2014 Top Ten List #4 A Dream of Iron (Cheol-ae-kum)

A DREAM OF IRON (Cheol-ae-kum)            A                         
S. Korea  (100 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Kelvin Kyung Kun Park

Originally conceived as a three-channel museum video art instillation, 철의 꿈 (鐵夢, A Dream of Iron), 3 Channel Installation - Vimeo (1:48), where three large projections run simultaneously in 30-minute loops, as shown at the Daegu Art Factory Survey Exhibition in March 2013, where there is no beginning and no end, as the viewer is free to move around the room and leave at any time, which, according to the director, represents a style of film more liberating than a feature film.  But this Korean manufacturing film develops into an intoxicating and impressionistic essay on massive, large-scale machinery that become an extension of man’s reach, as he is able to create machines that are so much bigger and stronger than anything he is capable of himself, where the colossal machines are reverently described as gods, as humans worship them on such a massive scale, becoming dependent on them to survive.  While the machines come to represent the hopes and dreams of the future, ushering in a more modern era, it also comes at a price, suggesting the spiritual domain, the inner sanctity of man has been sacrificed at the foot of the giant machines, where Park’s somber film style documents on a grand scale the rituals of an industrial age, becoming an immaculately beautiful requiem for the remnants of a dying age.  Featuring some of the most extraordinary cinematography by the director himself that literally takes one’s breath away, where viewing this on as large a screen as possible can reduce one to tears simply by the rapturous beauty of the film which takes on a sci-fi, post-apocalyptic tone, as if humans once lived in gargantuan steel cities ruled by machines.  Unlike the Wiseman film National Gallery (2014) which surprisingly doesn’t allow moments of introspection due to the constant explanations, this more wordless effort is fertile grounds for quiet contemplation.  The stunning power of the images has not been seen since the seemingly endless opening shot of Jennifer Baichwall’s MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES (2006), a slow tracking shot down a side aisle of a huge Chinese iron assembly plant of 23,000 workers, revealing endless rows of bright yellow-shirted factory workers sitting at their work stations performing a synchronized monotony of repetitious motions, many of whom seem relieved to stop and stare at the camera’s obvious intrusion, where the accumulation of ever-expanding space defies all known concepts of rationality.  These technological wastelands drive the nation’s economy but leave the workers doomed to indifference and solitude.

What Park does, however, is strive for the profound by magnifying the extraordinary beauty of size, where cinema has rarely concentrated on filming objects of this immense magnitude before without being seen at some distance, like the lift-off sequence of a space craft into outer space, or resorting to fictional movie recreations, capturing commanding images through a choreography of slow pans, obtaining views never before seen, where the viewer is literally immersed in an industrial aura of seemingly endless time and space.  Shot in the port city of Ulsan along Mipo Bay, home of one of the world’s largest shipyards, the director shoots at POSCO (Pohang Steel Company) and the Hyundai Shipyard, both playing a key role in the postwar economic development and industrialization of South Korea, where the company name “Hyundai” means “modernity,” playing into a myth that corporate industrialization has been at the forefront of a modern social movement since the 60’s, but the film documents many of the accompanying protests, including strikes by workers both in the 1970’s and again in the 1990’s protesting against the giant “Goliath crane,” where 78 workers actually occupied the crane, a prelude to many other “high altitude” battles to come, as these goliaths introduce new and unprecedented dangers into the work place, where welding at that altitude is particularly hazardous.  As a result, they try to build as much as they can on the ground and then hoist it to the elevated heights needed.  By photographing this amazing process, the director transforms this bleak industrial landscape into a poetic exploration of the sublime, where the power of the visual tableaux is awe-inspiring and ominous, creating an astonishing montage set to Mahler’s 1st Symphony, 3rd Movement, played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelík, A DREAM OF IRON Trailer | Festival 2014 YouTube (2:46), which is quite simply one of the most ravishingly beautiful sequences of cinema seen all year.  The slow precision of the camera movements are similar to Kubrick’s monumental outer space movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), where the human eye is simply captivated by what the future holds, while at the same time reveals a kind of unspoken mysticism from Tarkovsky’s messier, less sterile version of the future in SOLARIS (1972), where the symphonic imagery of steel in motion is also accompanied by age-old Buddhist monk spiritual chants, continually connecting the present to the past.

