The Propaganda Game
 
 
Director:  Alvaro Longorio
Year:  2015
Rating: 6.0
This is a documentary on North Korea from a Spanish filmmaker and so is perhaps more even handed than ones you might see coming out of America. Yet the issue that faces every documentarian on North Korea is that you only get to see what they allow you to see. You always have to have a North Korean minder and guide with you. Do they think you will wander off accidentally into one of the slave labor camps?



So while they extol all the wonderful virtues of the country - they don't actually want you to see too much of it. And the director never asks any tough questions - doing so is probably a way to be on the next airplane out of the country. Simple questions though - such as why can't I walk around on my own - if your people love this place so much why don't you allow them access to the Internet, to films, to literature from outside the country.



So on that level this is basically a softball but it still intrigues just seeing the North Koreans about in their normal lives - kids roller skating, sitting in the park with friends, going to work on the subways (which have the added benefit of being bomb shelters when we attack), performing in school (a song to the Great Leader), a dance performance (a dance to the Great Leader) - but there are lots of smiles, it doesn't seem at all grim - yes people answer questions in almost the exact same way and no one word of dissent is heard. There are large skyscrapers and beautiful wide roads with hardly a car or motorcycle to be seen. I would actually love that.



The director also presents dueling views of propaganda - theirs but also the West's. Nearly every story we get out of North Korea is about an atrocity - The Great Leader has executed someone, people are starving, millions in the gulag - while they have an equally dim view of the West as imperialistic warmongers. Maybe some truth in both but also some exaggeration as well. For example, the director goes to a Catholic mass where everything seems normal - turn to a commentator from the West and a Korean defector and they say it is an absolute fake set up for tourists. Who knows who to believe.



Also, traveling with the director is a Spanish national who has completely bought into North Korea ideology as the last Communist country. He exclaims - Mao was betrayed, Stalin was betrayed, Ho Chi Minh was betrayed - ok I would have to put you down as nuts - but he is very personable and has an answer for everything - the main one being - you have eyes, you are witnessing life in North Korea - does this look so bad? And no it doesn't but the film barely touches the surface because that is all that is allowed.