Mozzeenet

I think the title of the film, The Killing Fields (1984), put me off seeing it even though people have said to me since living in Cambodia that it’s worth seeing. I’ve been thinking about it but kind of dreading it too because its title gives the impression of a violent bloodbath and as that was the actual turn of events, I didn’t think that was unreasonable but yet, didn’t really want to put myself through it.

I finally borrowed it last week and sat down last Friday night to watch it on our small portable TV which was kind of appropriate with the ’80s sound and picture quality. I don’t know if it is because I have lived there and could recognise some of the street scenes and that it conjured up a similar picture to the one formed in my mind through reading historical accounts of the Khmer Rouge regime but I found it very moving. From my knowledge, it was a fairly realistic portrayal apart from the scenes just after the KR soldiers took over Phnom Penh when it was shown to be raining heavily which seems unlikely because the coup occurred at Khmer New Year in April, the hottest month of the year (that’s the time of the year we arrived in the country and we didn’t see rain for a few months) and the comical accents put on by the actors playing Australian expats.

More than the portrayal of events, it was the main characters who were most intriguing and affecting - the tenacious and cynical American journalist determined to uncover the covert bombing of Cambodian villages by the US army near the end of the Vietnam war who formed a strong friendship with a Cambodian reporter, Dith Pran.

Pran did not manage to escape Cambodia with other fleeing residents and expats (his family escaped to France through his connections) and he was ordered by the KR with all other residents of Phnom Penh to envacuate en masse (and mostly by foot) to communes in the provinces to work 12-14 hours a day in the fields with one small bowl of watery rice to eat a day.

Eventually many perished from starvation or a violent death at the hands of the KR soldiers (some of who were brainwashed children) for any perceived transgressions against the rules of ‘Angkar’, Pol Pot’s murderous big-brother ruling body which attempted to dissolve family structures, emotions, education and books, closed down all banks, schools and hospitals and outlawed any “modern” technology like clocks, fridges and cars. They referred to their programs as a return to Year Zero enforcing what they called the “re-education” of people. What happened there is now recognised as genocide (or auto-genocide because the killing was not carried out by one ethnic group against another but by Cambodian upon Cambodian). Two to three million Cambodians, or a third of the population at the time, died.

Pran through strength, determination and luck survived the cruel conditions and eventually escaped through the jungle to reach the Thai border where refugee camps had been established for other victims fleeing Democratic Kampuchea (the name the KR gave to the country - in Khmer the country is still called Kampuchea - I think ‘Cambodia’ is the westernised name, it is ‘Cambodge’ in French). It’s a fascinating story and well worth seeing.