Aim High in Creation

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Audience Member I loved the way this quirky documentary amusingly covered ground from urban and rural Australia to North Korea and back again on a quest to save a neighborhood park. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/30/23 Full Review Audience Member Sounding like an ambitious documentary and directed by an Australian filmmaker, Aim High in Creation sounded very much to be an interesting documentary. First of all I'd like to say that I appreciated the fact that Aim High in Creation made the effort to reveal the tribe nature of North Korea. Instead of being simply a war torn nation full of terrorists, North Korea is depicted as a society of its own with simply different customs to more of the western world, including strict law enforcement. One particular scene covering this theme that entertains me is when Australians and North Koreans discuss politicians, and North Korea reveals how much respect they have for their politicians while Australians support the fact that they do not respect such people, and it is all too true. This moment is also rather funny, and this is key in a lot of the film because Aim High in Creation is a surprisingly comedic documentary which succeeds in delivering the laughs due to revealing its cultural differences between Western and Eastern societies in a comedic way which is still serious, and many of the people involved in the process prove to deliver a few laughs, particularly the many North Korean people who question the western way of life and just what the Australian people are asking or saying. While admittedly at times it feels as if some of the Australians were stuck up and felt as if they were superior to North Korea, overall they were an interesting bunch of characters to explore. So as an exploration of North Korean culture from an Australian perspective, there is a lot to learn from Aim High in Creation. Also, Anna Broinowski takes advantage of her chance in directing Aim High in Creation to take an emotionally intense performance about how coal seam gas is changing Australia in a negative way. While the view is blunted by its excessive one-sidedness and is dramatised in a propaganda style way, it does bring the issue to attention and how it is affecting Australians as well as examining how the idea is being neglected by Australian politicians and CEOs of Australian corporations. I didn't know a thing about coal seam has before seeing Aim High in Creation, and the dramatic impact of the film was easy for me to feel because it was genuinely horrific. Admittedly, I laughed quite a bit at the cultural differences between Australia and North Korea in Aim High in Creation, and I learned a lot about North Korean culture as well as about the complicated process of filmmaking from it. So Aim High in Creation is an interesting educational feature and is a journey for the people involved which is fairly honest and open. Aim High in Creation's flaws rest largely in the final product of the propaganda film created. The documentary is dedicated to telling a story about following Kim Jong Ill's trademark film style to make a propaganda film that changes the way people think and encourages Anna Broinowski's point. But the final product is a bit of a joke. Instead of following the power of the North Korean propaganda films, it basically parodies them. The final film feels like an extended commercial against coal seam has, but it feels way too forced. It is no wonder that the film won't attract many supporters. It's too short, too quick and lacks the passion of North Korean cinema. In North Korean films, the propaganda tends to be an undertone disguised by entertaining cinema and strong filmmaking, but in the final product created by Anna Broinowski it is so obvious and clearly very forced. It's easier to believe that her final film product is a satire of Korean Cinema and Australian Advertising than a legitimate film, because it just wasn't up to par. While I learned about a lot of North Korean cinematic culture in Aim High in Creation, it doesn't seem like Anna Broinowski herself did. It is no surprise that people didn't get the message she was trying to put across from her final feature when her documentary itself had more sense to understanding than what it was documenting the creation of. So although Anna Broinowski takes a very one-sides look at the construction of coal seam gas mines as well as the fact that the short film created after the journey that the documentary takes is massively flawed, Aim High in Creation is still a funny and thought provoking examination of cultures with a lot of energy, honesty and colourful visual appeal. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/27/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Aim High in Creation

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