The Missing Picture
Film poster
Directed byRithy Panh
Written byRithy Panh
Christophe Bataille
Produced byCatherine Dussart
Narrated byRandal Douc
Jean-Baptiste Phou[1]
CinematographyPrum Mesa
Edited byRithy Panh
Marie-Christine Rougerie
Music byMarc Marder
Distributed byLes Acacias (France)
Release dates
  • 19 May 2013 (2013-05-19) (Cannes)
  • 21 October 2015 (2015-10-21) (France)
Running time
92 minutes
CountriesCambodia
France[2]
LanguageFrench[3]

The Missing Picture (French: L'Image manquante) is a 2013 Cambodian-French[4] documentary film directed by Rithy Panh about the Khmer Rouge.[5] It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival[6] where it won the top prize.[7] It was also screened in the World Cinema section at the 2013 Cinemanila International Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize.[8] It won the Lumières Award for Best Documentary at the 21st Lumières Awards and was nominated for the César Award for Best Documentary Film at the 41st César Awards as well as for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards.[9][10]

Overview

This film recreates the atrocities of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979 through animation, archival footage, and clay diorama figurines handcrafted by sculptor Sarith Mang. Rithy Panh was born in 1964, and at the age of 11 experienced first-hand the upheaval of the Khmer-Rouge takeover. Panh escaped to Thailand and later immigrated to France and enrolled in Cinema Studies and made a career in cinema. His filmography centered around the Khmer-Rouge, focusing on the genocide and the impact on Cambodia. Panh is searching for truth as he explains the process of a loss of cultural identity and how systematically Khmer-Rouge came to power and how the loss of culture impacted Cambodian's everyday lives. Khmer-Rouge sought to re-educate Cambodians and purify them in revolutionary Socialism.[11] Panh lost many family members, including his parents and his siblings and nephews. Panh claims he made this film to "find his childhood." He states "And my childhood returns. Now it is the boy who seeks me out. I see him. He wants to speak to me. But words are hard to find."[12] In the film he describes seeing his father waste away, wanting to die rather than face the indignities of the brutal regime. The Khmer-Rouge erased identity and culture. Every citizen became a number and no longer had a name. Most Cambodians succumbed to exhaustion and starvation, but approximately 1.5 to 3 million people were killed.[13] Rithy Panh uses the clay figurines to recreate the missing picture from his childhood. The visual novelty of the documentary resides in the first-person narration, which is given with the help of little clay figurines. Miniatures tell the story of hunger, fear, torture, death, dream and hope. They are set in the jungle, in rice fields, in private houses or in schools. This narrative device is brilliant, because it conjures up so many aspects of Panh's youth. Clay figurines, like lead soldiers, are childhood toys, a childhood that Panh is seeking, "unless my childhood is seeking me."[14] Panh also states "I seek my childhood like a lost picture," Douc says on his behalf in the film's opening voiceover. "Or rather, it seeks me." With "The Missing Picture," Panh sought—and found—his own hard-earned truth."[15]

The Missing Picture seeks to provide the visuals for an era lost. Most of the films and photographs from prior to 1975 were destroyed. Nearly every camera after 17 April 1975, the day the Communists took Phnom Penh, was destroyed, as cameras were seen as an instrument of lies and propaganda by the new regime. Those images of dances, birthdays, evidence of human times, were gone forever.[16] "Panh believes deeply in cinema and the restorative, communicative power of moving images.

The ultimate insult, then, is to see how the Khmer Rouge’s version of cinema was a total lie, a neutered version of events meant to sell the revolution to communist elites around the world – "those in Paris" as the voiceover angrily puts it – who directly or tacitly supported the Khmer Rouge and accepted at face value its covered-up monstrosity."[16] "At times Panh’s memory sickness is too colored with middle-class naivety: the pre-crisis era in Cambodia was much more complicated, of course, than the blissfully dancehall world he recreates with clay (he acknowledges as much by pointing out how the Khmer Rouge manipulated real class issues to gain power)."[16]

