Rithy Panh on ‘The Missing Picture’ and Living With Tragedy

The International New York Times | 13 Dec. 2013

Of the 76 entries for the Oscar for best foreign-language film, Rithy Panh’s “Missing Picture,” representing Cambodia, is one of only two documentary films submitted in the category. But there’s never been a documentary quite like “The Missing Picture,” in which Mr. Panh uses clay figures, dioramas, period music and archival film footage recovered through detective work to tell the story of how his family — parents, siblings and nephews — and 1.8 million others perished in the Khmer Rouge genocide.

“It was the 17th of April, 1975 when we were forcibly taken from our home” in Phnom Penh and made to work in the fields on what amounted to starvation rations, Mr. Panh, now 49, recalled. He escaped to Thailand just before the Khmer Rouge fell in 1979, made his way to France, where he still lives, and was training to become a carpenter when a chance encounter with a video camera at a party set him on a very different course.

“I wasn’t predestined to be a filmmaker, this wasn’t an obvious choice to me,” he explained. “To me it was a matter of restoring to the people who I lost, the people who died in Cambodia, to restore to them their dignity, their humanity.” 

Over 25 years, Mr. Panh has made more than a dozen films about the Cambodian experience, some documentaries, others features. In a telephone interview this fall, Mr. Panh, speaking in French, discussed “The Missing Picture,” which won the top prize of the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival in May, and its place in his body of work. Here are excerpts: 

Q.

How should we see “The Missing Picture” in relation to your other films? Is this a continuation, or does it represent a break because it delves into such deeply personal territory?

A.

I think that as a filmmaker, you’re always making the same film, regardless of how many different stories you tell. This is the case for me, whether I’m making documentaries or fiction films. In all of my films there is a desire to testify, to interrogate the past. This film, it’s true that it’s more personal, I’m using the first person. Perhaps that’s because now, after 30 years, I’m more comfortable with this and perhaps am able to approach the subject in a way I couldn’t have before.

Q.

Having offered this deeply personal account, are you now finished with the subject of the genocide, or is there more to come?

A.

I would like to be able to return and do more films about this. You have to try to reach an understanding of, the pain you have suffered. For me, like all the other Cambodians of my generation, life is very strange. We have survived a genocide that killed off 1.8 million people, and for that reason we have in our lives a deep sense of tragedy. To speak very frankly, and at the risk of perhaps appearing somewhat maudlin, having survived this tragedy, I feel like I have come back to life, have died and been reborn. But reborn with a sense of loss, with a sense of death that surrounds me. It’s difficult, and it’s also a question now for me of trying to render to those who were left behind a sense of dignity.

I’m also troubled constantly by this question: Because I was physically stronger, more robust or more intelligent than others, is it possible that by living I took someone else’s place? Could I have done more to help the others? You are tortured by these questions. For that reason, if this pain is no longer present in my life, I won’t feel the necessity to make these films. It will probably mean that I have been able to come to terms with what I experienced.

Q.

One common criticism of films about the Holocaust is that it is morally wrong to make such films because you are trivializing genocide. I notice a bit of that same complaint in some of the commentary about your film. As a genocide survivor and filmmaker, how do you respond to that argument?

A.

It’s true, especially in fiction films, that when you are dealing with genocide and mass crimes, there are zones that are dangerous, where there is a risk of verging on spectacle. Adorno of course famously said that there can be no poetry after Auschwitz. At first I believed that, but now I believe the opposite, that if you have a very strong ethical perspective and point of view, then it is your obligation to stand up to the torturers who sought to strip you of poetry.

So for me it was absolutely essential that I take back this area, that I reappropriate it. After having died once in my life, I had to learn again how to laugh, how to love, to enjoy food, for example. I had to reappropriate my identity, and that includes cinema, art and poetry.

Q.

When you show the film in Cambodia, what has been the reaction of others who lived through this same experience?

A.

The response has been very strong and very positive. But I remember that when I first started making films about the subject 30 years ago, the reaction was very different. People often responded by saying that I shouldn’t deal with this subject. I would get letters ordering me to stop making films about this tragedy that one should best forget. I’m all in favor of forgetting. If you’re able to forget, then so much the better. But you can only forget once you’ve dealt with the past, you can only move on once you have transcribed it. So this is what I’m seeking to do, get it down so we can get over this.

Q.

What about younger people, those born after the genocide ended?

A.

Interestingly, it’s very young people who are interested in this film today, young people who didn’t experience the genocide. These young people don’t understand why an uncle isn’t there, the uncle that sometimes people mention. They read books about the genocide, and go on the Internet looking for information about the genocide. But they are looking to understand what took place. Why isn’t my grandfather alive today? Was he a criminal? They feel guilty for these relatives who are no longer around. So I saw it as my task to enable these people to understand that those people who are missing were not criminals.

Q.

Why did you decide to have the film narrated in French rather than Cambodian?

A.

I made it in French as a tribute to my father, who loved the French language so much and loved French poetry. French is also a language that I think it is suited for this— it’s very precise, but aesthetic at the same time.

Q.

In the Oscar race this year you were initially competing in both the documentary and foreign-language category, where documentaries aren’t generally submitted. Is this a film that transcends the documentary genre?

A.

I’m not really very concerned when I’m starting a film whether it will be documentary or fiction. Of course when you’re making a documentary, you don’t have actors, but nonetheless there is a writing process, that does take place in the editing room. Every time you are getting ready to make a shot in a documentary film you are asking yourself questions about your cinematographic approach. You are approaching the truth, but the image is never the truth itself.

As for the Oscar itself, I’m very happy that Cambodia chose to submit it for the foreign-language film category. You have to remember that during the genocide in Cambodia, between 1975 and 1979, there was no cinema, no songs, no books, no television. Art disappeared, and the country itself was on the verge of disappearing. The vast majority of artists and intellectuals were executed or died of hunger or disease. Film is an expression of an artistic rebirth, and it means a lot to me that this makes it possible for a younger generation to continue on this path.

Q.

What about you personally? After surviving genocide, does the possibility of winning an Oscar have meaning for you?

A.

Yes, it means I’m alive. [Laughs] It means I’ve survived, that I’m still standing on my feet, able to create.