English Dub Review: Funan

Today, in near 2020, you hear in the news all of the time about families being split up for apolitical reasons. In 1975 Cambodia, Chou, a young woman who seemingly has everything she can ever want in the form of food, a loving husband, and a 4-year-old son. Unfortunately, the Khmer Rouge, would take hold of the sprawling area in which Chou’s family would live and soon would have her life flipped upside down being on the receiving end of mandated labor, near starvation, and a brush with death as a result of non-treated cases of malaria. In the process, her son is sent to another camp across the country and, together with her husband, will stop at nothing to get him back.

In the animated tale directed by Dennis Do who is credited as a writer as he had surmised a story told to him by his mother who had actually lived through the Khmer Rouge herself. And while the plot in the film is fiction, the setting is inspired by real-life events from research that took years to manifest so that it may be a horrifying backdrop in what is a harrowing tale of survival, bravery, and love in the face of unspeakable odds. Friends become foes, foes become friends, and even blood isn’t a strong enough bond to keep everybody on the same page of an 87-minute film that does not, at any point, slow down.

Similar to In This Corner of the World or Titanic, viewers will find themselves less concerned with the actual plot given that it doesn’t stray all too far from the tried-and-true Spielberg format of families separating only to be reunited, but the manner of whence we get there is the soul of Do’s cautionary tale for those that wish for nationalism to be the norm in it’s most extreme form is extraordinary and is one of those films that are so important for viewing that there should be classes in elementary schools where this movie is on the itinerary.