There is very little new in N.C. Heikin's documentary attack on North Korea's endless dictatorship that hasn't been seen or heard before, and watching these painful reports by escapees of starvation, concentration camps, torture, and killings is more frustrating than enlightening.
We know that nothing will be done about any of this — it's as if we were watching Jews in 1943 telling the world about Auschwitz and there were no plans to topple the Nazis. The film's title is the name of a special begonia presented to North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Il back on his long-ago 43rd birthday, in celebration of his commitment to "Love Peace Wisdom Justice."
If there's one moment of black-humor levity in this drone of horrors, it's the scenes from a kitsch North Korean documentary that rationalize forced-labor camps for the products they turn out, which include lovely items for export: doilies to Poland, paper flowers to France, bras to Russia.
