Skip to content

Duch: Master of the Forges of Hell (2011)

Directed by: Catherine Dussart

3 stars

S21. 6 heads. 29 arrests. Prisoner 261.  12,380 executed. 1.8 million killed.

Numbers dominate this documentary about the work, from 1975-1979, of Kaing Guek Eav, a.k.a. Comrade Duch, in prison camp S21 in Cambodia during Pol Pot’s reign of madness.

Shown in what seems to be a prison cell, and then speaking from a bland interview room, Duch tells the story of how he directed arrests, interrogations, torture and “executions” (though murder is the only word that will really do) and finally disposals.

Gap-toothed, missing a finger, we are not sure at the beginning whether Duch’s watery-eyed descriptions are a sign of remorse.

Interviewers are never heard posing questions.  Instead, we have Duch himself, going over old photographs, lists (so neatly written, so carefully annotated) of people, results, outcomes and fates, recounting procedures & techniques, interspersed with recitations of the regime’s mantras: “Killing an innocent person by mistake is better than leaving an enemy alive.”   

By the end of this harrowing if somewhat rambling documentary, it seems, to me at least, that questions of remorse are beyond Duch.  The numbers, the enormity, overwhelm him. Towards the end, he quotes both Buddhism and Christianity, seeming to opt for the latter as offering a chance for salvation if he is repentant. But he, and we, can scarcely comprehend this awful crime.

No comments yet

Leave a Reply

You may use basic HTML in your comments. Your email address will not be published.

Subscribe to this comment feed via RSS