You could almost call it Boonmee’s Nephew Who Recalls Past Lives. Set in a near future Phnom Pehn in which augmented reality seems to only exacerbate the gap between rich and poor, Karmalink, from first-time writer-director Jake Wachtel, is a fascinating blend of science fiction and Buddhism. The fact that Wachtel is American-born, and only moved to Cambodia in 2015, doesn’t necessarily invalidate this inventive and strangely resonant script. For all the film’s critique of French colonialism, one might well feel weird about an outsider immersing himself in this culture, but perhaps that merely adds another facet to the profound theme of technology and human connection.
The fanciful plot begins with two seemingly unconnected settings: in an auditorium-sized laboratory, an unidentified man puts on a headset. “I am the owner of my karma…Whatever I do, good or evil, to that I will fall heir,” he says in voiceover, as an electronic sensor placed on his temple pulses and glows. What seems like an ancient scene unfolds, as a different man takes a gold figurine from a temple; then, a boy wakes up, having dreamt this historical adventure?
What is the connection between these people? Leng Heng (Leng Heng Prak) thinks he’s remembering past lives, and imagines that that gold Buddha will be his ticket out of poverty. So he enlists the help of Srey Leak (Srey Leak Chhith), an older girl who tells Leng Heng that she’s a detective who can help him track down his treasure. But What Srey Leak really does is scrounge in garbage looking for hard drives and computer chips she can sell.
Wachtel, with the help of cinematographer Robert Leitzell, creates a fantastic world out of a traditional setting; this, you think, is what the world of Blade Runner would really look like, and we’re not that far off: people who can afford it are jacked in to augmented reality, and when they activate a glowing third-eye sensor, the QR codes that plaster everything in town are transformed into a neon-tinged metropolis that Ridley Scott might envy.
So Leng Heng’s quest crosses the traditional past with this brave new world; but when he and Srey Leak find out whose dreams he’s really having, it takes them far from the world of spiritual connectedness that his ancestors have followed for centuries.
Wachtel moved to Cambodia to work for a nonprofit program that taught filmmaking to children, and the director treats his cast with a level of respect—his two young leads were his students, after all. As we see Leng Heng and his friends navigate run-down slums, it’s hard not to feel that you’re watching far-flung poverty porn; but the script, which Wachtel co-wrote with Christopher Larsen, is ambivalent about the technology that’s taking over Phnom Pehn. On the one hand, augmented reality helps Leng Heng’s grandmother get her memory back, but it soon becomes clear that the nanobug mechanics (there’s a COVID allegory buried here somewhere) can be used for less noble purposes. If one wonders about Wachtel’s status as an outsider, the script is finally ambivalent about that too; maybe progress isn’t always the answer.
The cast is inconsistent, but Leng Heng Prak has charisma that suggests a pre-teen Marcello Mastroianni. Tragically, the young star died after production, and the film is dedicated to his memory. Karmalink is a strange and curious look at a future that seems very close to the world we live in now, in which computer screens have all but replaced true human connection.
Photo courtesy of Good Deed Entertainment
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