And we're back with another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com! In the brilliant words of comedian Michelle Wolf, I'm still chippin' away at the ham....
Today it's another Best Pic nominee from the 1980s, Roland Joffé's harrowing true account of two reporters stationed in Cambodia during the 1975 Khmer Rouge takeover. Played by Sam Waterston and newcomer (and actual survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime) Haing S. Ngor, Sydney Schanberg and Dith Pran were assigned to Phnom Penh to cover the Cambodian civil war and the US's involvement in bombing civilians. When the capital fell to the murderous Khmer Rouge forces, Schanberg as an American citizen was given safe passage to neighboring Thailand, but as a Cambodian citizen Pran was captured and put into a forced labor camp. Schanberg had previously arranged for Pran's family to be relocated to San Francisco, and engaged in a massive letter-writing campaign to find his lost friend, but Pran had to rely on his own wits and bravery to ultimately escape captivity.
Going into this I knew very little about the Cambodian civil war, and in retrospect I think the film would've resonated more strongly if I'd done my homework ahead of time. That said, this is a very effective telling of a brutal and appalling chapter in the history of the Far East. Waterston's performance is initially what guides us through the chaos; it's not a showy one but he is very convincing as the no-nonsense American reporter sifting through US government lies and red tape. But it's Ngor who steals the film, bringing tragic, understated realism to the role for which he won a well-deserved Supporting Actor Oscar. Once Pran is captured we spend most of the film's second half with him, experiencing the inhumane conditions he and thousands of other Cambodians are forced to endure - hard labor, starvation, and indoctrination under penalty of death.
Communist dictator Pol Pot envisioned taking Cambodia back to a 19th century agrarian society where possessions and intellectualism were forbidden. To that end he had anyone with skills above "laborer" executed, and also programmed children to hate anything and anyone that didn't line up with the views of the Party. There's a sequence in a makeshift school that felt right out of 1984, as the adults and children being "re-educated" are told to forget everything that has come before and to embrace the present time as Year Zero.
Pran must hide the fact that he speaks three languages and pretend he was a cab driver before the war, lest his captors view him as a dangerous insurgent. There are no subtitles in the film so as the audience we feel the same disorientation as the characters do (I had mixed feelings about this, as some scenes were a bit confusing for this reason).
His eventual escape is set against stunning jungle landscapes (filmed in Thailand), that convey the oppressive heat and cruelty of the climate. I'm always drawn to films that capture how desolate and beautiful these locations are - Apocalypse Now and Rescue Dawn for example - as it's truly a world apart from anything I've experienced. When Pran finally makes it to freedom (spoiler alert) it feels very much earned without being sensationalized.
The Killing Fields is a very honest look at one of the many disgusting authoritarian regimes that have taken root over the last hundred years, but it's also a story of friendship and the triumph of the human spirit. I think I find the larger story of the Khmer Rouge's four-year reign of terror even more fascinating than the film itself, but the film is very much worth a watch.
I give The Killing Fields ***1/2 out of ****.
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