87
Metascore
23 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranLos Angeles TimesKenneth TuranThe Missing Picture is personal and unexpected, a documentary that mixes media in an unusual way to very potent effect.
- 80VarietyJustin ChangVarietyJustin ChangThe film is a brave act of witness complicated by the documaker’s decision to re-create his experiences using clay figurines, a tricky aesthetic device that raises fascinating and problematic questions of representation.
- 80Time Out LondonTrevor JohnstonTime Out LondonTrevor JohnstonThe effect is talismanic: overlaid by a thoughtful voiceover, it invites the audience to share the pain in a cathartic act of imaginative reclamation.
- 80EmpireDavid ParkinsonEmpireDavid ParkinsonPowerful and mesmerising, this offers an fresh approach to a tough topic.
- 80Film.comJordan HoffmanFilm.comJordan HoffmanA gripping, fascinating and visually arresting memoir.
- 80Total FilmTotal FilmPanh’s commentary – spoken in French by Randal Douc – searingly sets the context.
- 75Slant MagazineNick McCarthySlant MagazineNick McCarthyParamount to molding a narrative of war and totalitarianism, however, is the inventive aesthetic in which Panh frames his memoir: a hypnotic hybrid of bleak archival footage, thoughtful voiceover, tone-dictating music, and—most significantly—homemade clay-figurine dioramas.
- 75The PlaylistJessica KiangThe PlaylistJessica KiangIf some elements are more successful than others in achieving a balance between the public and the private, between the story of a nation’s ruination and that of a family’s annihilation, it remains a shocking, poignant and soulful tribute to lives ended and to innocence lost in the country’s notorious Killing Fields.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterNeil YoungThe Hollywood ReporterNeil YoungA deliberately distanced but often harrowing vision of a living hell.