Film
Graves Without a Name
Graves Without a Name (Les tombeaux sans noms; ផ្នូរគ្មានឈ្មោះ) is a 2018 documentary by Rithy Panh about his search for the graves of his family.[1][2][3] Most of those relatives were killed under the Khmer Rouge.[3]
Synopsis
The film follows a 13-year-old boy who has lost most of his family and searches for their graves.[4] The boy stands for Panh himself. He travels to Trum, a village in Battambang province, where Panh and ten members of his family were deported in 1975.[5] Panh looks above all for his father's grave and for the mass grave of his mother and sisters.[6] The graves he seeks may be graves of clay or spiritual ground. The film moves between the national and the personal, and between past and present, as it follows the lasting effects of the Cambodian genocide.[3][4][7]
The film takes the form of a Cambodian funeral ceremony.[5] It opens with Panh having his head shaved in a Buddhist prayer ritual.[8] Candles are lit, water is sprinkled, rice is scattered and prayers are chanted for murdered relatives.[9] Panh performs funeral rites for relatives who disappeared, and he consults mediums to reach the dead.[5][6] In one scene a woman tells him that a spirit she has called recognizes his son.[8] Buddhism runs through the film, as it runs through daily Cambodian life alongside animism.[5]
Farmers in the film still turn up teeth, bones, buttons and scraps of clothing in their fields.[6][10] Panh interviews other survivors, who recall starvation, forced labor, forced marriage and routine executions.[10][6] The film also looks at present-day corruption and inequality in Cambodia and at how the trauma of survivors reaches a younger generation.[6] It returns to baksbat, a Khmer word for "broken courage."[10] The Museum of Modern Art puts the number of people killed by the Pol Pot regime at more than 1.5 million. The Jerusalem Film Festival describes the killing as the loss of one fifth of the population.[10][3]
The film uses clay figures only now and then. It also uses folk masks, totems hung in trees and family photographs, and pictures of victims appear and fade in the landscape.[6][9] Randal Douc narrates poetic reflections in French, drawn in part from Alain Resnais's Night and Fog (1955).[6][9]
Production and credits
The film continues the personal and spiritual journey Panh began with The Missing Picture (2013), which won the Un Certain Regard prize and was nominated for an Oscar, and with Exile.[7][3] Panh directed and edited the film and wrote it with Agnès Sénémaud.[1][4] Catherine Dussart produced it.[9] ARTE, Anupheap Productions and Catherine Dussart Productions were the production companies.[4][11] Panh has said that the film asks for the viewer's full attention and that it reflects on how the living should go on speaking to the dead.[5]
Release and reception
The film premiered as the opening film of Venice Days in 2018.[6] It competed at the 17th International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights in Geneva.[5] Cambodia selected it as its entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards; it was not nominated.[1] It had its Long Beach premiere at the 2019 Cambodia Town Film Festival, screening on Saturday, September 14, at 5 p.m. at the Art Theatre Long Beach.[7] The Bophana Center showed it on Saturday, November 16, 2019, at 5 p.m.[2] It was released in the United States on May 12, 2020.[11]
Metacritic gives the film a score of 91 from four critics, which it rates as universal acclaim.[11] The New York Times named it a Critic's Pick.[8] Clarence Tsui of The Hollywood Reporter called it "emotionally overwhelming, visually ravishing and intellectually stimulating." Demetrios Matheou of Screen Daily found it quietly and profoundly moving, and Variety and The New York Times also gave it positive reviews.[11] The film received one award and two nominations at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival and one award and one nomination at the Namur International Festival of French-Speaking Film. It was also nominated at the Venice Film Festival.[11]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Wikipedia, Graves Without a Name
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Bophana Center, program for November and December 2019
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Jerusalem Film Festival, Graves Without a Name
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 IMDb, Graves Without a Name (2018)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Swissinfo, Rithy Panh revisits the horrors of the Khmer Rouge
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 Variety, Film Review: 'Graves Without a Name' (August 30, 2018)
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF 2019 Official Selection: Graves Without A Name (archived)
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 The New York Times, 'Graves Without a Name' Review: An Impossible Quest in Cambodia (May 14, 2020)
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Modern Times Review, A cinematic prayer (October 20, 2018)
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 The Museum of Modern Art, Les tombeaux sans noms (Graves Without a Name), 2018 (October 16, 2022)
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 Metacritic, Graves Without a Name Reviews