IFFK review | Meeting with Pol Pot; a cinematic study on dictatorship

'Meeting with Pol Pot' -- the straight forward title is more than enough to evoke curiosity among those who have heard the name of the Cambodian dictator believed to be responsible for the death of a million people in his quest to transform his country into a communist Utopia. French-schooled Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh’s film looks back into the haunting past of his country, based on the book 'When The War Was Over' by American journalist Elizabeth Becker.
Panh adopts the docu-fiction style to deliver this historic drama with an element of suspense embedded in it. The plot goes around three French journalists’ visit to the Democratic Kampuchea (now Cambodia) on an official invite from Pol Pot’s the Khmer Rouge regime. Journalists Elise Delbo (Irene Jacob), Alain Cariou (Gregoire Colin) and Paul Thomas (Cyril Guei) land in the country excited about the rare opportunity to interview Pot, who is referred to as Brother No 1 by comrades.

However, the excitement soon paves way for a sense of fear as tyranny starts showing its true colours, though discreetly. Photo journalist Pot lands in trouble with his uncompromising journalistic commitments while the other two come under surveillance. Throughout the narrative, Panh maintains suspense over the titular meeting which gives room for some tensed drama infused with political philosophy.
The film offers a fair amount of insight into how the ideological psyche of the Khmer Rouge, yet another failed experiment in communism, worked. However, its artistic brilliance lies in the way the filmmaker finds a cinematic language to convey how dictatorships survive on suspicion and resultant tension. At times, Panh deploys the black and white archive footage from the Pol Pot era to establish authenticity. Then there are the clay figure sequences depicting the undocumented cruelties and sufferings of the era.

In one of the early scenes, the journalists are taken to a sculpture and painting workshop only featuring portraits and sculptures of the supreme leader. Compared to this, the clay figure sequences that follow appear to be the truthful, often bitter, but this is how artistic expressions ought to take place in a free society.
Though there are only two sets of characters in the film, the journalists from outside and the comrades from within, Panh brings in more humane elements to his storytelling by presenting the journalists in different shades. Unlike his colleagues, Alain remains a mysterious character harbouring some kind of sympathy with Pol Pot with whom he had correspondence for 30 years. Alain, though skeptic, shares the communist romanticism about a better society. His direct encounter with the embodiment of an ideology that justifies elimination of the 'imperfect' in the creation of a new world is one of the lofty points in the film. Aymerick Pilarski’s cinematography capturing the beautiful landscapes in eerie tones and Marc Marder’s music add to the cinematic tension.
(The film was screened at the ongoing 29th edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) under the Festival Favourites segment)