Books, Arts & Manners: Automata

For all its flaws, The Killing Fields is an important, indeed necessary, film. Based on an article in The New York Times Magazine by Sydney Schanberg, it tells the story of the friendship between Schanberg, then the Times correspondent in Cambodia, and his Cambodian translator and guide, Dith Pran, before, during, and after the takeover of that luckless country by the Khmer Rouge. It also tells of Dith Pran’s fearful ordeal in various labor camps after Schanberg’s departure, of Schanberg’s guilt feelings for not letting his protégé, whose services he needed, escape with his evacuated wife and children before the fall of Phnom Penh (though he was eager enough to stay), of the American journalist’s efforts to locate and rescue his companion, and of how the latter finally, with almost superhuman effort, did manage to escape to Thailand and fall into Sydney’s arms. And also of Nixon-Kissinger’s deleterious, disastrous involvement in Cambodian affairs.

The main problem with the film, written by Bruce Robinson and directed by Roland Joffé (whose first feature film, after work in theater and TV documentaries, this was), is that it tries to do too much, which leads to oversimplification and superficiality in some areas, and the elision of relevant facts. For example, it does not show us how Dith Pran recruits the companions for his eventual escape or that his wife, angry at him for staying with Schanberg rather than leaving with her and the kids, divorces him upon arriving in America. It glosses over Sydney’s selfishness and doesn’t adequately examine Dith Pran’s motives for staying on.

For all its flaws, The Killing Fields is an important, indeed necessary, film. Based on an article in The New York Times Magazine by Sydney Schanberg, it tells the story of the friendship between Schanberg, then the Times correspondent in Cambodia, and his Cambodian translator and guide, Dith Pran, before, during, and after the takeover of that luckless country by the Khmer Rouge. It also tells of Dith Pran’s fearful ordeal in various labor camps after Schanberg’s departure, of Schanberg’s guilt feelings for not letting his protégé, whose services he needed, escape with his evacuated wife and children before the fall of Phnom Penh (though he was eager enough to stay), of the American journalist’s efforts to locate and rescue his companion, and of how the latter finally, with almost superhuman effort, did manage to escape to Thailand and fall into Sydney’s arms. And also of Nixon-Kissinger’s deleterious, disastrous involvement in Cambodian affairs.

The main problem with the film, written by Bruce Robinson and directed by Roland Joffé (whose first feature film, after work in theater and TV documentaries, this was), is that it tries to do too much, which leads to oversimplification and superficiality in some areas, and the elision of relevant facts. For example, it does not show us how Dith Pran recruits the companions for his eventual escape or that his wife, angry at him for staying with Schanberg rather than leaving with her and the kids, divorces him upon arriving in America. It glosses over Sydney’s selfishness and doesn’t adequately examine Dith Pran’s motives for staying on.