In this week’s Cinema Studies class, we started by looking at a very interesting article that posed the question; ‘Did Wes Anderson design North Korea?’
It’s seemingly a rather non-sequitir, abstract question, however when we looked at the accompanying images for context, it was interesting and a little disturbing to see that photographs of public spaces in North Korea (change rooms, pools, buildings, lecture halls) do in fact resemble the ‘mise-en-scene god’s (as I call him, probably not his official moniker) work.
If the artificial perfection and symmetry weren’t enough to make the Korean spaces seem similar to Anderson’s settings in his films, the shapes and colour palette truly drive it home. With pastel pinks, muted blues and forest greens, it may well be a scene out of Moonrise Kingdom, or The Grand Budapest Hotel. It poses the question; does life imitate art, or does art imitate life? It’s hard to tell if either party was influenced by the other, with North Korea so isolated from the rest of the world, but its interesting to note that perhaps the similarities come from both creators (creators of the Korean public spaces, and Wes Anderson as the director of his films’ mise-en-scene) totalitarian control over all things ‘within the frame’, or within the country.
Perhaps next, North Korea will design a Zissou-esque military ship, complete with albino dolphins to guide the way?
