2014-05-22

Nearly forgotten but truly fascinating and of biblical proportions…

Few countries manage to provoke such hyperbolic statements as North Korea. The nation’s first president, Kim Il-sung, preferred to call his Communist paradise on earth the Democratic (ahem) People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), but Western news agencies amuse themselves coming up with more sensational metaphors to attract readers and viewers alike. It has been called “The land that time forgot” or “The secret state” by some journalists, but not many news reports succeed in moving beyond the mere mysterious and sensational aspects of the last completely isolated Soviet-style dictatorship in the world. However, between reports of nuclear tests, Stalinesque executions and images of impressive military marches, it is well reported that the now-deceased ‘Great Leader’ Kim Jong-il was… a huge film buff.

Kim’s film collection allegedly contained 20.000 films and he (again, allegedly,) gave guidance to thousands and thousands of North Korean productions. He even managed to write a book on the subject, “on the Art of the Cinema”, reflecting his views on the pivotal role of the medium in propagating the message of revolution. Ever since, the book is considered the holy Bible of filmmaking for every North Korean director and everybody in the film business should strictly adhere to the Great Leader’s rules of ‘Juche’, a catchall term for all North Korean ideological dogmas.

Of course, the ideological restrictions suffocated any creative spirit and led to one dull movie after another. Invariably, the source of drama in any North Korean production revolves around the absence of the Dear Leader in one way or another. Either the father of the people has yet to appear in the depressing lives of the Koreans (in historical dramas and war pictures), or – in more contemporary settings – the protagonist is so foolish to think he or she could live without the Dear Leader, rejecting the leader’s ideals. In the end, luckily, smiling faces fill the screen as the deviant comes to terms with its plight. The Republic is truly the one and only happy place on this godforsaken earth. The end.

Repeat this a hundred times and it needs no further explanation why this nation’s cinema became a laughing stock for the rest of the international film industry. It’s evenly so clear that the North Korean movie-going masses craved for a gripping film, or the revolutionary message would eventually fail to come across. Kim Jong-Il acknowledged this sobering reality. To please his father and to prove himself a worthy successor, he invested his time and effort in cinema. He became something like a true movie mogul, but unlike the movie moguls in the United States Kim didn’t need to worry about competition. From the 1960′s onwards, Kim sought international recognition and praise for his film industry he held so dear. Surprisingly, for a short period, he seemed to succeed in its project for national prestige seeking. The most remarkable and praised North Korean film of that golden age is Kotpanum chonio/The Flower Girl (1972). Throughout the Eastern bloc, the film received nothing but admiration and was even rewarded with the ‘Prix Special’ at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Kim Jong-il instantly gave the picture the statute of the ‘North Korean Classic’, an official label only reserved for the best of North Korean productions. We at easternKicks decided to look at this long-forgotten classic (?) and see what all the fuss was about.

The entire plot (spoiler warnings!) could be faithfully summarised here as The Flower Girl is all about portraying prolonged suffering and revolves solely around the protagonist’s prayer for better times to come. We’re in occupied Korea, the 1930’s. Japanese forces are subjugating the Koreans with their sadism. Kotpanum is an innocent and true Korean young lady selling flowers at the village square in order to survive. Her mother is terribly ill, her brother is sent to prison and her little sister is blind. The evil landlords, backed by ‘the Japs’ (Japanese ‘imperialist’ forces are always referred to in such a pejorative sense in the DPRK), are responsible for all their woe. The landlady caused the little sister’s blindness by kicking her right into a pot of boiling water. When the brother sought vengeance by setting their property on fire, he’s sentenced to a far-away prison indefinitely. Kotpanum struggles to keep the true Korean family alive and well, but after the mother succumbs to her illness, she decides to look for her brother. Once arrived at prison, the guards snarl at Kotpanum that her brother is deceased. Without a mother or a strong man on their side, the two sisters are left for dead. Next, a ‘deus ex machina’ enters the scene. It turns out the brother managed to flee from prison and joined the Korean Revolutionary Army (KRA). The last ten minutes of the picture are straight propaganda: the brother arrives in town, reunites with his two sisters and stirs up the angry Korean villagers. One thing is made clear over and over again: those ‘dirty Japs’ must be kicked out of the country. The end credits roll as Kotpanum and her sister frivolously walk around town selling flowers. It is not sure whether the violent upstanding of the Korean people has already taken place or not. One thing is made clear however: the imperialist forces stand in our way of true happiness.

Of course, it is the brother who must return as only some form of manly power can revolutionise the populace. In North Korean cinema, (girly) girls are either suffering or they’re faithfully fulfilling their plight as non-violent servants of the state. Powerful women in DPRK cinema are androgynous to say the least, reflecting the North Korean ideal of manliness. Indeed, the elements of propaganda are apparent on all levels. At one moment, the brother even addresses the audience directly: “You don’t know why we’re living in bitter tears. It’s because we’ve lost our country and the Japs are giving us a hard time!” In the meantime, the brother is breaking the fourth wall by blandly staring at the camera. Subtlety isn’t exactly North Korea’s strongest suit.

