True/False Films

The Red Chapel

In person: d.p. and editor Rene Johannsen

By turns discomfiting and devilishly absurdist, The Red Chapel quite appropriately comes from Lars von Trier's production company, Zentropa. Mads Brügger has made a complex film about totalitarianism, role-playing, manipulation and how postmodern irony doesn't play so well in North Korea. Brügger believes that comedy can be the soft spot of a dictatorship and conceives a performance by two Korean-Danish comedians to expose the regime's absurdity. It doesn't go according to plan as their assigned theatrical director redirects their performance, spastic Jacob has a breakdown, and they get swept up in a vast, anti-American march where they are televised. Jacob's unsettled feelings are the film's emotional core while Brügger's von-Trier-ish presence, in dark glasses and sometimes Mao-esque jackets, shows a director bent on manipulating Jacob more than the North Koreans. (PS)

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