The Killing Fields (1984)

 

The Killing Fields

This took a long time to get through. Not because it is bad but because it is devastating to watch. “The Killing Fields” pulls no punches and leaves you an emotional wreck. It also makes you loose hope in humankind.

Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston) is a New York Times journalist working in Cambodia together with photographer Al Rockoff (John Malkovich) and interpreter Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor). It is 1973 and Cambodia is a mess. We see them cover what looks like a US airstrike and being somewhat at odds with the American presence in the country. Fast forward to 1975, the Khmer Rouge is taking the capital and Pran gets his family evacuated while the trio stays to cover events. Pran saves the two Americans from being killed by the Khmer Rouge, but when the city, including the French embassy where all westerners are interred, is emptied of Cambodians, they fail to protect Pran who is taken away to a work camp.

Back in the America Scharnberg drives a campaign to find and rescue Pran but to little avail. He also takes care of Pran’s family. Meanwhile, Pran is experiencing life under Khmer Rouge from the inside. He witnesses the destruction of society, the corruption of children and mass slaughter of civilians. In the agrarian-maoist system of the Khmer Rouge, anybody with a hint of education is suspect and Pran survives by pretending to be a very simple person.

“The Killing Fields” tells two stories. The apparent story of Scharnberg and Pran is the human interest story that the plot is hung up on. It is compelling because of the nightmare Pran goes through, but the quest of Scharnberg to pin the misfortunes of the Cambodians on the US government is rather unconvincing. Or, rather, Scharnberg himself is convincing in his almost religious zeal, but compared to the US fumbling in Vietnam, the actions in Cambodia seems trivial. If anything, it would be the inaction that is the problem here.

The second story is the tragedy of Cambodia itself. The complete meltdown and destruction is described both in poignant detail and confused context, leaving the viewer in bewildered horror of the sheer brutality of what happened. It is to my mind one of very few movies to describe this tragedy and that is just way too little. Yet, “The Killing Fields” makes up for this lack up public attention by driving the point all the way in. We see it in the small with casual executions and the complete disregard for the value of human life and in the massive scale of mass murder. When Pran walks through a swamp littered with the rotting remains of thousands of people we start to grasp the scale of this insanity and it forces you to really look while all you want is to look away. This is mass graves where not even the grave is offered. We also see it in the faces of children, the dehumanization that on a mass scale turn children into monsters. This is heartbreak in the extreme and I would have to press stop and wait another day to continue.

We see it all, mutilated bodies, executions, maimed children, despair and suffering. This is documentary, but shows us details documentaries would balk at. It is soul-numbing and yet you feel every punch. It manages to tell us that each of these millions of dead is a heartbreaking tragedy, yet is disposed of as casually as if it was a videogame by the Khmer Rouge.

I am hopelessly uninformed about the Cambodian tragedy. I tried to read up on it for this movie, but I cannot say I understand much of the politics involved. Something about that the Khmer Rouge was backed by China, who also backed Northern Vietnam, yet the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge were fighting it out between them. But all this matters little and even less for the movie. What matters is the complete corruption of humanity and the devastating tragedy.

Haing S. Ngor was a doctor in Cambodia before the civil war and spent four years in captivity. In his role as Pran, he was in a sense reliving the nightmare of his life and I cannot help thinking that this is why he is so convincing, and I wonder how it felt to him to go through all that again.

I am also very impressed with how real and authentic all this looks. In an age before CGI, we see details that you can only think of as being real, yet it cannot be, can it? Impressive and scary.

“The Killing Fields” won 3 Academy awards, including an acting award for Haing S Ngor, and was nominated for another 4. All very deserved.

It will take some time to get over this. Not for the faint hearted.