Originating with the silent film short Manhatta (1921), where the city of New York is reduced to an abstraction of images, which was followed by a similar treatment of Paris in Alberto Cavalcanti’s NOTHING BUT TIME (Rien que les heures, 1926), the 20’s was an era when experimental filmmakers began exploring the rapid growth in urban development, capturing the rhythm and motion in montage films known as “City Symphonies,” including Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927), André Sauvage's ÉTUDES SUR PARIS (1928), and Dziga Vertov’s Man With a Movie Camera (1929).  In Park’s mind, the metal ships under construction remind him of the awe that was once associated with giant whales, depicted in the Neolithic wall drawings of the nearby Bangudae Petroglyphs, where over 200 images of animals and people are drawn onto the side of the Bangudae Mountain, dated somewhere between 3500 and 7000 years ago.  It was only after whales were conquered by humans and began being hunted and captured for commercial use that they lost their sense of epic grandeur, where they were once seen as near mythological creatures.  When seen in the ocean, they remain a colossal figure of undisputed nobility, where the sounds they make can sound musical, adding a sense of artistry and co-existence when heard interacting with the industrial images, where the film retains a religious sense of divine glorification.  Briefly interjected into this observational documentary is a personal, diary-like narration that suggests the narrator’s former girlfriend has just left him to seek enlightenment as a shaman, where she wishes to pursue a relationship with God.  In response, the director goes on a similar quest to seek out the remnants of new earthly gods, which offer their own sense of undefinable wonder.  Using a mix of electronic and acoustic music from Paulo Vivacqua, the effect can be strangely hypnotic, offering its own sense of sacred insight by connecting with another medium, where film can turn the abstract into something poetically comprehensible, imparting euphoric feelings of joy and reverence.  A style in contrast to J.P. Sniadecki’s The Iron Ministry (2014), where old-world iron horse style trains have been replaced by modernized bullet trains, this film examines every level of production, where we hear from one of the first female laborers as she puts on the various protective layers of uniform, covering every part of her body before she steps out to weld large metal pieces together, but we also see streams of workers arriving to work while another shift is leaving simultaneously, creating hordes of human congestion on the street as a traffic policeman stands on a pedestal directing traffic with a series if strange hand motions.  While individual workers are discretely isolated in their own space performing their assigned tasks, what’s most striking are the bold and terrifying images where constantly monitored computers are pouring enormous vats of hot, molten iron or lifting gigantic ship parts that only the massive “Goliath” cranes can hoist in the air, creating unforgettable, mind-boggling images that offer a sense of the sacred and the sublime.  

A Hijacking (Kapringen)

A HIJACKING (Kapringen)       B            
Denmark  (103 mi)  2012  d:  Tobias Lindholm             Official site

The Danish put their own characteristic spin on everything, from the moody and melancholy tone of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to the national support the country provides through a system of public grants provided to artists, funding theater, museums, and various film projects like this one.  The nation itself is a country of 5 million people populating a small collection of about 50 islands, where the national economy is built upon a huge commercial shipping fleet, where nearly every family has someone employed in the industry, including the director’s own father.  So in 2007 when a Danish cargo ship was hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean, it became a personal story that nearly everyone in the country could intimately relate to, as someone from their family could be sitting out there in the middle of the ocean subject to the wild whims of heavily armed pirates.  The film is something of a follow-up of an earlier American documentary Stolen Seas (2012), which examines the impact of an actual November 2008 hijacking of the CEC Future, a Danish cargo ship traveling through the Gulf of Aden, events that alerted the world to the revival of this seemingly barbaric 18th century practice, becoming commonplace in the modern era along the East African coast of Somalia.  While that documentary does an excellent job recreating the hostage negotiations process, where much of what’s revelatory is gleaning insight into the little known Somali culture through the eyes and ears of the American educated Somali negotiator, who was not one of the original hijackers, but was hired exclusively due to his language proficiency.  In contrast, this film is a fictionalized recreation of real events that examines the impact that piracy has on the effected Danish families back home and the company executives in Copenhagen that must eventually come to terms with the pirate’s outrageous ransom demands, originally requesting $15 million dollars.   

