Thousands gather to practice routines for the massive North Korean celebration Mass Games. The film A State of Mind chronicles the festival.
Over the last 50 years, the communist state of North Korea has been putting together an eye-popping, people-filled spectacular called the Mass Games.
Utilizing more than 80,000 gymnasts and countless others with technical verve and ability, the Mass Games is as extravagant as a Super Bowl halftime show. But it is filled with participants who bring dedication, class, honor and a little spilled blood to the set.
The gymnasts and mosaic board-flippers spin, leap, kick and explode in a series of colorful, human controlled moving seas, waving flags, synchronized patterns and, most importantly, living examples of loyalty and devotion to North Korea, communism and their great leader Kim Jon Il.
While watching Daniel Gordon’s BBC documentary, A State of Mind, I was reminded of how little I actually knew about North Korea. Two fingers on my hand represent the knowledge of the country— Kim Jon Il and frightening nuclear capabilities — I carried into the film.
It is perhaps this blind spot that made the film intriguing and frightening to me in equal measures. Gordon’s cameras were allowed unprecedented access to film in North Korea.
The crew included translators and access to sacred public areas.
Gordon focuses his lens on the story of two young gymnasts, Pak Hyon Sun and Kim Song Yon. Both are devoted schoolgirls who seem to exhibit the perfect adolescent life under the General’s reign. At school they learn about the predicted assault by the United States on their soil, hone their English (as both a tool and as a weapon), and spend 80 percent of their time in the Mass Games club where they, and just about every other nimble student, perfect their gymnastic skills in the hopes that they will be good enough to be asked to perform in the “socialist realism extravaganza.”
We watch both girls through multiple practices (all done on concrete and with no regard to aches and pains) where the smiling girls learn that they succeed “as individualism disappears and group power develops.” Every synchronized leap and flip is another link in the chain of self-reliance.
These movements are also another step away from the unwanted imperialism of the United States and those who oppose the perfect communist state.
These lessons spill over into the girls’ home life as well. We watch as family time becomes a time to help each other, learn about each other and build a unit so tight that it can be used as a defense for their state. When electricity goes out nightly for hours at a time (North Korea, despite seeming like a show-off still struggles economically), curses toward the United States are heard as excuses for the way things remain and a reason for everyone to work harder to overcome them. The previous actions of the United Stares are what drive North Koreans toward beautiful perfection and love for their leader and home.
It was this sudden lesson that tinged the wonder of watching thousands of people coming together for one amazing artistic expression.
It was a bitter pill full of fear for what a million united minds could be capable of, especially when anger and resentment are the bubbling at the core.
A State of Mind shows us a place changed by the past, happy with their present time, and prepared for the negative expectations of what is to come.
The Mass Games put an exquisite mask on to a face that has been long awaiting a proper unveiling.
Yet it remains to be seen if the scars that the mask has been hiding are being worn with pride or with reflection to those who may have caused them.
Directed by Daniel Gordon
2004/N. Korea/93 min.
Korean with English Subtitles
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