3/11) at the Asia Society in New York.

Posted on March 9th, 2012 at 8:42am.

An Indie Darling Turns Scream Queen: LFM Reviews Silent House

By Joe Bendel. The multiplex kids probably have never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (let alone Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark), so the supposed single continuous “real-time” tracking shot making up the latest indyish-genre outing from Open Water directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau might seem like a fresh gimmick to them. Remaking the recent Uruguayan horror movie (including the aforementioned uninterrupted take), they show fewer seams than Hitchcock but more distracting narrative issues come to the fore in their remake, Silent House, which opens this Friday in New York.

Sarah’s family had some good times in their lake house, but vandals and weather damage have taken a toll. Her father and Uncle Peter are trying to restore it, but their bickering makes the going slow. It looks peaceful outside, but with the windows boarded up and the power kaput, the house is pitch dark inside, even during high noon. It would be a scary place to be locked in with a psycho killer, which will be the case for Sarah. After she establishes the lack of phone lines and cell service with an old childhood chum she cannot remember, her menacing begins.

When it comes to the mechanics of skulking about the old dark house, Silent is more than competent. However, when it drops its clues, they clang like anvils. Frankly, anyone who isn’t on to the big twist by the half hour mark must be remarkably guileless, even if they have not seen the Uruguayan original. Unfortunately, this makes it devilishly difficult to buy into Silent as a funhouse ride. Instead, viewers will more likely feel as if they are watching the film play out the string.

Still the toast of the indie circuit for her work in Martha Marcy May Marlene, Elizabeth Olsen handles her scream queen duties rather capably. There is actually more to Sarah than the typical teens chased through slasher movies, which Olsen evokes quite convincingly. However, Adam Trese and Eric Sheffer Stevens are just glaringly miscast as Papa John and Uncle Peter respectively, looking more like aging hipsters on a photo shoot for Restoration Hardware than adults with any kind of connection to the real world.

Ironically, the one take device is the least distracting aspect of the film. Indeed, the filmmakers should avoid the game of poker, because they display all kinds of “tells.” As a result, the creepy vibe and some nice work from Olsen, duly framed to maximize viewer leering, largely go to waste. For the curious, Silent House opens today nationwide.

LFM GRADE: D

Posted on March 9th, 2012 at 8:41am.

YouTube Jukebox: Borges

By David Ross. YouTube is the most irresistible seduction of them all. Holding temptation at arm’s length, we say, “I’d like to, but I shouldn’t.” YouTube turns even our conscientiousness against us. In so many cases, we really should. Morally, spiritually, intellectually. A case in point is “The Riddle of Poetry,” a lecture delivered by Jorge Luis Borges at Harvard University in the fall of 1967 and spring of 1968. It’s so full of grave wisdom; its language, so austere and precise, is a moral lesson unto itself. Live in the spirit of Borges’ prose seems to me a reasonable credo. Among other things, “The Riddle of Poetry” conveys what it means to be a gentleman of the mind – or rather what it meant, for the type is extinct. Borges’ comportment – his code of intellectual order and etiquette – now seems as quaint and remote as bending at the waist to kiss a gloved hand.

The Riddle of Poetry: Part 1 (above), Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Posted on March 9th, 2012 at 8:39am.