Today, Panh actively teaches and mentors Cambodian filmmakers. In 2006 he started the Audiovisual Center Bophana. Audiovisual Center Bophana was opened on 4 December 2006 in Phnom Penh Cambodia. Partnering with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, the National Audiovisual Institute, the Thomson Foundation for the Cinematic and Television Heritage, The International Francophonie Organization, The French Ministry of Culture and Communication; The National Center for the Cinema and UNESCO, the Center not only collects images and sounds of the Cambodian memory and makes them available to a wide public, but also trains Cambodians in the audiovisual professions by welcoming foreign film productions and its own artistic projects.[17]

The film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards.[18] Approximately half of the film is news and documentary footage, while the other half uses clay figurines to dramatise what happened in Cambodia when Pol Pot came to power.[3][19]

Cast

  • Randal Douc as the narrator (original French version)
  • Jean-Baptiste Phou (English version)[20][21]

Reception

The Missing Picture has an approval rating of 99% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 88 reviews, and an average rating of 8.26/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Thrillingly unorthodox and emotionally searing without being didactic, The Missing Picture is a uniquely poignant documentary -- and so much more".[22] It also has a score of 87 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 23 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[23]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "The Missing Picture movie (2013)". Retrieved 10 February 2016.
  2. ↑ "The Missing Picture". Screen International. 20 May 2013.
  3. 1 2 "Oscars: best foreign film contenders". BBC News. 21 February 2014.
  4. ↑ "Cannes Film Review: 'The Missing Picture'". Variety. 30 May 2013.
  5. ↑ Young, Neil (23 May 2013). "The Missing Picture (L'Image manquante): Cannes Review". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 23 May 2013.
  6. ↑ "2013 Official Selection". Cannes. 23 May 2013. Retrieved 23 May 2013.
  7. ↑ Richford, Rhonda (26 May 2013). "Cannes: 'The Missing Picture' Wins Un Certain Regard Prize". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
  8. ↑ "Cinemanila 2013 winners awarded Saturday night". Philippine Daily Inquirer. 22 December 2013. Retrieved 28 December 2013.
  9. ↑ "France's Lumiere Awards: 'Mustang' Takes Top Honors". The Hollywood Reporter. 8 February 2016.
  10. ↑ "'Golden Years,' 'Marguerite,' 'Dheepan,' 'Mustang' Lead Cesar Nominations". Variety. 27 January 2016.
  11. ↑ "The Missing Picture – review". the Guardian. 2 January 2014. Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  12. ↑ Zylberman, Lior (2014) "The Missing Picture - Film Review," Genocide Studies and Prevention: Vol. 8: Iss. 3: 103-105.
  13. ↑ "The Missing Picture uses clay figurines to expose the horrors of history". The A.V. Club. 13 March 2014. Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  14. ↑ Fong, Christy (23 March 2015). "THE MISSING PICTURE = L'IMAGE MANQUANTE | By Rithy Panh". Pacific Affairs (UBC Journal). Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  15. ↑ Lemire, Christy. "The Missing Picture movie review (2014) | Roger Ebert". Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  16. 1 2 3 "Film of the week: The Missing Picture". British Film Institute. 25 April 2018. Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  17. ↑ Rosenberg, Scott.(2006). Retrieved from M & C Movies at: https://web.archive.org/web/20070929130345/http://movies.monstersandcritics.com/features/article_1234058.php/Exclusive_interview_Cambodian_film_director_Rithy_Panh_%96_%93Angelina_Jolie_come_visit_the_Audiovisual_Center_Bophana!%94
  18. ↑ "Oscars: Main nominations 2014". BBC News. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
  19. ↑ "The Missing Picture – review". The Guardian. 28 February 2014.
  20. ↑ Turan, Kenneth (3 October 2013). "Review: 'The Missing Picture' a poetic study of Khmer Rouge horrors". Los Angeles Times.
  21. ↑ Bourne, Christopher. "New York Film Fest 2013 Review: THE MISSING PICTURE, A Hauntingly Poetic Work of Emotional and Historical Archeology". TwitchFilm. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
  22. ↑ "The Missing Picture (2014)". Retrieved 10 October 2020 – via www.rottentomatoes.com.
  23. ↑ "The Missing Picture". Retrieved 10 October 2020 – via www.metacritic.com.
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