If
know someone in North Korea, then you have just cause to be concerned for their
well-being. With reports re-surfacing of
widespread famine and worse, loosing contact with family in the closed Communist
nation would not inspire optimism. When
the annual letters from filmmaker Jason Lee’s uncles stopped coming, his father
became understandably anxious, embarking on a family fact-finding mission documented
in Lee’s short film, Letters from
Pyongyang (trailer
here), which
screens during the 2013 Korean American Film Festival in New York.
Getting
into the DPRK requires superhuman bureaucratic hoop-jumping, even from
Canada. After getting more no’s than
Stephen Merchant in a singles bar, Lee and his father finally received the
requisite approvals for their visit.
However, in a massively anticlimactic turn of events, they learn Lee’s
two uncles died several years ago, just prior to embarking. They continue on anyway, hoping to pay their
respects and connect with the family they have never known.
What
follows vividly illustrates the stilted nature of tourism in oppressed
countries. The Lees’ minders show them
plenty of imposing Socialist monuments, but they are only allowed a brief
meeting with their extended North Korean relatives in the lobby of their
hotel. Presumably, Lee the filmmaker has
little to say about this conspicuous police state behavior because Lee the
nephew is concerned about his uncles’ families.
That is completely understandable but highly problematic from a
cinematic standpoint, resulting in too many scenes of Lee and his father duly
taking in one epic statue after another.
