The Killing Fields: authentically good

Roland Joffé's 1984 masterwork is a solid piece of historical film-making, capturing factual detail without sacrificing fine storytelling. Alex von Tunzelmann can even forgive the use of Imagine

Alex von Tunzelmann
guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 12 March 2009

Bomb site ... Sam Waterston and Haing S Ngor as Sydney Schanberg and Dith Pran in The Killing Fields. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

Director: Roland Joffé

Entertainment grade: A–

History grade: A–

The Killing Fields
Release: 1984
Country: UK
Directors: Roland Joffé
Cast: Haing S Ngor, John Malkovich, Julian Sands, Sam Waterston
More on this film

Richard Nixon ordered an incursion into Cambodia in 1970 as a corollary to the war in Vietnam. With the country under an American-installed government, the Khmer Rouge gained widespread support. After American withdrawal in 1975, it instituted a regime that made George Orwell's 1984 look like a feelgood tale of heartwarming friendship between a man, his brother and their pet rat. Between 1975-1979, the Khmer Rouge coerced most of Cambodia's people into forced labour, and murdered something in the region of 1.5-2 million – around 20-30% of the entire population.

Violence

No beating about the bush ... Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/Warner Bros

The Killing Fields follows the story of Dith Pran, a Cambodian fixer, and his patron, New York Times journalist Sydney Schanberg. The first few scenes show the two of them travelling to the town of Neak Luong, which the Americans accidentally bombed, in 1973. Putrid water fills enormous craters where homes used to be. Refugees stagger around the makeshift field hospital, begging Schanberg to take their photographs and show the world the truth of what is happening. Immediately, it's clear that this film is not going to patronise its audience by giftwrapping the story. It's complicated, challenging and upsetting. Just like the modern history of Cambodia.

Casting

In an inspired piece of casting, Dith is played by Haing S Ngor, a doctor and real-life veteran of the Khmer Rouge's labour camps. This was Ngor's first performance, and it deservedly won him an Oscar. Sam Waterston is well cast as Schanberg, and John Malkovich gives a memorable performance as photographer Al Rockoff. On the other hand, the real Rockoff has always insisted that Schanberg was a lying coward, and that both Malkovich's performance, and many of the details in the scenes that take place inside the French embassy in Phnom Penh, are inaccurate.

Slavery

Of human bondage ... Photograph: Kobal

When the journalists are forced to leave, Dith is left to the mercy of the new regime. He passes himself off as a taxi driver, pretending not to speak English or French. The languages would immediately give him away as being middle-class and having worked with foreigners, either of which would have earned him a summary execution. The two-and-a-half years Dith spent in Dam Dek, a village-cum-slave camp near Siem Reap, are unavoidably compressed, but the film does an excellent job of recreating the sense of living in constant fear and confusion. Characters speak in Khmer, without subtitles – leaving the mostly non-Khmer-speaking audience, like the prisoners in the camp, reliant on instinct to work out what's going on. In totalitarian regimes, whatever is said cannot be trusted anyway.

Escape

Some of the facts of Dith's escape have been switched around, but the significant historical details are all present and correct: the Vietnamese invasion, Dith's flight over the border to Thailand, and the shocking recreation of the killing fields themselves. These vast dumping grounds, where the Khmer Rouge left the bodies of their victims, were described by the real Dith as being pitted with water wells full of corpses, "like soup bones in broth". In reality, Dith stayed around for longer under the Vietnamese occupation than the film allows, even becoming mayor of Siem Reap. However, the closing scenes, shot in a real Cambodian refugee camp in Khao-i-Dang, Thailand, provide plenty of authenticity. They also include the film's one artistic misstep: ending on the fatuous strains of John Lennon's Imagine.

Verdict

Reunited ... Sydney Schanberg and Dith Pran in Thailand in 1979. Photograph: Teresa Zabala/AP

It's hard to know whether the real Al Rockoff or the real Sydney Schanberg is right about certain minor details. But the main storylines of this movie – US involvement in Cambodia, the rise of the Khmer Rouge, the abuses and horrors of the regime – are not only accurate but, for many viewers, enlightening. The Killing Fields uses real archive footage and personalities to tell an astonishing and moving true story. As a result, even with one or two question marks, and even with John Lennon, this is historical film-making at its very best.