I first saw this when I was living in Austin, TX. It was playing at the Austin Film Society close to the studio where I worked, which made it easy to just pop in and watch stuff after work from time to time. At that time I was struggling with my animation career. The year before I was not getting the amount of work that would help me hone and develop my skills further and I was essentially relegated to responsibilities that were outside of my job description and took me away from working on animation itself. This year there was immense crunch and while that did mean more actual animation work for me, that also meant longer, more grueling hours. I was beginning to question if animation was worth it.
Funan made it worth it.
Animation provides a certain level of control over the final product that you wouldn’t get with live action. There are a lot of variables that are hard to control with live action, working with sets and props and actors. Dennis Do, the director, asserts that control to tell an incredibly personal story in a way that only animation can handle. The beautiful landscapes contrast with the horrors of what is happening in disturbing ways. The horrors of the regime are able to be presented as the horrors that they are without turning into a strangely voyeuristic look at extreme suffering. Do and his animation team explore the political upheaval and the abuses thereof with extreme care and respect, connecting past to present.
