Entertainment

Korean commie comedy

Comedy of the absurd meets the country of the absurd in “The Red Chapel,” a clear-eyed and inspired documentary about the folly that is North Korea.

In an effort to “expose the very core of the evilness of North Korea,” Danish director Mads Brugger decided the only way to gain permission to film inside the gulag state was with an idea as nutty as its totalitarian regime. He would come to North Korea with two Danish comedians of (South) Korean descent — one of them a self-described “spastic” — on a pretext of cultural exchange and harmless slapstick.

The two Danish-Korean comics are Simon, the straight man, and Jacob, a retarded adult with severely impaired speech and somewhat awkward movements but a clear moral

conscience and (this is his most dangerous handicap, at least in North Korea) an inability to tell a lie.

Under Brugger’s direction, they rehearse a ridiculously awful stage comedy the North Koreans rewrite: Jacob’s contribution is chillingly downgraded to the point where he is no longer allowed to speak or even rise from a wheelchair, though he is perfectly able to walk. Brugger explains why: North Korea exterminates the handicapped.

Though Brugger and Co. are obliged to work with the scantiest scraps of access, what they produce is at times a buffet. Pyongyang’s eerie streets are a deserted concrete wasteland reminiscent of the denuded LA of another surreally haunting film, “The Omega Man.” The uniformed robo-children seemingly ordered to applaud and smile for as long as the cameras roll are, as Jacob puts it, “psycho-creepy.”

Brugger doesn’t get to meet dear leader Kim Jong Il, but nevertheless solemnly presents the functionaries with a pizza paddle for brick ovens (the Kimster is said to be a pizza lover) and delivers a rambling anti-imperialist speech. These tricks earn trust so the lads get invited to the annual mass rally to denounce the US — at which Jacob’s refusal to play along threatens to expose everything.

“The Red Chapel” is daredevil irony, a sharp implicit rebuke to “Borat” and the like. Comics, those lockstep rebels, train almost all of their fire on the easiest targets — pols, celebs and the bourgeoisie. They stay well clear of the real evildoers in the world, from Islamist fanatics to Communist prison states.

“Comedy is the soft spot of all dictatorships,” Brugger opines. For boldness of execution as well as vision, “The Red Chapel” stands out as a singular, important comedy.