A story of friendship and of survival through adversity, The Killing Fields is an often harrowing account of the Cambodian civil war and its aftermath.
Sam Waterston plays Sydney Schanberg, a highly dedicated reporter working for the New York Times. His friend and interpreter is Dith Pran (Dr. Haing S. Ngor). They cover the story of the U.S. involvement in Cambodia from its major city, Phnom Penh. Schanberg, who would later win the Pulitzer Prize, is a driven, obsessive man who seemingly lives only for his reporting. He is indifferent to the increasing danger that surrounds himself and Pran.
In 1975, the civil war is won by the Khmer Rouge, who are hard-core communists. Western journalists such as Schanberg and photographer Rockoff (John Malkovich) are allowed to leave. But Pran is turned over to the Khmer Rouge, for whom he toils in a deadly, oppressive concentration camp.
Spalding Gray had a small role in The Killing Fields as an employee at the U.S. consulate. Gray's experiences with the film became a sizeable part of his monologue in Swimming to Cambodia (1987).
Blame for the Cambodian massacre is not placed on Pol Pot, whose name is never mentioned during the film. Blame instead is given to the U.S., and to Richard Nixon in particular. What the leftist polemics fail to mention is that American involvement in the Vietnam war was escalated during the Democratic Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
Nixon steadily withdrew troop deployments during his administration. He did expand the war by bombing Vietnamese bases on the border of Cambodia, but this was an obvious military decision. It is true, however, that he cared nothing about what was best for the Cambodian people. The same can be said about the entire American involvement, which resulted in the futile slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese in order to save them from communism.
But surely no one in the Defense Department could have known that after the civil war had ended in Vietnam, an isolationist, totalitarian regime would be established in Cambodia. Or that the regime would herd its population into work farm concentration camps, resulting in the deaths of a third or more of the population. The U.S. has aided more than its share of repressive dictators, but cannot fairly be held accountable for the Khmer Rouge.
Getting off my soapbox and back to the movie, The Killing Fields deserved its Academy Award for Chris Menges's cinematography. You feel that are there in Phnom Penh as it falls to the insurgents, and that you are with Pran as he struggles for survival in the 'killing fields'. Filmed in Thailand, the depiction of Cambodia's rivers and forests is both beautiful and deadly.
On the other hand, Mike Oldfield's intrusive, operatic score has been overpraised. It often detracts from the potent images that it is supporting.
Haing Ngor was not a professional actor, but his life experiences had prepared him for the role. Like Pran, he was an educated Vietnamese family man, who had spent several years in the 'killing fields' of Cambodia. His wife would die there during childbirth. Ngor was eventually liberated by the invading Vietnamese army.
Ngor's real-life suffering may explain why his performance in The Killing Fields is so sympathetic. He won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role, the first non-professional to do so since Harold Russell's extraordinary performance in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Ngor should have been nominated for Best Actor instead, as he sees more screen time than any other character.
Ngor continued to act afterwards, but in decidedly lesser films. His eventual murder in 1996 was at first alleged to be retribution by the Khmer Rouge. However, he was actually killed by members of an L.A. drug trafficking gang, who wanted him to surrender the gold chain around his neck. He was unwilling to do so, because the chain's locket contained an image of his late wife.
The Killing Fields was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Waterston), Best Director (Roland Joffe) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Bruce Robinson). It lost in all four categories to Amadeus. (65/100)
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