Documentary film “Soup and Ideology”, which I belatedly checked out yesterday, presents a modest but intimate personal story closely associated with the dark past of the Korean history during the 20th century. As its Korean Japanese director tries to understand her aging mother, the documentary gradually reveals the longtime pain and sorrow inside her mother, and it is often moving to see how the mother and daughter in the documentary come to have some moments of understanding and acceptance.

At first, director Yang Yonghi, who won the World Cinema award at the Sundance Film Festival for her previous documentary “Dear Pyongyang” (2005), shows us what happened after the end of “Dear Pyongyang”, which was mainly about her attempt to understand her father’s staunch loyalty to North Korea and its dictators. After her father passed away in 2009, her mother came to live alone in their old residence, and Yang came to focus more on her mother as she occasionally visited a Korean neighborhood of Osaka where her mother lived for many years.

During its early part, the documentary summarizes how Yang and her parents became separated from many of their close family members. Around the 1960s when the conflict between North and South Korea became more intensified after the Korean War, many of Korean Japanese people had to choose between South and North, and Yang’s parents did not hesitate at all in siding with North Korea. As a matter of fact, Yang’s father was one of the prominent local figures associated with North Korea, and he and his wife even sent all of their three sons to North Korea just for showing more of their loyalty to North Korea.

Needlessly to say, this hurt Yang a lot, who was not so pleased about being separated from her three older brothers. One of them was actually forced to go to North Korea against his will just because of being selected as one of those human tributes to be sent to its dictator, and, not so surprisingly, he died rather early after struggling a lot with his resulting manic depression. In addition, many of their close family members were also sent to North Korea as a part of the ambitious nationalistic project during that time, and we can only imagine how things turned out to be really bad for them as well as numerous other Korean Japanese people, who erroneously believed that North was relatively better than South.

Nevertheless, Yang’s mother still sticks to her loyalty to not only her family but also North Korea and its dictators. Although she is now living on a small amount of pension, she often sent some money to her surviving family members in North Korea, and that often causes conflicts between her and Yang. To Yang, her family members in North Korea have been distant figures for a long time, but her mother still insists that she should not stop supporting them at all, and that surely makes Yang quite frustrated from time to time.

The most amusing moment in the documentary comes from when Yang subsequently introduced her fiancé to her mother. Just like her husband, Yang’s mother often said that they opposed to having a Japanese son-in-law, but she cannot help but delighted when Yang’s Japanese fiancé visits her house along with Yang during one hot summer afternoon. She gladly prepares her special stuffed chicken soup for her daughter and future son-in-law, and the mood becomes more casual as she talks more with him while eating their little meal together in her kitchen.

Yang’s fiancé, who incidentally serves as the producer of the documentary, is understandably amazed by his future mother-in-law’s political belief – and how much that has influenced her daily life. At one point, we see the photographs of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, the father and son dictator of North Korea, hung high on the wall of her living room, and I must confess that I rolled my eyes a bit as a hardcore anti-North Korea liberal guy.

Nevertheless, Yang’s mother is still a gentle and likable human figure, and I was touched by how willingly Yang’s fiancé listens to her more as they spend more time together. As Yang’s mother points out at one point later in the documentary, they are still a family who can eat together regardless of their different political opinions, and her plain words of wisdom will remind you of that undeniable value of humane tolerance.

Not long after Yang marries her fiancé, Yang’ mother begins to show the signs of Alzheimer’s disease, and that is certainly a devastating news for Yang and her mother. Even though she and her husband show more care and attention, Yang’s mother gets more faded in her deteriorating mind, and this becomes worse and worse day by day.

Meanwhile, Yang’s mother also comes to talk more about what happened to her when she was just a young girl in the 1940s. As Japan was ravaged by the World War II in 1945, she and her two siblings were sent to Jeju Island of South Korea where many of her family members resided, but the island was turned upside down by the Jeju Uprising and the following massacre in 1948. While she managed to escape along with her siblings and then went back to Osaka, she lost many of family members and neighbors, and this painful incident still hurts her a lot even though its memories are being faded just like many other memories of hers from the past.

The most poignant moment in the documentary comes from when Yang’s mother can finally visit Jeju Island along with her daughter and son-in-low for attending the memorial ceremony for the massacre. As getting to know more about the massacre, Yang begins to understand and empathize with her mother more than before, and there is a little bittersweet melodramatic moment when they come to connect with each other more than ever.

Overall, “Soup and Ideology” presents a powerful family story to remember, and you may also want to watch Yang’s previous documentary “Dear Pyongyang” for getting to know about her family. In my humble opinion, this is one of the best documentaries I have ever encountered during last several years, and I think you should check it out if you happen to have a chance to see it.