leeper@ahutb.UUCP (leeper) (02/27/85)
THE KILLING FIELDS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
I am not really very impressed by the film industry's representation of
the Vietnam War. I simply do not feel they they are very accurate. DEER
HUNTER was nice and believable as long as it stuck to the good old U.S. But
I really do not trust the impressions of Southeast Asia that the film
conveyed. APOCALYPSE NOW seemed even less credible, with gung-ho commanders
taking beaches for surfing. I do not believe the DEER HUNTER or APOCALYPSE
NOW Vietnam, but I can easily believe THE KILLING FIELD's version of
Cambodia.
THE KILLING FIELDS is about a Cambodian journalist, Dith Pran (Haing
Ngor) who was forced to stay in Cambodia when the Americans and Pran's
family fled the country in 1976. The story begins in 1973 and traces Pran's
relationship with three NEW YORK TIMES reporters, the reporters' attempts to
take Pran out in 1976, and especially Pran's life in a Cambodia run by the
Khmer Rouge. The viewer sees the chaos that the Southeast Asia war brought
to Cambodia and the chaos that the Khmer Rouge brought when the war was
over. The conclusions are not that the U.S. was justified in trying to
destroy the Khmer Rouge, nor that the Khmer Rouge were right to try and
control Cambodia. Instead, we simply see that Cambodia is one of the very
best places in the world to not be. There is little doubt on seeing
MISSING, Z, THE LAST PLANE OUT, or even THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY who
the "bad guys" are in the political situations they portray. THE KILLING
FIELDS does not tell you that either side of the war was right. If
anything, it tells you that both sides were wrong and shows you credibly and
realistically how bad things are in Cambodia.
This film creates a number of startling visual images without ever
appearing to do so intentionally. In MISSING there was a scene of a
beautiful white horse being chased by a jeep and in the context of the film,
the symbolic meaning of the scene was obvious. It was a nice touch, but it
felt ever-so-slightly forced. In THE KILLING FIELDS, director Roland Joffe
manages to have a number of symbolic images without ever forcing them. One
scene involves the Americans being attacked while sitting on a stockpile of
Coca-Cola; another shows dead pigs being carried around in the back seats of
taxi cabs. There are a lot of gore effects in THE KILLING FIELDS, but only
because the film does not portray a sanitized, John-Wayne style war. The
images are there to distress, not to horrify, the viewer, and the camera
records them rather than wallowing in them.
Just a personal note--a couple of questions I had after seeing the
film. At one point, Sydney Schanberg, the American reporter who
ineffectively tries to get Pran out of Cambodia, is watching footage of the
Cambodian incursion and listening to TURANDOT. That opera has breath-
takingly beautiful music, but I have always considered the story and musical
style to exemplify Western culture misunderstanding Eastern culture. That
may just be my personal ax to grind, however, and I am somewhat curious why
that particular opera was chosen. Second, I suspect that Ngor had more
screen time as Dith Pran than Sam Waterston had as Schanberg and the film is
really Pran's story. Why then is Waterston nominated for the Academy Award
for Best Actor and Ngor only for Best Supporting Actor? In any case, THE
KILLING FIELDS noses out AMADEUS as my choice for Best Picture of 1984.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!ahutb!leeperted@usceast.UUCP (Ted Nolan) (03/09/85)
I saw _The Killing Fields_ last weekend and was not much impressed.
I understand that war is very confusing to the people involved, not
at all as clear cut as a general's map, but confusing the audience is
not the way to make this point. There were several points in the movie
where I had very little idea what was going on, mostly, but not entirely
because of the language barrier; in my view, with few exceptions,
while characters may get caught in the flow of events, the audience needs
more data to appreciate what is happening to them.
The movie was too long. I remember thinking at the end that there must
have been 30 minutes of unnecessary footage. There were several New York
scenes I would have cut entirely and the whole French Embassy stay
could have been shortened easily.
The focus of the film was wrong; it should have been Pran's story, starting
probably at the point where he puts his family on the evacuation flight.
As it stands, entirely too much attention is paid to the Sidney whatshisname
character.
Pran is an irritating character, it is hard to feel too deeply for him.
We never really know his motivations, all we have are his mannerisms
which consist mainly of unceasing groveling to Sidney and a constant
beseeching patter to various captors delivered while praying(? or whatever
that hands-clasped gesture means). In particular, it is hard to
sympathize much with his devotion to Sidney, who seems to little deserve it.
The M*A*S*H 'letters to home' like narration of his captivity helps little
either. I realized that my enjoyment of the movie was rapidly slacking,
when several times I just wished he would shut up.
I'm glad the real Pran made it out of Cambodia, but the movie should
be deported :-)
Ted Nolan ..usceast!ted
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Ted Nolan ...decvax!mcnc!ncsu!ncrcae!usceast!ted (UUCP)
6536 Brookside Circle ...akgua!usceast!ted
Columbia, SC 29206 allegra!usceast!ted@seismo (ARPA, maybe)
("Deep space is my dwelling place, the stars my destination")
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