Madeleine Gavin’s movie about North Korean defectors, which has been shortlisted for this year’s Documentary Feature Oscar, is custom-made for controversy. Though many Western critics have praised its verité take on the defection process and unflinching depiction of NK regime atrocities, documentarians who regularly cover the Korean peninsula have questioned what they see as an unbalanced view of the North-South standoff and expressed concern as to the filmmakers’ effect on the action presented. These issues were explicated in a recent letter some of these documentarians sent to PBS prior to its airing of Beyond Utopia, saying that the historical record laid out in the film is incomplete and the film’s wholesale demonization of North Korea dangerously misleading. Though almost no one thinks the dynastic communist Kim regime constitutes a legitimate government, or that the country’s human rights record is anything but horrible, the U.S. has had a hand in maintaining the brutality of the regime through ever-intensifying military pressure and sanctions that mainly harm the North Korean people. Such aspects only opens the film up to charges of being ideologically driven.

Just as likely, these decisions seem to have been made for the purpose of generating dramatic tension. The movie covers two parallel stories, the more exciting of which is a step-by-step visual record of one family’s escape from North Korea into China, which takes them all the way to Thailand, mostly on foot. In order to make this possible, the filmmakers work closely with the South Korean Christian pastor, Kim Seungeun, who has helped hundreds of other defectors make the same trip in the past. Working with teams of brokers who are in it for the money, Pastor Kim knows all the pitfalls of such a journey and is the perfect guide for the viewer, especially since he, at one point, physically joins the Roh family (which includes two children and an 80-year-old woman) after they enter Vietnam. There is no denying the visceral character of these sequences, though the viewer may wonder how much of what they are seeing is in service to the documentary project. (At one point, the pastor instructs family members on how to use the cameras) The structure of the film also raises questions, as the suspense of the Rohs’ ordeal is interrupted—and thus heightened—every so often for another example of North Korean perniciousness as explained by a group of experts, including journalist Barbara Demick and defector/activist/author Lee Hyeonseo. In contrast, the second story, which follows defector Lee Soyeon as she tries to extricate her teenage son from North Korea, can’t help but feel less momentous since it all takes place on the phone as she, already settled in the South, negotiates with brokers and people with connections in the North. 

It’s perhaps the utter professionalism and high quality of the finished product that may cause the viewer to wonder, because all the elements seem geared toward maximum emotional involvement. Beyond Utopia bills itself as a unique look into a country that’s shrouded in dread and mystery, but it has the effect of being draining in much the same way a disaster movie is draining. Most of the film’s objectivity is concentrated on the Roh family’s difficulties in coming to terms with the despicable character of the North Korean government since they are so conditioned by propaganda—even as they flee the country for their own survival. It’s a paradox that Gavin plays up, especially at the end, but it also implies that if the viewer is truly interested in a complete picture of the plight of North Koreans, they should additionally seek out other, less fraught materials. 

In Korean and English. Now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001). 

Beyond Utopia home page in Japanese

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