Beyond Utopia (15)
Directed by Madeleine Gavin
★★★

MADELEINE GAVIN’S documentary about North Korea’s Pastor Kim’s work in helping people defect is two contradictory things at once: both a gripping and moving film, particularly the story of the Woo family’s journey through China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand to South Korea; and a predictable piece of anti-communist propaganda. 

How is this dialectic resolved?

You don’t need to be a defender of North Korea for the constant abstract use of the term “freedom,” the sentimental music, the description of the route as the “underground railroad,” a term from the slavery era in the US, the cliched inserting of dystopian found footage of daily life, and the underlying assumption that all communism is bad, to grate.

What is remarkable about the film is the mobile phone footage of the various escapees, especially the Woos. We see them undergo a tortuous journey through rivers, jungles and borders. Seeing this through a shaky, hand-held lens has two effects: it brings us closer to the action while also making it clear that what we are seeing is constructed. There are no seamless fades and cuts here.

Pastor Kim is clearly a man with a calling, and not just for God: he is on a mission to get as many people out as possible and, indeed, bring down the regime. 

His work is dependent on the network of brokers he pays to move people about, who all operate within the free market and respond to its “rules”: when rich Chinese dissidents from Hong Kong pay more, the prices go up for everyone.

The secondary narrative of the mother who wants her son to join her is heartbreaking. He is caught having crossed the Yalu River into China and each day the news regarding his situation is worse. It is unclear if the brokers are telling the truth, given they are human traffickers and only interested in money. We eventually learn that he is in a concentration camp.

To return to my question, the dialectic isn’t resolved, and the viewer’s enjoyment here will be predicated on how much they can enjoy the human story while putting the film’s political assumptions about capitalism and communism to one side.

Out in cinemas Friday

Dr Jekyll (15)
Directed by Joe Stephenson 
★★★★

FOR spectators of a certain age, this latest adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde will bring to mind Hammer House of Horror, the 1980 television anthology from Hammer Films. Indeed, the film feels very much like a television play of that era, stylistically and in terms of its narrative pacing.

That’s not a criticism. From the folk horror titles through to the ambiguous ending, the film is replete with genre memory, while managing not to tip over into nostalgia or referentiality for the sake of it.

Both central performances – Eddie Izzard as trans CEO Dr Nina Jekyll/Rachel Hyde and newcomer Scott Chambers as Rob (Robert Louis Stevenson, as we eventually find out) – are very strong. A special word for the fantastic yellow lighting for exterior night shots and use of static camera, which give those sections of the film a somewhat painterly hue.

Out in cinemas Friday

Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn (PG)
Directed by Sheila Hayman
★★★★

THE theme of the film – how women have been written out of classical music history and how they might be reclaimed – is both surprising and unsurprising: the former because Fanny Hensel’s life (1805-1847) is remarkable and the latter because the restrictions placed on her are unfortunately not.

The film presents parallel narratives: one detailing Fanny’s life, including her relationships with her father, her famous brother, Felix, and her loving husband, Wilhelm; the other the search for evidence of her compositions, specifically her Easter Sonata. 

The first presents the spectator with a traditional narrative of a life, the second ends with the first public performance of the sonata in Birmingham in 2022.

Effectively excluded from creating music for public consumption once she hit puberty, Fanny still managed to compose a lot of it, perform it for people privately, and publish her songs by her 30s.

Hayman, who is Fanny’s descendent, has produced a film that deserves a wide audience. After all, as we are reminded at the end, over 90 per cent of classical music performed is still written by men.

Out in cinemas Friday