Cambodia was a spot on the map to me, involved with Viet Nam in some foggy way, and accompanied by some dim recollections of headlines from my childhood. This movie brings it into sharp, painfully understandable focus. Movies that portray the consequences of our actions in distant places are needed here, regardless of the political spin on the portrayal. They encourage self-examination, and also remind us how good we have it even when things seem hopelessly screwed up in their local context. This particular movie goes a step beyond that as well, and evokes the simultaneous terror and beauty that can fill our experience of the world with such wonderful power.
3 responses to “Movie: The Killing Fields”
good ‘ole Pol Pot. yeah, he was a sadist of the noblist blood. i don’t remember if they showed this in the movie but…
when cambodia gained it’s independance, everyone was in the street celebrating. then, soldiers were in the streets of the city forcing everyone out… out into the forests and fields. why? to regain cambodia’s glory of the 14th century(?… some period long ago).
insane? yes. i mean, i would like to be in the old west… with all the modern medicine of today.
one more note, the main cambodian character, the one that escaped cambodia:
he got in the Hollywood lifestyle a bit too hard. he liked young gay fags. he had 2 young skin head homos come up into is apt and filmed them doin’ the deed. couple days later, he was beatin’ and dead. both of the guys were convicted of his murder.
AND YOU THOUGHT CAMBODIA UNDER POL POT WAS BAD!?!?! move to North Hollywood.
? could drink the blood of living (or ded for that matter) cow?
answer: who knows, until you are in that situation.
also, Pol Pot was finally dethrowned ~5 years ago. he was brought up on genocide charges, but was all bitchey whiney saying it was all well intended. he was not executed, but died of natural causes in jail.
They did show the mass evacuation from Phnom Penh. When I think about those scenes are really amazingly realistic. How the movie was made is nearly as inconceivable as the history it relates.
The encyclopaedia article I read ‘estimated’ that 1.5 million people were executed under Pol Pot. The highest estimates I’ve heard of executions in Iraq under Saddam Hussein are in the 100-150,000 area.
No cow blood or moves to North Hollywood for me until I’m really desperate.
yeah, i don’t remember what those scenes looked like. i have seen real footage though. very very very weird.
no n. hollywood for me. too many “necromancers” down there. the whole ‘death culture’ thing is just beyond me. makes me really really really sick.
i was in a shop on Melrose and a family of 5, all dressed in black, mom and dad is psycho tats, walk in. the mom has what appears to be a backpack on… it’s a miniature BLACK coffin with a cross on it. it’s zippered all the way around.
one of the kids (the baby) did not even look human. i almost staired at it. surely drugs were taken when this kid was in the womb. sickos.
pol pot had a death culture going on. life meant nothing. the fields of bodies … my friend was telling me about a FETISH associated with GENOCIDE (go figure). apparently, Adolph Hitler had this fetish as well (go figure again).