Largely seen through the differing eyes of two individuals, Mikkel (Pilou Asbæck), the hijacked ship’s cook, spending most of his time at gunpoint in isolation with two other crew members, separated throughout from the rest of the crew, and Peter Ludvigsen (Søren Malling), the wealthy CEO of the shipping company, constantly seen in a cramped executive boardroom with the other major players, where what’s interesting is that both men are intentionally kept as much in the dark as possible, offering no clues that might in any way be considered helpful.  Instead the crew is continually bullied and intimidated, where they’re not even allowed to use the bathroom for the first month, forced to live in their own putrid stink in sweltering heat with no air circulation.  Meanwhile the suited executives have to deal with Omar (Abdihakin Asgar), often heard on the phone, but never seen, where they refuse to provide information about the crew, insisting they speak exclusively about money.  The company hires an expert on hijacking, but Peter refuses the advice to hire an impartial negotiator, insisting that he carry out his chief executive duties, which includes working in the best interests of the company and the crew.  What might surprise some is the polite and overly courteous language displayed between Peter and Omar, where neither wants to convey any hint of weakness, both crunching numbers, behaving as if they are dealing in the world of high finance.  While this is Peter’s specialty, he’s never before been threatened by the execution of his crew members if he doesn’t produce a high enough number.  At times, both sides crumble under the pressure, made worse by not knowing what to expect, often quickly cutting off phone lines to elevate the dramatic suspense.  While these death threats are typical piracy maneuvers and practiced techniques, one still never knows just what they’re dealing with on the other end of the phone line, where like police hostage negotiations, the important thing is to maintain regular contact and make use of what little trust can be established.

Time drags on and days turn into weeks, where the growing frustration eventually turns into months, where the families live in a state of hysteria, never knowing if their loved one is living or dead, where the company cannot provide any information, as they don’t want anything getting into the newspapers or television reports where it can be used against them.  The impact grows typically unrealistic, as the board can’t understand why negotiations can’t be wrapped up like any other high stakes deal, and family members are shunned from the excruciating pressure that falls on the shoulders of Peter, who really has to shut out all outside conditions to be able to stand what he’s doing, which is prolonging the agony of men’s lives and obliterating the hopes of the families that have lived for months without them.  Onboard, the ship quickly runs out of food and psychological tensions only escalate, where the hijackers finally allow Mikkel to call his wife, but interrupt the call screaming at the wife to demand that the shipping owner pay the ransom money, and then quickly hang up.  The effect is brutal, as are the lingering conditions onboard, which resemble the unbearable treatment of POW’s in Vietnam, thrown into the empty storage shell of the vessel, like living in a cave with no light whatsoever, losing whatever shred of humanity they have left.  In the end, both sides behave like animals, stripping themselves of that same humanity, showing literally no mercy whatsoever, as these are the terms of the game.  What sets this version apart is the understated minimalism, stripped down to the bare essentials, providing as little as possible, using a cinéma vérité style to show a wrenching documentary style realism, where brief moments of crippling emotional violence fill the screen, followed by an interminable silence, where one waits, but time needlessly drags on, turning this into a brooding and morbid exercise of prolonged misery and doom, where a feeling of helplessness prevails, as all tactics fail, yet both sides continue to wear down and eventually exhaust the other into submission.  This is a particularly gloomy film with ominous reverberations, exposing a tiresome and damaging process that may alter the lives of those who pay the ultimate price, like any soldier returning from the particularly catastrophic conditions of war, where the haunting ferociousness of the experience has the capacity to extinguish the human spirit.

Stolen Seas

STOLEN SEAS                       C+                  

USA  Canada  Somalia  Denmark  Philippines  Estonia  (88 mi)  2012  d:  Thymaya Payne Official site

Much of this plays out like a journalistic exposé, where this feels like an in-depth television news piece rather than a feature length documentary movie, as this has a History Channel feel throughout in what is mostly a historical analysis of a particular event in time, the November 2008 hijacking of the CEC Future, a Danish cargo ship traveling through the Gulf of Aden by heavily armed Somali pirates, an event that alerted the world to the revival of this seemingly barbaric 18th century practice, becoming commonplace in the modern era along the East African coast of Somalia.  A necessary passageway between the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden is subject to heavy commercial traffic, estimated in the billions of dollars each year.  The film does quickly get the audience’s attention in the pre-opening credit sequence by playing the actual audio recording of the ship’s captain alerting authorities that his ship is taking incoming bazooka fire, attacked by a high speed vessel with about a dozen men armed with Kalashnikov rifles who are outracing his ship, eventually boarding his vessel.  All of this happens literally within seconds, where the real drama begins when his voice cuts off, setting in motion a strange sequence of events that ends up with a hostage negotiations crisis.  The film takes us through the process where the ship immediately veers off course steered into a safe Somalia port city, and once there, the Danish CEO of the ship, Per Gullestrup, receives a ransom call asking for $7 million dollars.  What follows is a reenactment of a series of phone calls that initiates the negotiations in order to obtain the release of the 13 crew members, while the film takes a deeper look at the root causes of why Somalia is in such desperate straights, a poverty stricken country that hasn’t had a ruling government or any acting court since a Civil War broke out in 1991 with no resolution, turning instead into a nation of warlords, reminiscent of Japan’s 19th century feudal history when rival clans used samurai warriors for protection.

