It's actually quite profound, politically speaking. I understand why Kim Jong Il thought it was a Masterpiece. To get hung up on visuals and call it a knockoff is itself tacky and shows a lack of appreciation for context; which is what art is about. It's an honest take on modern human society and the tradeoffs that are made.<p>It gives insights into the minds of some modern leaders... The idea that you have to kill the monster which saved you.<p>The part at the very end where the woman kills the monster and sacrifices herself with it (out of principle) is brilliant. At the end, the soul of the monster joins with the body of the woman and the camera zooms in on her face... You assume that it will bring her back to life but actually, she is not moving and you can't quite tell if her eyes are open or closed (dead or alive)? There's something deep behind the ambiguity.<p>I suspect Kim Jong Il saw the monster as a metaphor for capitalism or globalization, the woman as a metaphor for a revolutionary leader (maybe Kim himself) and the monster's relentless hunger for metals as a metaphor for greed-driven industrialization but I wonder to what extent did he see it as a metaphor for his own communist movement? The message seems to be that even though she did a bad thing killing their saviour, she did it with sound morals because she was willing to sacrifice herself. She knew it was the right thing to do to contain the monster's relentless greed. But I feel like the part at the very end where the soul of the monster joins her body is a way to show that she is forgiven because it's the intent that counts... Maybe a subtle hint that a good leader is rewarded for having good intentions and conviction but is it purely an ideological reward of being spiritually 'made whole' or also material (she gets to live)?<p>It makes me wonder if Kim Jong Il may have been tempted to turn North Korea into a capitalist society under the thumb of globalists; keep feeding the beast which had originally (in his view) freed his people from past oppression but instead, he decided to politically 'sacrifice himself' for his people by betraying that globalist monster which had helped him.<p>There is a statement at the end which essentially amounts to blasphemy in the west: "To keep feeding him, we will have to keep sending him to other countries to wage war. We cannot do this to the world." Ouch.<p>As unfree and poor as North Korea may be, this is an incredibly blunt, honest take.