Journalists get a guided tour of totalitarianism in 'Meeting with Pol Pot'

French Cambodian manager Rithy Panh has often cited the genocidal authorities of the Khmer Rouge, which killed his household and from which helium escaped, arsenic the crushed he’s a filmmaker. His movies aren’t ever straight astir that wretched time. But erstwhile they are — arsenic is his astir memorable achievement, the Oscar-nominated 2013 documentary “The Missing Picture,” which re-imagined idiosyncratic memories utilizing clay-figurine dioramas — 1 senses a expansive mosaic being assembled portion by portion linking devastation, aftermath and remembrance, ne'er to beryllium finished, lone further detailed.

His latest is the coolly observed and tense humanities play “Meeting With Pol Pot,” which premiered past twelvemonth astatine Cannes. It isn’t autobiographical, prevention its fictionalization of a existent communicative that happened concurrent to his puerility trauma: the Khmer Rouge inviting a trio of Western journalists to witnesser their proclaimed agrarian utopia and interrogation the mysterious person referred to by his radical arsenic “Brother No. 1.” Yet adjacent this governmental junket, which took spot successful 1978, couldn’t fell a cruel, convulsive information from its guests, the unfolding of which Panh is arsenic adept astatine depicting from the viewpoint of an progressively horrified visitant arsenic from that of a long-scarred victim.

The movie stars Irène Jacob, whose intrepid French newsman Lise — a cleanable relation for her captivating quality — is modeled aft the American writer Elizabeth Becker who was connected that trip, and whose aboriginal publication astir Cambodia and her experience, “When the War Was Over,” inspired the screenplay credited to Panh and Pierre Erwan Guillaume. Lise is joined by an ideologically motivated Maoist prof named Alain (Grégoire Colin), speedy to enthusiastically namedrop immoderate of their hosts arsenic erstwhile schoolhouse chums successful France erstwhile they were wannabe revolutionaries. (The quality of Alain is based connected British world Malcolm Caldwell, an invitee alongside Becker.) Also determination is eagle-eyed photojournalist Paul (Cyril Gueï), who shares Lise’s steadfast skepticism and a tendency to larn what’s truly happening, particularly regarding rumors of disappeared intellectuals.

With sound, pacing and images, Panh readily establishes a temper of charged, contingent hospitality, a veneer that seems acceptable to crack: from the unsettlingly calm opening ocular of this tiny French delegation waiting unsocial connected an bare sun-hot tarmac to the strange, authoritarian formality successful everything that’s said and shown to them via their usher Sung (Bunhok Lim). Life is being scripted for their microphones and cameras and flanked by armed, blank-faced teenagers. The movie’s square-framed cinematography, too, reminiscent of a staged newsreel, is different subtle interaction — 1 imagines Panh rejecting widescreen arsenic lone feeding this evil regime’s presumption of its ain righteous grandiosity.

Only Alain seems anxious to disregard the disinformation and clasp this Potemkin colony arsenic the existent woody (except erstwhile his eyes amusement a gathering concern). But the much Lise questions the pretense of a happily remade society, the nervier everything gets. And erstwhile Paul manages to elude his overseers and research the surrounding country — spurring a frantic search, the menacing tenor of which raises Lise’s hackles — the movie efficaciously becomes a situation drama, with the trio’s eventual interviewee depicted arsenic a shadowy warden who tin determine their fate.

Journalism has ne'er been much nether menace than close present and “Meeting with Pol Pot” is simply a potent reminder of the profession’s worth — and inherent dangers — erstwhile it confronts and exposes facades. But this eerily elegiac movie besides reflects its director’s soulful sensibility regarding the wide calamity that drives his aesthetic temperament, ne'er much truthful than erstwhile helium re-deploys his beloved hand-crafted clay figurines for cardinal moments of witnessed atrocity, oregon threads successful archival footage, arsenic if to support indispensable intimacy betwixt rendering and reality.

Power shields its misdeeds with propaganda, but Panh sees specified murderous lies clearly, giving them an honorable staging, heavy with echoes.