Under the Sun

Director: Vitaliy Manskiy

It's not often we see footage of life in North Korea, which makes director Vitaliy Manskiy's Under the Sun something unique in cinema. The first question one might ask is: how did Manskiy secure permission to film a North Korean family's life and how much latitude was he granted as an artist to pursue his subject? Given that the film was shot behind North Korea's iron curtain, the answers to both questions are probably less mysterious than they appear. Manskiy and his crew were never alone during filming and based on what we see, it's axiomatic that the North Korean government will probably find little about the film that is objectionable. But though government monitors followed the director closely, we still manage to see what citizens endure on a daily and yearly basis as citizens of an oppressive state and unsurprisingly, it's pretty dismal.

We see a family of three; what is maybe a typical Pyongyang, father-mother-child unit. The daughter has been chosen to participate in what is called Spartakiads; which; from what I gather, are a series of celebratory events honoring North Korean history and its leaders; past and present. Choreographed events featuring singing and dancing, musical plays and miscellaneous pageantry are among the seemingly colorful but utterly monotonous activities the country's youth must stomach to aggrandize leader Kim Jong-Un and his familial forebears.

We see scenes of the family being directed in propaganda film. In one segment, the family sits at their kitchen table while the mother exhorts the daughter to eat her kimchi as a way to extol the virtues of enjoying a national delicacy. In other segments, we see factory workers taking part in other propaganda films celebrating productivity and the virtues of collective effort.

The daughter's role in a play commemorating a war hero and a ceremony marking the children's transition to citizenship are attended by elderly government officials in military uniforms. Adults are hardly spared participation in state-choreographed spectacles, which like those for children, are conceived for the sole purpose of deifying the country's communist leaders from the last half century.

In case one thinks the children participate merrily in the state's never-ending worship of its communist past (and present), Manskiy offers us footage of a classroom of kids listening to a war veteran recount his exploits. While he blathers on, Manskiy's camera focuses on a child who struggles to keep her eyes open.

What is particularly interesting (but hardly surprising) about Manskiy's film is its lack of access to the family's private world. A country that goes to herculean lengths to protect its own image would surely never risk unsupervised filming.

What we finally see is hardly surprising, for North Korea isn't much different than its communist neighbor to the north and the Soviet Union during the last century. Everything is gray in color and in spirit and all personal expression has been purged from the culture. What's left is personified in Manskiy's shots of the massive bronze colossi representing Kim Jong il and Kim il Sung; Kim Jong-un's predecessors. It is particularly disconcerting to watch citizens disperse from the foot of said statues; looking like insects before the towering buffoons.

Manskiy's film gets as close as a documentary can to North Korean life. It is fascinating, nevertheless; for we see what ordinary citizens must endure.

Under the Sun provides us images of things we don't normally see in the media. Manskiy shows us humanity under authoritarian rule; moments even the formidable North Korean can't censor. That alone is one of its greatest attributes.