"The story of Kim Kum-sun has haunted me since 1958. Telling it in Le Lièvre de Patagonie, in 2009, probably reactivated my desire to make a film about it, readers of the book told me about it, and François Margolin, the producer, whose son was my son's best friend (Felix, who died of cancer on January 13, 2017, at the age of 23) convinced me to try the adventure, to go back there, but this time to shoot there." Claude Lanzmann, The Patagonian Hare.
For a long time, Lanzmann had been thinking of directing a fictional project for Steven Spielberg, but he finally decided to return to the traces of his North Korean idyll to tell his story, face-to-face with the camera. In Napalm, the traditional Lanzmann method is reversed, with the director presenting himself as the subject testifying, unlike in his other films, where he appears as the interviewer.
" "Das ist das Platz." Yes, this is the place." Quoting Simon Srebnik, Shoah's first protagonist, Lanzmann recalls on an unchanged bridge his rendezvous with Kim Kun Sun, a North Korean nurse he met in 1958.
1958 - five years after the devastating Korean War, Kim Il Sun, North Korea's head of state, invites Western public figures on an official visit. Among them were Armand Gatti, Jean-Claude Bonnardot, Pascal Clark, Francis Lemarque, Claude Lanzmann...
During his many visits to the country, Lanzmann was struck by an unprecedented encounter with nurse Kim Kun Sun. The young woman and the French delegate had just one word in common, which each of them understood:
"Napalm"
"And she, at full speed, uncovered a pear-shaped breast that was heavy. You wanted to touch it. And under the breast, a great black bar of burnt flesh. And she said one word: napalm" Claude Lanzmann, Le Lièvre de Patagonie.
"At the time, American bombers poured 3.2 million liters of napalm onto the North Korean peninsula, killing 4 million people. Lanzmann shows us archive footage of the bombing and its victims. Images that directly echo those of today's North Korea, "the world's last bastion of Stalinism", which seems frozen in time, on July 27, 1953, the date when the war ended.
"It's a harsh critique of this totally undemocratic dictatorship. But I didn't want the savage American bombings to be forgotten [...]. Because if we leave them out, we won't understand anything about the situation today, or our relationship with the Americans. It's also a rather complex film, because it shows the passage of time."
Claude Lanzmann shot the film without permission in North Korea, still one of the most closed countries in the world. The only authorization he obtained was to shoot a film on taekwondo. Some of these images can be seen in the film. Every other shot represents a victory over the permanent control of the regime's political police.
Finally, what gives Napalm its unique character is that it is the only film by Claude Lanzmann that does not touch on the history of the Jewish people, which was the great subject of his life as a filmmaker with Why Israel, Shoah, Tsahal, and all the films that followed.
