I watched the most anticipated and dreaded film of the Festival this year, Marc Wiese's latest documentary Camp 14. Wiese is no stranger to atrocity, he has turned his attention to the worst humankind has to offer, genocidal mass murderers, "honour" killings, biowarfare.
What is there to say about a documentary that makes Dante’s depiction of hell look like a comedy. Perhaps that Camp 14 is an important and formally intriguing documentary (interspersed with dreamily seamless animated scenes), one that I would not have wanted to miss. That it is elegantly and subtly delivered, guiding us but never dictating to the viewer what to think, how to react. Perhaps that it shows a multi-faceted portrait of the main character, a victim who also carries guilt. Perhaps that it leaves us a lot of room to think, compare, wonder while giving unparalleled access to the hidden world of horror.
The opening and closing scenes are quite brilliant and unexpected: The initial astounding insight is that a human can survive 23 years in a gulag and that things can "get better" after, according to the ex-North Korean death camp inmate. And finally his longing for home -- the North Korean camp that cost him his family and that he escaped at the expense of another man's death.
In between many small but important epiphanies: Shin visibly shell-shocked and overwhelmed when confronted with a dozen different kinds of dairy in a vast South Korean supermarket, after having received 6 spoons (if lucky) of maize every day for 23 years. Shin only getting agitated once, when deploring how the physical deformities and scars the frequent torture left remind him every morning in the shower of that past he is trying to forget. The embarrassing absurdity of the psyched and cheering young American do-gooders in a support group for North Korea, a place light years away from their experiences or imaginations. Shin's first memory as a 4-year old: of a public execution. Shin's regret: not having smiled at his father before fleeing.
Politically, two elements in the dehumanizingly claustrophobic system of North Korean prison camps that Marc Wiese opens up for us I found especially hard to deal with: the absurd severity and the perverse insidiousness of the rules that determine the prisoners’ lives from birth on. Half of the official prison rules can easily be summed up as: You will likely get shot. For anything (sex, having an opinion, stealing, not greeting guards etc.). The other half are worse than anything George Orwell could have dreamed up trying to corrupt and control your mind:
Prisoners must retain order, be attentive and keep watchful tabs on each other and report anything suspicious to the guards.
The accomplishment of your assigned duties is the only way to pay your debt and show gratitude for the laws which show you mercy.
All camp inmates must make up for their past mistakes by accepting the national security officials as their teachers and by strictly abiding by the ten rules and regulations. Honest work and rules will contribute to this.
Do not fear this film. Don’t concentrate on the perpetrators and their crimes too much, as astounding it is to listen to the people behind North Korea’s secretive death camps and their evil banality.
I went away wondering how it is possible that Shin Dong-Hyuk became the thoughtful young man he is today, after 23 years in the innermost circle of hell. One can choose to watch this film and marvel at the power and resilience of humankind after all.
Don't miss our Goethe Directors Talk with Marc Wiese on 13 September. There will be many questions to ask. Find the full video of our talk on our YouTube channel in late October.
More on evil and its perpetrators tomorrow, with Margarethe von Trotta's Hannah Arendt.
by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto
