Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.5

The Killing Fields Blu-ray Movie Review

Millions of Dominos Fell

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 4, 2014

The Killing Fields is an important film not only because of its exceptional quality, but also because it is the only film from a major Hollywood studio to dramatize the momentous impact of the Vietnam War on the neighboring nation of Cambodia. Many Americans brought back stories from Vietnam, which became the basis of films, novels, plays and memoirs. But the U.S. presence in Cambodia was far more limited, and within a few years after the American withdrawal from Southeast Asia in 1975, the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that overthrew Cambodia's previous government had killed as many as three million Cambodians (the death toll can only be estimated), with special attention given to anyone with education, professional skills or artistic talent. By the time the Khmer Rouge was defeated in January 1979, the most likely witnesses to it crimes against humanity were all dead.

Not quite all of them, though. Dith Pran had worked as a translator and guide to New York Times correspondent Sydney Shanberg, who had been assigned to the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until 1975, when the Khmer Rouge overran the city. Shanberg had already arranged for Pran and his family to be evacuated to the United States, but Pran insisted on staying behind to help Shanberg continue reporting. When all remaining foreign journalists took refuge in Phnom Penh's French embassy, the French were forced to surrender every Cambodian citizen as the price for the embassy's safety. To his great frustration and no small sense of guilt, Shanberg had to leave Cambodia without his friend and colleague, whom the Khmer Rouge would almost certainly execute as a collaborator.

But Pran survived, masquerading as a nobody who'd driven a taxi. In 1979, after years of privation and abuse, he escaped across the border into Thailand, with detailed accounts of the atrocities perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. It was Pran who coined the term "killing fields" to describe the open spaces where the regime piled up the bodies of its randomly executed victims. After contacting Shanberg, Pran emigrated to the U.S., where he became a photojournalist with the Times and a tireless advocate on behalf of Cambodian refugees. (Pran died in 2008 at the age of 65.)

Producer David Puttnam (Chariots of Fire) chose first-time feature director Roland Joffé to helm The Killing Fields over several bigger names, because Joffé was the only one who read the massive script by Bruce Robinson and saw that the core of the film was the enduring friendship between Pran and Shanberg. By focusing on that relationship, Joffé turned what might otherwise have been a parade of horrors into an ultimately optimistic tale about the possibility of grace.

The Killing Fields divides into three acts, each with a distinctly different mood. The first is an adventure story that begins in 1973, when Sydney Shanberg (Sam Waterston) begins reporting from Phnom Penh, assisted by Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor, a non-actor, who won an Oscar for his eloquent portrayal). The pair can usually be found in the company of photographer Al Rockoff (John Malkovich), whose sardonic detachment provides an effective contrast to Shanberg's righteous fire. This is the period when Shanberg and Pran become friends. Pran is clearly drawn to the intensity of Shanberg's commitment to find out what is happening—what is really happening—outside the capital city. For his part, Shanberg is impressed with Pran's resourcefulness, which gives him an edge over his competitors. When Pran's connections pick up rumors of a botched U.S. bombing raid with multiple civilian casualties, the local commander, Major Reeves (Craig T. Nelson), stonewalls Shanberg's inquiries and grounds all flights, but Pran arranges a ride to the site on a police boat. They get there ahead of the official "sanitized" press tour. As Shanberg's dispatches begin to make the front page, he tells Pran: "We must be doing something right."

The film's second act moves from adventure to terror, as Phnom Penh's legitimate government collapses. The U.S. withdraws both its military forces and its diplomatic presence, and Shanberg is urged to leave by the U.S. consul (Spalding Gray, who transformed his experience of acting in the film into a performance piece called Swimming to Cambodia). Although Shanberg stays behind to cover the arrival of the Khmer Rouge, his first priority is to get Pran and his family out of Cambodia. But Pran decides to stay, protesting that "I am also [a] journalist!" Shanberg will later reproach himself for not insisting that Pran leave.

The evacuation is chaotic and disorderly, and Joffé stages and shoots it as if a documentary crew just happened to capture the mad rush of people and equipment. (In his commentary, the director breaks down the precision planning, because many of the shots had to be done in different locations, months apart.) By the time the Khmer Rouge enters Phnom Penh, only a handful of foreign journalists and medical personnel remain. As these cold-eyed thugs in uniform swagger through the streets with rifles, beating and killing indiscriminately, the aura of invincibility that Shanberg and other journalists thought would protect them quickly vanishes. He and the photographer, Rockoff, are herded into a military APC, along with a British reporter named John Swain (Julian Sands) and others. Outside the vehicle, they can hear Pran arguing and pleading with their captors. As Joffé does consistently throughout the film, none of the Cambodian dialogue is subtitled, so that the viewer suffers from the same lack of information as the Western reporters, who are certain they are about to die. (Joffé says that, when the real John Swain told him this story, he could not stop shaking.)

Pran talks his way into the APC and somehow persuades the Khmer Rouge to spare the reporters' lives, but their captivity lasts many hours, and other prisoners are not so lucky. They are released just in time to witness the forced evacuation of the entire city of Phnom Penh, as several million people, including the gravely wounded, are marched at gunpoint out of their homes and into the countryside. Most did not survive. Meanwhile, Shanberg, Rockoff, Swain, Pran and a small band of expatriots and their Cambodian associates take refuge at the French embassy, where the men who had been saved by Pran scheme desperately, but in the end unsuccessfully, to give him a new identity as a foreign citizen.

The film's third and longest act is an elegy for a country lost and a prayer for absent friends, as Joffé shifts back and forth between Shanberg, now returned to New York, and Pran, for whom life is a daily struggle for survival. Shanberg dedicates his Pulitzer Prize for foreign reporting to Pran and writes hundreds of letters to relief organizations, government agencies and foreign embassies seeking their assistance. He visits Pran's tearful wife, who insists that her husband is dead. He is reproached by Rockoff, who accuses him of keeping Pran in Cambodia for his own ends. And he struggles with his private doubts about his actions.

In Cambodia, Pran slaves under Khmer Rouge overseers in a country work site, outwardly turning himself into a blank, concealing all traces of his past and education. To maintain his sanity, he writes imaginary letters to Shanberg in his head, describing the "education" designed to create a new generation with no loyalty other than to their Khmer Rouge masters. Workers are randomly picked out of the crowd and led away, often with blue plastic bags over their heads. During his long and arduous escape, Pran will cross a field littered with many such bags.

It is a tribute to the performances by both Sam Waterston and Haing S. Ngor, and also to the Oscar-winning work by editor Jim Clark (Charade  and The World Is Not Enough ) that, throughout this intense section of the film, the connection between Shanberg and Pran remains palpable, even though they no longer share the screen. In the prickly, obstinate Shanberg, Pran saw something he admired and respected. Somehow he was able to draw on that quality and their friendship for strength during his long ordeal. Like his country, Pran emerged from the horror of the Khmer Rouge much changed, but he was a journalist, just as he said, and he did not return empty-handed. He brought with him the story of what happened—what really happened—in a land overrun by madness.

The Killing Fields Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

British cinematographer Chris Menges won the first of two Oscars (to date) for his work on The Killing Fields. (The second came two years later for the Joffé-directed The Mission.) Menges' photographic style provides an interesting contrast with the similarly honored lensing of Vittorio Storaro for Apocalypse Now, which contains similar scenes of chaotic battle, madness and grievous injury. Storaro intensified reality to the point where it became hallucinatory, whereas Menges kept The Killing Fields entirely realistic, almost (but not quite) documentary-style, as befits a film about journalists. Every so often, he allowed a moment of photographic stylization, e.g., a lengthy and famous conversation ("This is a big story!") in which Shanberg and Dith Pran are silhouetted against a late afternoon sun.

Most of the time, however, the lighting, camera placement and moves are designed not to be noticed. A notable example is an insurgent bombing in a crowded Phnom Penh street, which comes as a complete shock even when you know it's coming, because the camera doesn't direct your eye toward it. It occurs as if a documentary camera just happened to be there, with exactly the right light and focus to capture it perfectly.

