1984 was my first year of school. I was five years old, and the big news in our community was that some Kampuchean refugees had just arrived. Miss Wyber showed us all a children's book from Kampuchea with funny writing and told us: In Kampuchea, the pages go backwards and you read from right to left. It stuck very much in my mind, since the left to right of English was still arbitrary to me at that time. I could already read and write, but I hadn't yet picked a favourite hand to do it with, and these first few days of school were an introduction to the rules. I've since been to Cambodia, and I can even pick out the Khmer script from a line-up of squiggly alphabets, so I know that Miss Wyber had it wrong. But she also had it very, very right. I don't know where that book came from but thinking now about the situtation in Cambodia in the time it seems a miracle that she had anything Cambodian at all to help introduce our new, very different classmate to a conservative, monochrome school environment. Everybody loved Miss Wyber.
I don't really remember very much about our Cambodian refugees. I remember that the little girl in our class couldn't speak English at all. Not one word. I remember that she had short, straight, black hair and old looking clothes, and I thought for years that Kampuchea was an African country. My mother once told me that the Cambodian kids came to school on the first day with no shoes. My home town is cold all year round - and nobody wears no shoes if they can help it. I didn't stay at that school for very long, so I couldn't tell you what happened to that family, but I can say that the absolute best Khmer satay in the world comes from the stall in the Octagon in Dunedin - real street food, cooked on the street, hot and fresh and delicious. That stall was in the same place for years. I don't know if it's still there, but I'm sure my mother will comment...
By 1984 the damage had been well and truly done in Cambodia, but I daresay most people at home were oblivious to it, until this film came out and woke everybody up. Mr Martin and I watched it again last night. I'd seen it before, but probably nearly 20 years ago, and couldn't remember any of the details apart from of course that scene where the main Cambodian character literally stumbles across one of the famous killing fields, and plunges chest-deep into a mass grave.
Don't look away. This is one of the scenes that writer Bruce Robinson and Director Roland Joffé desperately want us to observe, and remember.
During a visit to Cambodia in 1989 Joffe said:
I think it is probably easy to get the uneducated and poor to hate the educated and rich. There's a scene in the movie where a Khmer Rouge soldier is examining a confiscated passport - he's holding it upside down. He can't read, he's not interested in what it says, he's just looking for something of value. What's not easy, what makes me so uneasy, is the fact that intelligent, educated people were behind it. As they were in Vietnam, and in China, and in Germany. I prefer to think that education will prevent this kind of thing ever happening again. But I could easily be wrong about that.
Or this scene, towards the end, when Pran is in a re-education camp, and we see a classroom. A child is called to the blackboard and is shown a picture of a stick-figure family in front of a house. It is a test. The child crosses out the parents, and erases the lines so the parents and children are no longer holding hands. Applause. She passes. And yet, a few minutes later, the camp leader asks Pran to love his child. It is incomprehensible.
There are a lot of notable children in the movie. The countless corpses, the injured bodies. The child soldiers with huge guns - longer than the child is tall. Children with guns is a common trope in Vietnamese propaganda even today. It's like a kind of gruesome misappropriation of The Emperor's New Clothes - the idea that a child is uncorrupted and pure. If a child professes it, it must be true.
The child who pointed out suspected traitors on the road. The children riding a tank through the streets on Phnom Penh.
The commander's child, who met his death via one of the most devastating legacies of this conflict in Cambodia - a landmine in the middle of nowhere. Pran's children, relocated to the United States as refugees and not knowing their father, believing him to be dead.
Or the one who sticks most in my mind - the young girl trying to sell a Mercedes logo** to the foreigners for a dollar. She's persistent. All the children who try to sell you stuff you don't want for a dollar in Cambodia are persistent.
In summary:
Bechdel test: Fewer than two women in this movie (named. All I can think of is Pran's wife).
Repeat line: Not used.
Believable characters: Everybody. Devastatingly so.
Music: One memorable song - not written for the movie.
Tears: Yes.
Plot: Careful - faithful - chronological.
Star rating: 10/10
* The devastation here and in China is just as real, especially for the victims. Only, there weren't so many graves (per capita).
