The Lovers and the Despot

Some sto­ries are so vivid­ly and thrilling­ly cin­e­mat­ic that, quite sim­ply, they can­not be writ­ten. In 1978, the South Kore­an actress Choi Eun-hee was kid­napped by Kim Jong-il in Hong Kong and held cap­tive in North Korea. Months lat­er, Shin Sang-ok, a crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed South Kore­an film­mak­er who also hap­pened to be Eun-hee’s ex-hus­band, was also abduct­ed in Hong Kong while attempt­ing to find his for­mer wife.

He, too, was brought to North Korea, where he was starved, tor­tured, and impris­oned for five years. When he was final­ly released, Sang-ok reunit­ed with his ex-wife as both roman­tic and cre­ative part­ner. With­in the next two years, the reunit­ed (and soon remar­ried) cou­ple would helm sev­en­teen films under the juris­dic­tion of their all-pow­er­ful bene­fac­tor-cap­tor, before mak­ing an impos­si­ble escape in 1986.

This extra­or­di­nar­i­ly bizarre but long-for­got­ten sto­ry has now been revis­it­ed in Ross Adam and Robert Cannan’s engag­ing new doc­u­men­tary, The Lovers and the Despot. Com­pris­ing grainy archive footage, con­vinc­ing recre­ations, cun­ning­ly-select­ed film clips from Eun-hee and Sang-ok’s exten­sive fil­mo­gra­phies, and inter­views with var­i­ous sub­jects (includ­ing a still-liv­ing and wist­ful Eun-hee), Adam and Can­nan find fas­ci­nat­ing and detailed angles into a sto­ry that might have been just a remark­able chron­i­cle of unlike­ly resilience.

The Lovers and the Despot digs deep­er and starts in earnest as an emo­tion­al account of the pain and prick­li­ness of imper­fect cou­ple­dom. There’s a sim­ple but soul­ful plea­sure to be found in watch­ing Eun-hee ten­der­ly recount how she, a beloved star­let accus­tomed to VIP treat­ment, fell in love with the bril­liant direc­tor who want­ed to make movies with her for­ev­er, only to lat­er find a chasm open­ing between them due to a reck­less affair and ille­git­i­mate pregnancy.

Upon their sep­a­rate kid­nap­pings, the film recon­fig­ures into an equal­ly riv­et­ing and ambigu­ous exam­i­na­tion of how an oppres­sive con­fine­ment could some­how lead to flex­i­bly cre­ative ful­fil­ment. Pro­vid­ed with gen­er­ous bud­gets and artis­tic free­dom by a dic­ta­to­r­i­al cinephile, Eun-hee doesn’t con­ceal the sat­is­fac­tion she and her hus­band found in mak­ing these movies, which won them prizes and played Euro­pean fes­ti­vals that the cou­ple were allowed to attend, albeit under the vig­i­lant super­vi­sion of North Kore­an guards.

Adam and Can­nan don’t shy away from the murk­i­ness of their unusu­al­ly accom­mo­dat­ing intern­ment, even as they refuse to probe Eun-hee on some of the more ques­tion­able aspects of her and her husband’s time in (and out of) North Korea. The film mines obvi­ous ten­sion from the thriller-esque kicks of this chap­ter, but it ulti­mate­ly los­es out by almost com­plete­ly ignor­ing the ten­sions that ini­tial­ly pulled Eun-hee and Sang-ok apart, instead depict­ing hus­band and wife as some­thing like a sin­gle enti­ty. In spite of this, the film’s poignan­cy con­tin­ues to build, espe­cial­ly through inter­views with the couple’s now grown-up chil­dren, two adults scarred by a trau­mat­ic time in their lives in which they thought they’d nev­er see their par­ents again.

Bewil­der­ing to the end, this is a mem­o­rable tale of love engen­dered and enhanced by trai­tor­ous friends, dou­ble-cross­es, and a tyran­ni­cal pup­pet mas­ter with cin­e­mat­ic aspi­ra­tions. It’s a wild­ly enter­tain­ing yarn, but also a reveal­ing reminder that film his­to­ry itself is so much deep­er – and weird­er – than we can pos­si­bly fathom.