One of the significant aspects of the film is tracking down both Gullestrup and his counterpart Somali negotiator Ishmael Ali, as each are operating on decisively different points of view, becoming a window into their respective cultures.  Gullestrup is pretty much what you’d expect, a conservative, tight-lipped European businessman who’s used to seeing the world strictly in dollar signs, where driving a hard bargain, streamlining costs, and weighing financial options is what he does for a living, surrounded by lawyers, and plenty of advice from police and hired consultants.  In fact, he quickly hires a disinterested spokesperson to handle all the negotiations, a professional in dealing with extortion demands, which typically takes its time, as they are subject to various threats to hopefully bring about a quick resolution, but when these tactics don’t work, the pirates tend to grow increasingly frustrated.  Ishmael Ali, on the other hand, is a unique figure, educated and fluent in English, he’s seen living an upscale life in Somalia where he nonchalantly flaunts his wealth, owning about 75 camels, claiming owning camels in Somalia is equivalent to joining an exclusive country club in America.  Having lived in the United States for 20 years, leaving due to the frenetic pace of life, he’s the lone voice that has had a chance to experience both worlds, proudly proclaiming one can live like a king in Somalia for about a thousand dollars a year.  While the filmmakers trot out American and European journalists, historians, terrorism experts, and even Noam Chomsky, supposedly an expert on everything, but none provide the rare insight of Ali, who is himself the central figure in the movie, both during the negotiations and afterwards as he assesses what it’s like living in Somalia, usually seen relaxed, dressed in flowing robes, sitting before an electric fan.  While he was not one of the hijacking pirates, he was hired by them as a translator/negotiator due to his proficient language skills, where he openly acknowledges he needed the money to give his 2-year old son the possibility of having a future.  

While piracy still holds a romantic swashbuckling notion from Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn in films like THE BLACK PIRATE (1926), CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935), THE SEA HAWK (1940), or the recent PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN (2003 – 2015 and still counting) series, the more intriguing aspect of the film is what it unearths about the nearly unfathomable nation of Somalia itself.  Somalia is unlike anywhere else in the world, a communist state aligned with the Russians before the fall of the Soviet empire, they were left adrift with no one to sponsor their interests, becoming a bloody battleground in a senseless Civil War that resolved nothing, leaving half a million dead Somali’s in the wake and no acting government.  When the Americans attempted to lead a United Nations mission in 1992 to bring food to a starving nation, where 300,000 had already died from famine, they got caught up in the nation’s Civil War, attempting to arrest one of the brutally corrupt war lords who was guilty of massive human rights abuses and stealing much of the incoming food, but they paid a heavy price in doing so, as depicted in typical Hollywood style in Ridley Scott’s BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001).  Since that failed debacle, Somalia has been left alone to fend for themselves with little to no help from the outside world, where toxic chemicals wash up on their shores from discarded shipping waste, effectively destroying the shoreline fishing industry, which was once the nation’s leading source of income.  From the Somali point of view, the passing ships are simply sitting targets, potential sources of income in a nation nearly destroyed with a shattered and depleted economy.  But all evidence suggests there is no trickle down effect from the multi-million dollar ransoms paid, as a few get enormously rich, while there is no foreseeable dent in the nation’s poverty.  While the filmmakers intermix Ali’s discerning thoughts about Somalia with the increasingly frustrating, drawn out pace of the negotiations, they perhaps believe they are building interest.  But the film is more a stream of facts and information, serving more as a lecture on the tactics of Somali hijacking several years ago, never bringing the viewers up to date, so by the end we feel the filmmakers have somehow missed the point.  Due to increased policing from European Union and NATO countries, there has been a significant drop off in piracy incidents in 2012, where these days, seen from a strictly economic viewpoint, financial backers are less inclined to finance pirating expeditions due to the low rate of success.