R | 2h 21min | Drama | 1984
Roland Joffé’s searing film only appears to dwell on a bloody civil war. In reality, it centers on a touching real-life story of friendship, forgiveness, sacrifice, and faithfulness to truth in the face of totalitarianism. Nominated for seven Oscars, it paints a moving portrait of simple freedoms that contemporary democracies sometimes take for granted.
The Cambodian civil war pits the ruthless communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas (backed by China and North Vietnam) against the South Vietnam-backed Kingdom of Cambodia (later the U.S.-backed Khmer Republic). At great risk to their lives, Cambodian photojournalist Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor) and American correspondent Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston) jointly capture the unraveling chaos for global audiences.
Moments before guerrillas seize the capital city, Phnom Penh, Schanberg uses his clout with the embassy to arrange to evacuate Pran and his family. However, Pran, faithful to Schanberg and his own journalistic calling, stays on to help and, as the city falls, guerrillas arrest him.
Then for four grueling years, in swatches of Cambodia that came to be known as the “killing fields,” he suffers starvation and torture. Labor camps were dens of malnutrition, disease, amid a landscape of mass executions.
Cinematographer Chris Menges hauntingly captures Cambodia’s sheer beauty: rolling hills, lush green fields, stately trees, grazing cattle, peasants working their grain, clouds pregnant with rain.
Editor Jim Clark mimics the feel of flicking through a photojournalist’s folio, using a quick succession of moving images: the fear of horror to come, the havoc it wreaks once it arrives, and the pain that lingers after it has passed.
But Joffé’s more interested in celebrating the friendship and respect evolving between Schanberg and Pran.
Once Colleagues, Now Brothers
The two men are almost antagonists at first. Schanberg’s furious that Pran doesn’t receive him at the airport as planned. Dimly, if not sheepishly, Schanberg soon discovers that Pran brought him vital intel, precisely by not sitting around as he could have done.Pran then works his magic, overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles in granting Schanberg the unrivaled access he needs to places and people, infusing Schanberg’s news reports with credibility, immediacy, and impact.
Repeatedly, Pran saves Schanberg’s life by steering him away from an explosive situation or smuggling him out of one, or shielding him by bearing the brunt of guerrilla fury.
In many scenes, Joffé’s camera gazes unmoved at the action as it happens, almost refusing to acknowledge what’s happening to his subjects: Schanberg slipping and falling, or Pran scurrying to get his wife and children onto the last evacuation sortie.
That’s Joffé saying, like a journalist’s sweeping headline, that individual fates are not the main event; they’re merely incidental to the larger drama of troops and diplomats moving out, guerrilla forces moving in, families fleeing, and refugees hiding.
In other scenes, Joffé does the opposite. He seems obsessed with his subjects, as if to say that nothing happens on the world stage without deeply affecting individuals and their families. He zooms in and holds his lens on Pran’s face, pondering his future alone as his family is airlifted to safety, or on Schanberg’s face as he silently struggles to reassure an overwrought Pran. The more he sees of Pran in action, the higher Schanberg holds him in esteem, and the deeper his affection for him.
Joffé’s film spotlights how vital journalist truth-telling is when totalitarian regimes impose propaganda on citizens, imprison intellectuals and human rights defenders, and cramp free speech and a free press.
Without their saying it, Schanberg’s and Pran’s brave actions illustrate what journalism means: revealing what repressive or corrupt regimes want to conceal.
This film falls squarely within the genre of war-zone realism, but it is a trendsetter rather than a follower. Yes, it follows “Apocalypse Now” (1979) but precedes and sets the standard for many such films that followed, including “Platoon” (1986), “Full Metal Jacket” (1987), and “Saving Private Ryan” (1998).
Like them, by depicting the horrors of war onscreen, it ironically helps prove war’s pointlessness. Unlike them, but like “Under Fire” (1983), it uses a peace practitioner’s (journalist’s) point of view, not a soldier’s.
Ngor, not a trained actor at the time of his debut here, performed so authentically that he stunned many—except Joffé, who felt that Ngor had been “acting” for years or he wouldn’t have survived the Khmer Rouge. For, like Pran, whom he portrays so convincingly on-screen, Ngor too had weathered the Khmer Rouge concentration camps by playing dumb or harmless. Unsurprisingly, Ngor became the first Asian to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
In one scene, it rains as Pran departs to his fate with the Khmer Rouge. He bears no rancor, aware that a forlorn Schanberg, now standing helpless, has done all he could to prevent that fate.
With all the rain it’s hard to tell, but as the camera closes in on Schanberg’s face, you suspect that it’s not just rain rolling down his trembling cheeks.