Except for some slight instability in the opening credits, Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is a superior presentation of Menges' work. The detail is superb, whether in tense closeups of various faces (terrified or vicious, as the case may be), or in the brilliantly choreographed long shots of barely controlled chaos involving as many as 3000 extras. Colors are delicately rendered, with a palette dominated by earth tones, primarily browns, yellows and greens. Black levels are accurately rendered, and contrast is properly set. The film's naturally fine grain pattern is visible if you look closely, and it appears undisturbed by filtering, artificial sharpening or other inappropriate digital manipulation.

The average bitrate of 25.95 Mbps is at the high end of Warner's usual range, and it is certainly sufficient to avoid any compression-related issues. This is one of Warner's best catalog efforts for a film that truly deserves it.

The Killing Fields Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original Dolby Stereo mix is presented as lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. It's an impressive mix, with clear dialogue, solid effects (by the standard of the era) and a strikingly percussive score by Mike Oldfield (whose "Tubular Bells" is now inextricably linked with The Exorcist). Like some of Maurice Jarre's best scores, Oldfield's orchestration often blends with the sound effects and is a critical element in creating the mood of key scenes.

The only caveat to the above evaluation is that Haing S. Ngor was still learning English during the making of the film, and his accent is occasionally thick. (On the commentary track, Joffé reveals that he frequently directed Ngor in French.) Recourse to subtitles may be necessary for some viewers.

The Killing Fields Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2001 DVD. A one-hour BBC documentary on the making of the film and an interview with producer David Puttnam appear on the Australian Blu-ray release of The Killing Fields, but they have not, to my knowledge, ever been included on a region 1 DVD release and are not included on this Blu-ray, presumably because of rights issues.

• Commentary with Director Roland Joffé: Joffé speaks continuously throughout the film's running time, and he is full of useful information and insights. He discusses the origin of the project, the casting of the two leads and the extensive research that he undertook personally. (He discovered, when he was finally able to visit Phnom Penh some years after making the film, that he could navigate the city in the dark, because he had mapped it so thoroughly in his imagination.) Joffé also breaks down the complex logistics of several key sequences and discusses the film's themes and plot elements in depth. Although I suspect that most fans of The Killing Fields have already listened to this commentary on DVD, I urge any who have missed it to take the time.



• Trailer (480i; 1.78:1, enhanced; 2:29):



• DigiBook: Warner's DigiBook provides numerous stills from the film, along with short background essays and biographies of producer Puttnam, director Joffé, actors Waterston and Ngor, trivia notes and a list of awards.

The Killing Fields Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

No discussion of The Killing Fields would be complete without some additional words about co-star Haing S. Ngor. Joffé's initial challenge in casting someone to play Dith Pran was that there were no Cambodian actors to audition; they had all died under the Khmer Rouge. Ngor was a doctor, who, like Pran, survived by concealing his background, but he lost almost all of his family, including his pregnant wife. After escaping to Thailand, he worked as a doctor in the refugee camps before emigrating to Los Angeles. Though initially reluctant to revisit those experiences, Ngor was persuaded by Joffé that he could, through Pran's story, also tell his own and that of his country, which the world barely knew. His moving embodiment of Pran's courage, loyalty and fundamental decency was rewarded with an Oscar and numerous other awards.

Ngor continued to act in various TV productions and feature films, including Oliver Stone's Heaven & Earth (1993), but his life and career ended with his shocking murder outside his L.A. home on February 25, 1996. The three street gang members convicted of the crime theorized, through their attorney, that the actor had been targeted by sympathizers of the Khmer Rouge, but produced no evidence to support their theory. All reliable evidence indicates that the killing was a botched robbery. At the time, Dith Pran referred to Ngor as his "twin", saying "right now I am alone". Still, as Ngor himself predicted, the film in which he made an indelible mark lives on. Highest recommendation.