Parenting
is so bourgeoisie. Under the Khmer Rouge, there was no need for such old-fashioned
capitalist conventions. They took care of child-rearing, splitting up families
for years. It was cradle-to-grave socialism, with an emphasis on the grave. Chou
and Khuon will try to survive the camps and endure years of separation from
their young son Sovanh in Cambodian-French filmmaker Denis Do’s remarkable
animated feature Funan, which opens today in New York.
Chou
and Khuon never really saw the rise of Angkor coming, but there is very little they
could have done to prepare. Like everyone else, they suddenly found themselves on
a forced march from Phnom Penh to the countryside. In the chaos, they lose
sight of Sovanh, but that hardly matters to the Khmer Rouge guards, because
they would have been split up soon enough anyway. However, Chou finds
absolutely no solace in that fact. She bitterly resents Khuon’s acquiescence,
insisting he should have deserted their cadre to find their son. Their
relationship will fray, but they still must stick together to have any hope of
survival.
Funan
is
visually stunning and emotionally devastating. Do uses the lush, verdant
Cambodian landscapes as an ironic (and enormously cinematic) counterpoint to
the cruelty and madness that surrounds his characters. Family members die with grim
regularity, but it just rips your heart out each time it happens. Technically,
Do keeps most of the violence off-screen, but certainly not the suffering and
tragedy.
The
artistry of Do and his team of animators is so clearly evident, nobody could seriously
deny it. Instead, some critics uncomfortable with Funan’s forthrightness
have tagged it “cliched,” but the truth is quite the contrary. Chou and Khuon do
not suffer nobly and stoically. They hurt each other and act badly, but still remain
bound by love. Really, this is an unusually honest and complex portrayal of
human emotions under extreme and prolonged stress.
In
all honesty, if GKIDS does not finally win an Oscar with Funan than the
Academy should just level with everyone and change their name to “The Official
Disney/Pixar Awards.” It is an important and, in some ways, timely film (considering
the recent vogue for socialism among millennials and presidential candidates),
but it is even more fundamentally a work of great artistic merit and humanism.
(As
an aside, Do previously made The Ribbon, an achingly beautiful and
tragic four-minute short film set amid Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Hopefully, GKIDS
can pair them together at some screenings, as they have sometimes done with
their shorter features, because both films truly deserve to be seen.)
Regardless,
this is genuinely vibrant animation, in service of a deeply haunting film. Very
highly recommended, Funan opens today (6/7) in New York, at the IFC Center.
