Life behind the headlines
Abemused Michael Palin is crowned with a haphazard wreath of leaves by a slightly over-excited North Korean and awkwardly shuffles off camera, muttering about looking rather like a tree.
A stern-looking member of the North Korean’s family steps in and hastily removes the man, who’s still flailing his arms around as if in some pagan dance-a-thon.
Around them, in a bizarre woodland setting in the heart of Pyongyang, hundreds of rice-wine sodden locals are partying hard. After all, it’s May 1 – International Workers’ Day – and the residents of this secretive, much-derided country have got the day off. Bar the shirts, ties, and statesanctioned haircuts, there’s something vaguely Woodstock about the whole affair.
Palin – ever the avuncular summer-upper of international human relations – wraps it up nicely: ‘‘These people might live in a repressive system that I find hard to understand, but there’s a joy and humanity to this that’s undimmed.’’
For 30 years, the ex-Python has toured the world using his utterly unthreatening, faintly bumbling interview technique to teach us about places as varied as the Arctic, the Amazon and the Himalayas, and – more importantly – the people who live there. And now, in North Korea: Michael Palin’s Journey, he’s immersed himself in a country he finds at once ‘‘unsettling’’ and ‘‘intriguing’’.
‘‘If we can get to know, meet or observe the North Korean people and if we can get beyond the politics… then we will find whether the people who live there see us as fellow human beings. After all, that’s the point, ultimately, of travelling and going around the world.’’
Obviously, the timing of this documentary couldn’t be better. North and South Koreas seem to be working towards an end to 70 years of hostilities, and Kim Jong-un is still basking in his post-Trump limelight.
But despite all the news coverage, North Korea obviously remains fiercely controlled and hermetically sealed, and visits from Westerners appear to be carefully stage-managed.
Apart from the harrowing testimony of a few who have escaped, it is hard to know what life is like for most of those still living under the dictatorship. What Palin does – admittedly with a security detachment in tow – is try to reveal something of their daily lives.
And so we learn that, from 5am every day, Pyongyang resounds to a Brian Eno-ish soundtrack relayed via loudspeakers. We see the guides and marks on the ground in Kim Il-sung Square that show the dancers in those giant ballets and parades where to stand. We watch kids playing ping-pong and men playing volleyball, and a particularly passionate student sing a poem about a mountain. We watch Palin’s stuttering efforts to learn the local word for ‘‘hello’’ in a lift, and get a head massage in a health spa, and chat to one of hundreds of artists who help churn out the propaganda posters that plaster the city’s walls.
Palin’s no patsy to this propaganda – although he does admit its effects start to seep through after a couple of days – and much of his narrative is punctuated by disclaimers about repression and the power of the state over freedom of expression. But Michael Palin’s Journey is not about the global politics. It’s about meeting people and picking out the nuances and niceties from the broad brushstrokes employed by those who write history.
We learn that, from 5am every day, Pyongyang resounds to a Brian Eno-ish soundtrack relayed via loudspeakers.
Few of us ever get to hear the stories hidden behind the most tragic of all headlines – those to do with murder and manslaughter. Police statements, court cases, coroners’ inquests – occasionally, a protracted battle of appeal and counter-appeal – satiate the public’s desire for macabre voyeurism or to see justice done.
But only extremely rarely do the friends and families of those who are murdered, or who murder, talk about what it is like to have something so ghastly, so lifeaffecting happen to them. A Killing in My Family is a remarkable documentary that approaches this theme obliquely, by gaining unprecedented access to a charity that provides support to children bereaved by murder or manslaughter.
These youngsters learn that telling their stories helps them grieve – and some of their stories are truly chilling. Three sisters whose dad stabbed their mum 22 times before killing himself; a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old coming to terms with having a dad jailed for murdering their mum, a kid whose mum was shot and whose dad is still so traumatised he can’t have a photo of her in the house.
These heartrending stories make for a harrowing watch. Comments such as ‘‘How do you spell ‘killed’? Is it with a curly-c or a kicking-k?’’; ‘‘Why did daddy kill mummy?’’ and ‘‘I don’t feel right when I let tears out in front of people’’ are instant tear-jerkers.
But it’s also clear that the work done by the Winston’s Wish charity is genuinely necessary, unimaginably difficult, and amazingly fruitful.
North Korea: Michael Palin’s Journey is on National Geographic, Tuesdays from December 4 at 8.30pm. A Killing in My Family is on CI, Tuesday at 7.30pm.