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How entertaining? ★★★☆☆
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 10 July 2015
This a movie review of DENNIS RODMAN'S BIG IN PYONGYANG.Seen as part of the East End Film Festival 2015. For more information, click here.
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“I am just trying to open doors, that’s it,” Dennis Rodman
After the snafu around THE INTERVIEW last winter, North Korea and cinema reached mainstream news. Timely then, this sprightly documentary looks at the relationship between the globe’s most secretive nation and America, specifically through the contentious visit of flamboyant basketball star Dennis Rodman to the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The material in different hands might have been po-faced; instead the filmmakers have delivered a cheeky, yet not frivolous, take on the event of NBA retired alums going to Pyongyang to play a match against a professional North Korean side; the first event of its kind.
After the snafu around THE INTERVIEW last winter, North Korea and cinema reached mainstream news. Timely then, this sprightly documentary looks at the relationship between the globe’s most secretive nation and America, specifically through the contentious visit of flamboyant basketball star Dennis Rodman to the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The material in different hands might have been po-faced; instead the filmmakers have delivered a cheeky, yet not frivolous, take on the event of NBA retired alums going to Pyongyang to play a match against a professional North Korean side; the first event of its kind.
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Setting out its stall early, the film jokingly claims to be, “The most controversial film the world has never seen.” It really isn’t. Even-handed, genial analysis is the tone. Not many documentaries, about a potential button-pushing subject, opt for wryness (though no party is the butt of a cheap joke). Context and history is briskly established about how the Korean peninsular was split between the North and South after the Second World War, the Korean War and the isolationism of the North under its three leaders since. Kim Jong-un is currently the head and a big basketball fan. The United States and North Korea have had a frosty relationship, and the film mentions how George Bush, Jr exacerbated matters by adding the Asian country to the “Axis of Evil”.
Dennis Rodman appears naïve to be getting in between these two countries, but his lofty ideal of a desire for rapprochement comes through in the documentary, which begins its telling proper in August 2012 when the idea of Rodman travelling to North Korea was mooted. An analogy is made between USA and China in the 1970s when a table tennis team from the former was sent to the latter, and is argued to have helped pave the way for President Nixon’s landmark trip. BIG BANG IN PYONGYANG is adept at entertainingly summarising history and geopolitics. We are not in essay Alex Gibney (WE STEAL SECRETS) territory; an entry level un-demonising is the order.
The doc deals in two main tranches:
- The initial foray from America to North Korea, consisting of a random coterie of guests with Rodman (e.g. a representative from betting firm Paddy Power and a Columbia University professor), and
- The basketball match, which attracts Dennis’ country folk’s ire. The latter has Rodman emotionally self-destruct due to the media pressure on him, where at times you have to watch through your fingers.
Uplifting and hopeful, BIG BANG IN PYONGYANG offers an alternative to cynical politicking, picking through propaganda to attempt a drawing back of a curtain on a mysterious corner of the world. Not profound, but also not vacuous. Sometimes the medicine needs a spoonful of sugar.
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