The Missing Picture is a 2013 film directed by Rithy Pan.
It is a documentary, or more accurately a personal memoir, of the Khmer Rouge
and its genocidal regime in Cambodia, 1975-1979. Pan and his family are sent into the countryside along with all two million of the residents of Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge enter the capital on April 17, 1975. The Khmer Rouge, fulfilling their radical vision of a classless proletarian society, essentially dissolve civilization and put all the people from the cities to work in brutal slave labor camps. Millions, including Pan's entire family, are executed or die of starvation.
Due to the lack of any photgraphic equipment in the rice fields and labor camps, there are almost no pictures of the suffering of the prisoners. So Pan set out to create his own picture—the "missing picture"—by use of clay figurines. Carved clay figures and dioramas depict the suffering and death of the internees under the Khmer Rouge.
Tropes:
- Abandoned Area: There are stock footage clips of the empty streets of Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge evacuated the capital. The wind blows money around in the streets as the narrator observes that there is no business being done and nothing to buy.
- Death of a Child: One scene shows a little girl who, after being denied food, lies down on the mat next to Pan and dies of starvation. Then the film shows a picture of Pan's three younger siblings, all of whom died in the camps.
- Documentary: A documentary of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime, using clay dioramas to portray the suffering in the camps.
- Happy Flashback: Many flashbacks of the life of the Pan family before the Khmer Rouge came. Rithy's father was a teacher, his brother played in a rock band, and Rithy liked to hang out on film sets and watch the actresses dance.
- The Ken Burns Effect:
- Used with stills. One scene shows a picture of laborers marching on a road, then pans out, then shows that the photo was put on a Khmer Rouge banknote that was never used.
- Basically this same effect is used with the clay figures and dioramas. It isn't animation as the clay figures don't move, but the camera pans and zooms to give the feeling of movement.
- Narrator: The film was released with both English and French tracks of Pan's narration.
- Noodle Incident: The film mentions how eventually the Khmer Rouge fell and most of its leadership escaped punishment, but does not mention what happened to Pan himself. (He escaped to Thailand before the Khmer Rouge were toppled, and eventually made his way to France.)
- Ominous Fog: When Pan, his family, and the other city folk are first assembled in the camps after being sent out on cattle cars, the camp is wreathed with fog.
- People's Republic of Tyranny: Possibly the most brutal Real Life example ever, as not even Stalin or Kim Jong Il emptied out the cities. Phnom Penh and the other cities of Cambodia are evacuated, as the Khmer Rouge rejects not only capitalism but modernity in all its forms, sentencing the people of the cities to terrible suffering as slave labor, all in the name of making a classless society.
- Scavenger World: Something like this happens in Real Life after the Khmer Rouge basically wipes out civilization. One stock footage clip showed that while the government wouldn't use capitalist automobiles for their intended purpose, they would use automobiles and their axles to power irrigation pumps.
- Splash of Color: While everyone in the labor camps wears the same black tunic, Pan is shown wearing a pink polka-dotted shirt. This is his memory of happier days before the Khmer Rouge came, but it also serves to make his figurine stand out.
- Stock Footage: A fair amount, mostly either footage showing what life was like in Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge destroyed everything, or Khmer Rouge propaganda footage meant to show the country as an agrarian paradise.
- Title Drop: The phrase "missing picture" is used several times, as most of the horrors were not caught on film.
- Early in the film the narrator says of the evacuation of the capital that "Phnom Penh's deportation is a missing picture."
- At one point Pan sits in a camp, watches a plane fly overhead, and wonders if they can see the suffering below. He says "The missing picture: that's us."
- Then at the end, Pan says "Of course I haven't found the missing picture" of life under the Khmer Rouge, so he made his own as a film.
- Traumatic Haircut: The narration relates how one of the first things the Khmer Rouge did after sending everyone to camps in the country was cut everyone's hair, as part of the effort to erase all individuality.
