Duch: Master of the Forges of Hell

Filmmaker Rithy Panh's follow-up to S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (VL-3/04) is built around a long interview with a monster: Kaing Guek Eav (or Kang Keck lew), also known as Duch, who ran a prison housing the victims of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge party in the 1970s. With his rotting teeth and black irises, Duch not only looks like a vampire but also displays few human qualities over the course of this documentary, other than one: self-pity. Personally responsible for over 12,000 deaths at two prisons, Duch's reign at S-21 (which he calls a “slaughterhouse”) is the main subject here. Calmly sitting at a table and looking over stacks of archival photographs of prisoners and interrogators, Duch recalls brutal stories of torture, the ill-educated boys and girls he personally trained to assault prisoners, and the administrative problems he had to solve to achieve greater efficiency. Wheeling out the classic excuse of war criminals and human rights abusers who are cogs in the large wheel of genocide, Duch argues that he had to do what he was told or risk being arrested for “individualistic” thinking. He also claims to have experienced sensitivity to the pain of prisoners crushed under his command, which included his own former schoolteacher. But other witnesses—including interrogators, prison guards, and S-21 survivors—tell numerous accounts of Duch's personal involvement in interrogations, tales that Duch literally laughs off. A difficult film to watch given the subject matter, Duch serves up plenty of historical detail on the Cambodian killing fields while also presenting a chilling portrait of organized depravity. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)