I’ve read a few things about what Pol Pot’s Khymer Rouge did to the people of Cambodia, and it’s horrifying. After taking control of the country, they worked to eliminate anyone who might be seen as an enemy of the regime, and that included pretty much any person with a Western-style education. I won’t claim to be an expert, and my knowledge on what happened is cursory at best, but it was a horrible time that proves, sadly, how bad people can be to each other.
The 1984 British movie The Killing Fields shows that through the eyes of a Westerner journalist and his Cambodian friend and co-worker to chllling effect.
American journalist Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterson) is covering the spill over of the Vietnam War in neighboring Cambodia. He has an associate, a local photojournalist who often acts as a translator, Dith Pran (Dr. Haing S. Ngor). Schanberg is the sort of Western-style journalist that seems more inclined to butt heads and get in trouble than anything else. He’s loud, pushy, and argues as a journalist he has a right to be wherever he thinks there’s a story despite the fact that it does seem as if the locals are not so inclined to honor those sorts of rights.
And then the Kymer Rouge takes over. Schanberg’s techniques were not exactly winning him friends with the American diplomatic or military attaches in Cambodia, but they sure won’t get him very far when those elements are gone. But the core here is partly what Sydney witnesses as an outsider and partly what Pran goes through as a Cambodian. Sydney seems to have little consideration for what his friend goes through traveling with him and reporting on stories of atrocities and highly explosive accidents hitting the poor citizens of Cambodia.
And again, much of that happens even before the Kymer Rouge takes over. Syndey does do Pran one good favore: he secures the right for Pran and his entire family to move to the United States as America pulls out of the country, but he does suggest Pran could stay behind with Sydney and report on what’s coming. It’s very low-key pressure, but it works. Pran’s wife and children leave, but Pran stays with Syndey and a handful of other Western journalists, including ones played by Julian Sands and John Malkovich.
After a certain point, things get worse. Sydney gets to go home, but Pran goes to the killing fields/labor camp. Pran has to stay alive, and Sydney has to live with himself.
I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised to see Sydney doesn’t seem to be much of a white savior type. Waterson’s character spends half the movie being more or less unpleasant. Other characters are very quick to remind him that he is the reason Pran stayed behind when he could have safely left. Yes, Sydney wins some awards for his reporting, honors Pran’s request to take care of Pran’s wife and kids, and talks a big game when confronted, but he also feels incredible guilt over what happened.
But the real revelation is Ngor, who wasn’t an actor but a doctor and a genuine survivor of the real Khymer Rouge. Pran may spend a chunk of the movie seeming more saintly than human, but he is easily the one beacon of humanity in the movie. The Westerners are either boorish, ignorant, or some combination of those. Other Cambodians are either cruel or victims. Sydney may talk a good game from the comfort of New York, but Pran actually has to live through fields filled with human skeletons as Party officials teach children not to value their families. Arguably, it is Pran’s very human decency, the fact that he alone will stop to make sure a small child is OK during a bombing run, that allows him to survive and eventually escape to the West. Ngor makes for a compelling character, and he really shines once he’s off by himself. It’s easy to see why the others work so hard to try to get him out of Cambodia, ultimately failing, before he uses the skills he has to get out on his own.
Plus, this movie may have the most tense photo-development scene I have ever seen. Director Roland Joffe put together a movie where the privilege of one man almost gets another killed, and the other man’s basic decency keeps him alive. It’s full of anger as the powerful hurt the weak and the only people who even care either can’t or won’t do anything about it. It’s a movie full of blood and crying children. And it’s a movie that reminds us just how awful humans can be to each other.
Grade: A
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