"THE KILLING FIELDS" OF THE KHMER ROUGE

My blood ran cold the moment I picked this one up. I had vaguely heard of the film – winner of three Oscars and nominated for a total of seven back in 1985 – a true story about the experiences of New York Times correspondent Sydney Shanberg (played by Sam Waterstone) in Cambodia of 1975 in the months leading to the take-over of the Khmer Rouge. The years after the takeover of the Khmer Rouge are told through the eyes of Dith Pran (played by Dr. Haning S. Ngor); he was Shanberg’s guide, translator and personal friend who was subjected to the full “Khmer Rouge experience” so to speak.
Sydney Shanberg is a war correspondent like any other during the war in Cambodia. The authorities on all sides find them slightly pesky, but the war correspondents of all nationalities stick together to form a motley crew of friends – and none were as close as Shanberg and Dith Pran. In Pran’s own words they are like brothers and together they have got into and out of many scrapes throughout the war. Yet they are both actually pleased when the Khmer Rouge take over, now at last it seems, peace may reign over this war-torn country… History has proved how wrong everyone who thought that was… While Shanberg, being western, escapes, Dith Pran, being Cambodian, has to remain. And we then turn from Shanberg to follow Pran, hear his amazing story and bear witness to his own first-hand experience of the killing fields of Cambodia…
In today’s turbulent times, Cambodia usually doesn’t feature at the top of international concerns and thus except for the discerning and politically conscious among us, the suffering endured in Cambodia is pretty much forgotten. This is why I think films like this are good things. True there is no lack of war – great escape – miraculous survival stories on the market (now don’t make that face; how else could an entire hour of footage be based on one man’s experiences in a communist dictatorship – surely you had figured that one out? Of course Dith Pran survived). My personal view is that as long as they are films of such good quality, they should definitely be watched, for two reasons. First of all, to bear witness to the suffering endured by these people. If Cambodia is no longer the top of news bulletins, such horrors should definitely not be forgotten. We will probably forget some murky article we see on the internet or in a history book; a well-made film however will stick in our minds. Secondly, because basically, we simply mustn’t become cold and callous to this kind of thing. I have a nasty feeling we are getting more and more immune to violence as a general concept thanks to the excess of it in films and video games and the media. This, I think, is not a good thing. Seeing the stories of real, actual people like Shanberg and Dith Pran remind us of the human side of the whole thing. It reminds us why war and violence are terrible things. And even though we all know this in theory, there is no harm in being reminded once in a while, right?