Mark Reviews Movies: FUNAN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 27, 2019

Animation is capable of showing us anything. The only limit is a filmmaker's imagination. Funan is co-writer/director Denis Do's animated dramatization of a family's struggles to survive during the horrors of the Khmer Rouge's reign in Cambodia. The subject matter might seem like a test for the medium's capacity to show us anything, since the approach feels counterintuitive to the severity of the material. Again, though, it's not the medium that's restrictive. It's the imagination of the filmmaker.

Ultimately, it almost seems as if Do has limited himself in the presentation of this story because of his chosen medium. The unfortunate cultural assumption is that animation is the realm of movies for kids or, more broadly, families. In this watered-down depiction of Cambodia in the mid-to-late 1970s, rendered in simple lines and boldly naturalistic colors, Do appears to have bought into that way of thinking.

The story follows Chou (voice of Bérénice Bejo), Khoun (voice of Louis Garrel), and their young son. The boy is separated from his parents and most of his family when soldiers from the regime march the population from the cities to work in the fields. At first, the parents hope to obtain leave in order to visit their child, but as it becomes clear that the only respite from this work is death, they simply try to survive.

This period in the country's history was brutal and unforgiving. Save for the killing of a member of the Khmer Rouge (depicted for either a catharsis of vengeance or a critique of it), Do only offers the suggestion of violence (Scenes cut away from executions, and grotesque moments are obscured or only seen in silhouette). Of course, we don't need to witness these horrors in order to understand and be disturbed by them, but in playing it safe or coy with the reality of what's happening, the movie neglects to communicate the scope of cruelty and mass murder performed by the regime.

To be fair, that isn't the chief point of Do's story, which is more about how this system of oppression devastates this particular family—the most basic and primal unit of hope and humanity. Those qualities, along with the lives of extended family members, are taken by this system. Funan makes that point clearly, albeit perhaps too repetitively and without a necessary, broader context.

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