Worth: $18.50
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Cast:
Pastor Seungeun Kim
Intro:
… beyond incredible, and one of the most daring works of cinematic journalism in recent memory.
There are times when the mere existence of a piece of film is dangerous; its content a genuine threat to someone, and whose creators are putting their own lives at risk in recording those images. We are not talking about any of the passe controversies that crop up with mainstream media in the West, where any given remake of a nostalgic property garners accusations of murdered childhoods. No, we are referring to something that reveals unspeakably horrible things actually happening in the world, to living human beings, which makes the preservation of the film’s facticity so vital. Navalny is a recent noteworthy example.
Beyond Utopia, the latest documentary from City of Joy’s Madeleine Gavin, offers an insiders’ perspective on the underground network of brokers and activists involved with North Korean defectors. Not through recreations (although animation and news footage comprise parts of the larger tapestry), but through actual clandestine camerawork following Pastor Seungeun Kim and the Caleb Mission, as they arrange and escort families across multiple state borders to escape the totalitarian regime. It’s guerrilla filmmaking brought to such an intensity that it eclipses even the factually rebellious works of Jafar Panahi.
Portraying the efforts of the Mission in securing both a family at risk because relatives had already defected before, and a mother trying desperately to reunite with her son, would be monumentally gripping on its own. But then Gavin goes the extra mile by detailing every inch of the society that they are running from, from its origins following World War II, to the various horrifying and regularly-nudging-the-absurd methods used to keep the populace loyal, to first-hand accounts of the institutional cruelty inflicted on the people. Even if someone went into this with a reasonable idea of North Korea’s iron grip on its people through mass media osmosis, the truly mortifying extent of that squeeze will still snatch the breath from your lungs.
As occasionally heartwarming as Beyond Utopia gets when it depicts defectors who can now appreciate the world outside the dystopia, the film’s perspective never for a second settles for that. The thought of all the people who are still there, still marching to the beat of the Kim Jongs, penetrates through any fleeting relief to firmly implant the idea that, as brave as Seungeun Kim and his network is, it’s still not enough. This is amplified by the framing of the footage itself, taken on the eve of the COVID outbreak. Contemplating the irony of a collective safety measure interfering with such a process is the altar where sleeping soundly at night gets sacrificed.
Beyond Utopia is beyond incredible, and one of the most daring works of cinematic journalism in recent memory. From end to end, it bristles with overwhelming anxiety and passion, demanding eyes to be drawn towards a crisis where extensive governmental effort is made to prevent it from being revealed, even to the people within it. As art, it outclasses any work of fiction that would deign to consider itself a ‘thriller’. But as factual document, it’s a sobering but rousing reminder that even the biggest bullets fired from the biggest guns still can’t match the calibre of a shot from the barrel of a camera.
