The Missing Picture (18)

Directed by Rithy Panh

4 Stars

This is an illuminating documentary that illustrates the horrors of Pol Pot's reign of terror in Kampuchea between 1972-78.

Rithy Panh was 23 when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975 and begun the infamous "Year Zero" policies.

City dwellers considered "middle class" were forcibly sent to the countryside to be "re-educated."

As most photographic references to that time had disappeared so Ranh decided to reconstruct his own memories by using hand-painted clay models.

As the viewers watch he carves figures he uses to recreate scenes from those tragic years. These images are inter-cut with "official" films of the time to create a simulacra meant to act as a form of catharsis.

It's an amazing construction. His voice-over relates the memories while he models his parents and entire villages, where the only personal possession permitted was a wooden spoon.

Sadly, such stories remain partial, unless you remember the period when the Khmer Rouge was even financed by the US as a bulwark against the Vietnamese.

Ironically, it was the Vietnamese who in 1978 finally put an end to this period when they help Kampuchea return to democracy.

The lesson of the film appears to be that there's no clean slate in history and that socialist consciousness cannot be ever artificially imposed.

Jeff Sawtell