The Betrayal (Nerakhoon).

"Some 23 years in the making, Ellen Kuras's first film as a director is a portrait of Laotian refugee Thavisouk Phrasavath," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) is also a haunting flashback to the lush green and fiery orange phantasmagoria of wartime Indochina."

Updated through 11/24.

"Through eloquently broken English and with an almost poetically minimal use of language, Thavisouk expresses the personal effects of political and cultural turmoil amid warfare so effectively that the viewer becomes enraptured in his headspace," writes Rob Humanick in Slant.

"A non-polemical rebuttal to the Palinheads tired of apologizing for America, The Betrayal shows there's still plenty to be sorry about," writes Henry Stewart in the L Magazine. "The title's 'betrayal' is double: America's wartime betrayal of Laos and the U.S. government's post-bellum betrayal of the refugees: it sets up mother and eight children in a two-room tenement, shared with a Cambodian family of six, in a neighborhood addled with gang violence, with a bag of rice and no pot to cook it in."

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Kuras "about her epic career-spanning project, bribing Laotian officials to get stock footage, and her childhood memories of Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur."

And Jason Guerrasio talks with Kuras for indieWIRE.

Updates: "[T]his world-class camerawoman has made a handmade document of a global-political story concentrated down into a single, extraordinarily intimate portrait, in which the 'bigger' issues are mirrored but ultimately dwarfed by domestic tragedy," writes Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog.

"One of the strongest features of the film is that, for all the betrayals along the way, large and small, the viewer never loses sight of the bigger picture: the many events at work that shape what happens to the family." James Van Maanen: "Consequently blame is apportioned more justly and forgiveness is perhaps possible, if haltingly."

Updates, 11/21: "The subjects addressed in The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)... could hardly be more enormous: war, revolution, the abandonment of a nation and the scattering of its citizens." AO Scott in the New York Times: "But the film, though it includes old news clips of the war in Laos and of American presidents discussing that country's fate, is distinguished by an intimate mood and a lyrical tone. It is quiet, contemplative and impressionistic, which makes the story it has to tell all the more powerful."

"Unlike Carl Deal and Tia Lessin's Katrina doc Trouble the Water, which includes footage shot by its subjects, The Betrayal avoids the taint of opportunism, writes Melissa Anderson in Time Out New York; "Kuras and Phrasavath become collaborators in telling his story. Though Kuras may erase her involvement too much (press notes reveal that she and Phrasavath met when she was looking for a Lao tutor), she remains ever vigilant about the code of the most compassionate documentarians: Never betray your subject."

"More than anything, The Betrayal is a cinematic essay about family and loss and home, one that's ironic and elegiac in tone and requires some patience," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "In blending home movies, newsreel footage, cinéma-vérité observation and Phrasavath's occasional, rueful narration, the filmmakers have created a shimmering, absorbing experience that's both specific and general, both concrete and abstract. It's about one Laotian family in Brooklyn and about almost every immigrant family everywhere in the country, about the allure of America and its often ugly reality."

"The title of The Betrayal refers to three different treacherous acts, each of a varying combination of personal and political significance for the family of Laotian subject Thavisouk Phrasavath." Following a few spoilers, Michael Joshua Rowin notes in Reverse Shot that "joy is tempered by a smoldering rage at the unchecked injustices of history... as well as lingering hurt caused by the disloyalties of one's flesh and blood that prevent a full restoration of family. Kuras and Phrasavath convey these feelings while uncovering the personal cost of political betrayal, their (self-) portrait operating successfully on multiple planes of emotion and awareness."

Update, 11/24: FilmCatcher interviews Kuras.

Posted by dwhudson at November 19, 2008 8:01 AM