Surprisingly, however, The Flower Girl mostly manages to conceal its true nature and although it’s hard to believe based on the above-mentioned plot summary, the picture is quiet moving. It walks a fine line between being dramatically effective and overly sentimental, but when the film hits home the images are truly captivating. Perhaps this explains its international success. Sure, as Kim Il-sung has written the screenplay, the sole purpose of this flick is to idolise the Korean uprising and their Dear Leader. It transcends this dubious message, however, through effective visuals and an impressive soundtrack. Especially the tracking shots evoke intense melodramatic moments. When characters experience sheer terror or incredible sadness, the camera emphasises their emotions by consistently closing in on the actors. It’s a cheap trick but, most of the time, emotionally effective. Impressive sceneries fill the screen as the film has a peculiar fascination with the Korean landscape and nature. Yet again, this fascination with natural beauty matches the ideological message. When Kotpanum’s spirit hits rock bottom, she desperately looks at the moon-lit sky, praying to God for a saviour to come. Of course, there is no such thing as a Christian God in North Korea as it upholds a form of secular humanism. Those who dear to express their religion, are faced with either harsh treatment in labour camps, torture or simply execution. There is only one God for the DPRK and it is the God of and for the people: Kim Il-sung. Her staring at the moon only foreshadows the coming of the Dear Leader, as he’s responsible for all the crops and the natural wealth the Korean people possess. The wonders of nature are the wonders of the Dear Leader and his wisdom. The wonders of nature are, in other words, the wonders of the Korean people.



It is tempting to criticise The Flower Girl for its sentimentality and flawed climax, but the film works surprisingly well as a Biblical allegory. Actually, both Flower Girl’s imagery and narrative structure resemble Western epics that we now consider as classics in the genre. Although lacking a breathtaking battle scene, expensive sets and thousands of extras, at its core it remains a story about faith being put to through the ultimate test. The heroic character, Kotpanum, resembles the spirit of the entire Korean people, as they are God’s (read the Dear Leader’s) ‘chosen ones’. Once you consider that North Korean ideology heavily rests on myth making and a strong belief in a homogenous Korean ‘race’, it is not difficult to interpret The Flower Girl as a translation of the Western religious epic. The political is construed as religious in the DPRK. In every sense, then, The Flower Girl is a proletarian or Communist version of Ben Hur (1959, William Wyler).

The impressive soundtrack only adds to this interpretation. For contemporary Western audiences, the musical pieces are overly bombastic and way too much on the nose, but it is undeniable that the numerous choir hymns are skilfully composed and sung. Together with the mystical images of the Korean landscape, they transform this picture in something more than an otherwise unremarkable piece of propaganda. The resemblance with the religious epic is not far away here either. Consider, for example, this fragment of one of the many hymns throughout the picture.

“How could I live in this rough world?

There’s no one who answers me.

When will this grudge be worked off.

When will this grief come to an end?”

Admittedly, it takes some goodwill to look beyond the dubious ideological message, the overly sentimental passages and the happy ending. The Flower Girl, however, was not marketed at a ‘capitalist pig’ like yours truly and one must look at the picture from the viewpoint of an average North Korean cinemagoer. It’s only intellectually honest to do so. Yes, the characters are mere archetypes, such as the ‘courageous’ Korean rebel and the ‘evil’ landlady collaborating with ‘imperialist forces’. At the same time, The Flower Girl is enjoyable because it is competently made and remains fairly convincing as a human drama.  Even the forced happy ending makes sense for other audiences. Johannes Schönherr, an authority on North Korean cinema, told me the Chinese could not get enough of The Flower Girl’s optimistic message. Whereas the Chinese (but also the South Koreans) were (and still are) used to downright pessimistic outcomes, this ‘North Korean Classic’ is in the end uplifting and hopeful. The Chinese flocked to the cinema to experience a form of escapism. For North Korean audiences, this film must have been the topic of conversation at the dinner table. Contrary to what you may think, North Koreans visit the cinema regularly and cinema attendance figures far outreach those of most Western countries. They must have been captivated and moved by this picture. In this sense, Kim Jong-il succeeded in its mission.

It may seem odd to take a look at a production of yesteryear, but The Flower Girl could just have been made today as in the seventies. In a totalitarian society that only reinforced their ideology over the decades, there is no such thing as a breeding ground for artistic revolutions, no ‘new waves’ to be founded. So far, that is. With the ever-increasing and unstoppable influx of foreign entertainment, the cinema of the DPRK has not much to look forward to. Right now, the regime responds to this threat with severe repression. Recently, some 80 citizens were executed, most of them on the basis of watching foreign entertainment. Rumour has it that the US show Desperate Housewives has a small following in Kim Jong-un’s Communist paradise. Fans of the series face the death penalty. Even more of a threat to the North Koreans than desperate housewives, however, is a desperate leader.

The Flower Girl can be found on YouTube with English Subtitles, though not on DVD. Recently we covered Chocolate Liberation Front’s interactive website Kim Jong Il’s Cinema Experience.

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