**One of those things that stick up on the hood of a car - there's a word for it, but I don't know what it is.
I don't really remember very much about our Cambodian refugees. I remember that the little girl in our class couldn't speak English at all. Not one word. I remember that she had short, straight, black hair and old looking clothes, and I thought for years that Kampuchea was an African country. My mother once told me that the Cambodian kids came to school on the first day with no shoes. My home town is cold all year round - and nobody wears no shoes if they can help it. I didn't stay at that school for very long, so I couldn't tell you what happened to that family, but I can say that the absolute best Khmer satay in the world comes from the stall in the Octagon in Dunedin - real street food, cooked on the street, hot and fresh and delicious. That stall was in the same place for years. I don't know if it's still there, but I'm sure my mother will comment...
By 1984 the damage had been well and truly done in Cambodia, but I daresay most people at home were oblivious to it, until this film came out and woke everybody up. Mr Martin and I watched it again last night. I'd seen it before, but probably nearly 20 years ago, and couldn't remember any of the details apart from of course that scene where the main Cambodian character literally stumbles across one of the famous killing fields, and plunges chest-deep into a mass grave.
Don't look away. This is one of the scenes that writer Bruce Robinson and Director Roland Joffé desperately want us to observe, and remember.
During a visit to Cambodia in 1989 Joffe said:
"The Khmer Rouge gave up love and affection . . . They encouraged children to turn against their parents, to have them killed. It is so puzzling. Pol Pot and the leaders were intellectuals who had studied in Paris, who had had contact with civilization. It is they who conceived of this. Those intellectuals lost their sense of reality, and built one of their own. This was not genocide to them, but a purification."Puzzling is the right word. What happened in Cambodia, and to a lesser extent* in China and Vietnam,is utterly baffling. There is a scene in the film as the final evacuation from the embassy in Phnom Penh is taking place, where young Khmer Rouge soldiers are in the streets just destroying everything of value. Cars, fridges - everything is smashed up. It makes no sense. Why destroy all your economic assets?
I think it is probably easy to get the uneducated and poor to hate the educated and rich. There's a scene in the movie where a Khmer Rouge soldier is examining a confiscated passport - he's holding it upside down. He can't read, he's not interested in what it says, he's just looking for something of value. What's not easy, what makes me so uneasy, is the fact that intelligent, educated people were behind it. As they were in Vietnam, and in China, and in Germany. I prefer to think that education will prevent this kind of thing ever happening again. But I could easily be wrong about that.
Or this scene, towards the end, when Pran is in a re-education camp, and we see a classroom. A child is called to the blackboard and is shown a picture of a stick-figure family in front of a house. It is a test. The child crosses out the parents, and erases the lines so the parents and children are no longer holding hands. Applause. She passes. And yet, a few minutes later, the camp leader asks Pran to love his child. It is incomprehensible.
There are a lot of notable children in the movie. The countless corpses, the injured bodies. The child soldiers with huge guns - longer than the child is tall. Children with guns is a common trope in Vietnamese propaganda even today. It's like a kind of gruesome misappropriation of The Emperor's New Clothes - the idea that a child is uncorrupted and pure. If a child professes it, it must be true.
The child who pointed out suspected traitors on the road. The children riding a tank through the streets on Phnom Penh.
The commander's child, who met his death via one of the most devastating legacies of this conflict in Cambodia - a landmine in the middle of nowhere. Pran's children, relocated to the United States as refugees and not knowing their father, believing him to be dead.
Or the one who sticks most in my mind - the young girl trying to sell a Mercedes logo** to the foreigners for a dollar. She's persistent. All the children who try to sell you stuff you don't want for a dollar in Cambodia are persistent.
In summary:
Bechdel test: Fewer than two women in this movie (named. All I can think of is Pran's wife).
Repeat line: Not used.
Believable characters: Everybody. Devastatingly so.
Music: One memorable song - not written for the movie.
Tears: Yes.
Plot: Careful - faithful - chronological.
Star rating: 10/10
* The devastation here and in China is just as real, especially for the victims. Only, there weren't so many graves (per capita).
**One of those things that stick up on the hood of a car - there's a word for it, but I don't know what it is.
I remember the Cambodian families that arrived at your school. While NZ welcomed refugee we weren't very good at looking after them at that time. The children did go to school barefoot in Dunedin winters. I hope they did well, I think they probably did. The Satay place is not there any more, wow that was good Satay. I'll have to look around for it, it may be near the University now if it still exist. I've never seen the film.
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