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There is so much news in the world it’s impossible to absorb it all. Documentaries and podcasts often fill that gap. This is what Ryan White’s documentary “Assassins” does, and he does it with straightforward clarity, an admirable choice particularly considering the outlandish nature of some of what went on. You’d think the tendency to “play up” the outrageous-ness would be irresistible, that it would be fun to “riff” on the more unbelievable aspects, via visual flourishes or pointedly ironic needle drops. The jokes practically write themselves. But White resists. In his mostly excellent documentary “Ask Dr. Ruth,” White “spiced up” the narrative with animated sequences, and an actress-voiced voiceover: these did little to illuminate the subject and felt unnecessary. Here, White plays it straight, and deftly untangles the different webs of meaning and implication, political, social and otherwise, to draw us into Siti and Doan’s worlds, to understand how the girls were tricked and used as pawns in a deadly North Korean family feud.
Both Siti and Doan came from humble families, naive country girls, caught up in forces beyond their understanding in the “big city.” Doan had artistic aspirations. She wanted to be an actress. She participated in the trend of “prank videos,” modeled after the Jackass trilogy (although not nearly as creative). The work was intermittent, but at least it wasn’t dirty or back-breaking. Siti’s backstory is a bit more grim: she left her village and moved to Jakarta where she found work in a clothing factory. She married her boss, gave birth to a child at 17, whom she then lost to her ex in the eventual divorce. She moved to Kuala Lumpur and drifted into sex work. When a taxi driver named John (one of the many mysterious figures who enter this story) tells Siti about a potential job participating in prank videos through a Japanese company, Siti jumped at the chance. It was better than sex work. The girls were managed by another mysterious person named “Mr. Y,” who made sure the girls rehearsed the pranks beforehand, coaching them on the effects necessary. “Everyone has their own roles to play,” Mr. Y texts Doan, a chilling message if you think of him not as a Japanese video-producer but as a North Korean secret agent.
The question of “guilt” was cut-and-dried: you can see the attack on the footage. They did it. But are they guilty under the circumstances? Fifield says, “In many ways, this is the perfect crime.” It really is. And North Korea almost got away with it, and would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for skeptical people like Azmi, who smelled a rat early on, and for people like the girls’ legal teams, whom White eventually loops into the story. We’re witness to their struggles to build a case, going through the 1000s of text messages from the girls’ phones (not one word about North Korea in any of them, damning evidence for the prosecution), the conferences (private and public), the lawyers’ challenges in presenting the material to an unfriendly court.
There are many tantalizing “roads not taken” in “Assassins.” White keeps the story focused on the girls. He plays audio recordings of them being interviewed from prison, where they sound dazed and disoriented. The geopolitical implications are clear, although this is not “Assassins”‘ primary concern. With his brother out of the way, Kim Jong-un has nothing to fear for the foreseeable future. After Kim Jong-nam’s murder, a bombshell drops that he had been a high-level CIA asset, and was holding a suitcase full of American cash. Considering all we just saw in the film, it’s even more sickening then to listen to President Trump’s comments upon hearing the news, where he sided with North Korea over America’s intelligence community.
Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong are free. But Kim Jong-un still won. The victory here is only partial.
Assassins (2020)
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