This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 18 Jun 2008, by Malis Uon Men.
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18 Jun 08
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Cambodia during the 1970s testifies not only to human dignity and resilience but to cinema at its most intellectually honest and morally necessary.
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, the independent state of Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge, an agrarian communist movement that had engaged that country in a civil war since 1970.
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ol Pot, instituted a series of murderous purges throughout the country, ultimately taking nearly 2 million lives.
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an artist named Nath, is the center of "S21,"
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emotional and troubling reunion with his former guards and interrogators
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brutal genocides in history
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he result is a deeply moving, provocative meditation on cruelty and suffering, all the more effective for being so starkly rendered.
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unspeakable atrocities they and their countrymen suffered – the arrests, the interrogations, the torture, the ritualized "confessions" of counterrevolutionary treason (even falling in love, one man explains, was considered a crime against the state)
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some of them recruited and indoctrinated as teenagers
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most frightening and dispiriting aspect of "S21" may not be the atrocities themselves but the ease with which otherwise decent men were able to commit them and their resistance to their own accountability.
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human psychology
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y strike viewers as distressingly relevant in light of recent reports from Iraq.
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atharsis or closure.
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Director Rithy Panh
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provided a vital historical record in the face of decades of denial
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officials didn't admit to the genocide until last year, after one of them had seen this film)
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one something more difficult in addressing the proper role of an artist in the face of unspeakable acts
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he seems to say through this compelling, heartbreaking film, is fulfilled by choosing simply to bear witness.
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