The Missing Picture (12A) ***
Arriving on the tail of The Act of Killing, here’s another documentary that uses strikingly
unconventional methods to bring its audience closer to the everyday horrors of
genocide. Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh has here deployed stubby, hand-turned
clay figurines to illustrate scenes from the personal testimonies of those sent
to work in labour camps under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime. Anyone anticipating
an Aardmanisation of history should think again, though: these variously
fragile, weary and haunted-looking avatars seem more likely to suffer cut
throats than close shaves.
Panh scarcely develops his argument, and perhaps
doesn’t need to: that the KR were murderous brutes engaged in a rigid form of
social moulding becomes apparent very early on. Instead, each bleak tableau
either underlines the thesis, or stands as witness to some long-obscured
atrocities. Granted, this is hardly the jolliest way to see in the New Year,
but it functions as a considerable educational tool: providing a sharp analysis
of the gap between KR PR and Cambodian reality, while literally remodelling the
past – the better to represent all those Pot and his ilk tried to grind into the
soil from which Panh’s golems have sprung.
The Missing Picture opens in selected cinemas from today.
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