Funan

Director: Denis Do
Release date: June 11, 2018
Rating: ★★★½
Review:

‘Funan’ is a film by Denis Do, a French film maker of Cambodian descent, and the film is partly based on the memories of his own mother.

‘Funan’ means ‘the new people’ in the Khmer language, and this is an apt description of the radical ideology of the Khmer Rouge, an extreme communist movement that took power in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, only to plunge the nation in one of the severest mass killings in human history, with the ultimate goal to rise as a ‘new nation’ of autarkic, non-intellectual people.

‘Funan’ thus tells about Cambodia’s darkest years, and does so by following one family from Phnom Penh, which almost immediately falls apart, and which succumbs one by one to various aspects of the terror, be it brutal murder, forced labor, famine or rape. We especially follow a couple, Chou and Khuon, and their son Sovanh, who gets separated from his parents near the start of the film.

Luckily, the film eschews gross images, keeping the watch tolerable, but strangely enough, this also means one feels the hardship and sorrow less than one should. The film’s rather episodic nature certainly doesn’t help, and one has a little trouble relating to these people, perhaps because they aren’t introduced very well (the happy bliss of pre-Khmer rouge existence is shown all too shortly), and because the film is told in a plethora of very short scenes, instead of a few well-chosen longer ones. Especially Sovanh’s story is too fragmentary to follow, and his experiences are only hinted at, although it’s clear that the young boy sees a lot of cruelty and death.

The 2D animation is fair, with the human character designs rooted in the French ligne claire tradition, while the background is painted and lineless. Both coloring and lighting are clearly digitally done, and to be frank, rather uninteresting.

I suspect the film could be more daring and more idiosyncratic in its designs and storytelling, especially when compared to Elsa Duhamel’s similar, but far more interesting short ‘Bach-Hong’, which tells of the coming of the communists to Saigon, Vietnam. Duhamel cleverly sticks to a single story, illustrating the regime’s cruelty by one, ostensibly minor detail in the nation’s history.

Do, on the other hand, seems to want to tell everything, and indeed he succeeds in painting a picture of these black years, but I suspect he had better chosen less scenes, and less characters, for now, unfortunately, the film remains at an emotional distance, and that can hardly be the film maker’s purpose. Yet, I am glad personal films like this are being made, for films like ‘Funan’ save tragedies like that of Cambodia from oblivion, and remind us that peace and safety aren’t guaranteed, at all.

Watch the trailer for ‘Funan’ yourself and tell me what you think: