Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot

An adorned, simplified and theatricalized version of reality.

It takes a better script, better acting, and a better idea to generate a film with accomplished meaning for a story as terrible as Pol Pot's, even if as a narrative device, the story of a journalist and a visit to Pol Pot was chosen.

I did not like the part told with the carved wooden puppets, I did not find any acting approaching a psychological realism of the characters, as if everything was accentuated or toned down instrumentally and rhetorically.

When the photographer escapes into the forest or when the journalist follows him afterwards, these are scenes executed as if they were a theatre devoid of realism. A little theatre that to me is offensive to the tragedy that it is instead about to tell.

For those who are really interested in seeing a film about Pol Pot's Cambodia, watch The Killing Fields, a movie that doesn't go pleasing the Hollywood clichés, and as The Guardian writes in its Metacritic review here in IMDB: "Roland Joffé's 1984 masterwork is a solid piece of historical film-making, capturing factual detail without sacrificing fine storytelling."

With subtlety and poetry, the director gradually unveils the ideological mechanisms that led a people into genocide. The use of archival footage and wooden figurines, combined with the actors' performances, brings modesty and restraint to a subject of great violence.

At the beginning of the film, the characters feel unease and try to reassure themselves, but as the reality unfolds, the tension steadily builds. The three characters evolve differently and react uniquely to what they witness.

In a time when social networks are flooded with superficial and sensationalist portrayals of genocide, it's refreshing to see a film that offers a sober and realistic treatment.

A film not to be missed!

Rithy Panh once again crafts an slow-burn but poetic, dark and subtle portray about the Cambodian massacre and the ideological mechanisms and concepts surrounding the situation and meanings. Panh, being one of the only Cambodian filmmakers out there, observes the uneasy and tense atmosphere and vibe throughout the writing and characters perfectly. The atmosphere, dialogue and writing undergoes a slow, but it steadily continues to build upwards as the tension, reality and the brutal aspects about reality and the genocide itself begins to grow. It's realistic treatment never comes off as off-putting or forced, unlike how some war or political movies have been portrayed.

Alongside with great camerawork, interesting characters, and structure of both fiction and non-fiction presentation, Panh never steps away from his direction as his direction maintains consistency and harmony. Making the story and the serious subject matter meaningful and engaging. All of the performances are good as well.

Having seen many of Panh's work, Panh continues to strive as one of the best Cambodian filmmakers in this modern era.

Great.

Absolutely masterpiece. I've been waiting for the entire week to have a chance to watch this, and now I've experience this work of art.

Watch this 4:3 ratio film with the static shots is really a new experience for me, not to mention that people in the cinema are really focus on the film, nobody makes a noise.

This is a beautiful film it's kinda a documentary/history film I think, but whatever, it's a piece of art. The shots composition from the opening scene until the end really impressed me, the balance shots are so beautiful I didn't see how we can make a simple balance shots to turn out it's beautiful like that, the pattern shots also.

It thrilled me all the time when the character take a risk to do something, some scene is just an invitation but I'm already think that they're gonna kill them.

This is the one that's different from the other Khmer Rouge films, it's a film from another person perspective which is the foreign. I used to see the tragic scenes of Khmer Rouge but here's a new one, they just have fun and playing around, but it doesn't last long though.

They were lucky to meet a good comrade and they were a friend of Pol Pot, otherwise they would have died on the first day. Really grateful for what they did to explore the truth about the Khmer Rouge, even though it was the most dangerous thing to take risks.

They did it good, but the ending wasn't good enough. If they focused more on the ending it'd probably the best film I can say. And one more thing is about the storytelling, they use little human to tell the story it's a creative way to do but they use it's a lot and some parts it doesn't tell the audience enough.

The concept art that they use to represent the character (I don't know what's called), using camera moment instead of character movement, tells the story with the soundtrack is on another level.

The fact is that they use real films from the Khmer Rouge to combine with the films they are making and the results are really good, that's so impressive. And Sophana mentioned again

I love the shots when they shoot Alain with Pol Pot, he's faceless, the scene is shot from his shadow to Alain's position and everything is shade by his shadow but except for Alain's face, and it completely tells us about the feeling that Alain experienced from his old friend. The entire movie doesn't have a single scene where they show Pol Pot's face to us, no matter which angle they shots, we only see his face in the photo.

I'm studying the documentary film right now, so this film really gives me the best advice to my studies, and yeah after I studied the documentary film I felt that the documentary film weren't bad at all and it helps me to understand the film better.