Sam Waterston
Sydney Schanberg
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The film opens in May 1973 in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. The Cambodian national army is fighting a civil war with the communist Khmer Rouge, a result of the Vietnam War over-spilling that country's borders. Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor), a Cambodian journalist and interpreter for New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterson ...
The Killing Fields (1984) There's a strange thing about stories based on what the movies insist on calling "real life." The haphazard chances of life, the unanticipated twists of fate, have a way of getting smoothed down into Hollywood formulas, so that what might once have happened to a real person begins to look more and more like what might ...
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- Violence
- Casting
- Slavery
- Escape
- Verdict
The Killing Fields follows the story of Dith Pran, a Cambodian fixer, and his patron, New York Times journalist Sydney Schanberg. The first few scenes show the two of them travelling to the town of Neak Luong, which the Americans accidentally bombed, in 1973. Putrid water fills enormous craters where homes used to be. Refugees stagger around the ma...
In an inspired piece of casting, Dith is played by Haing S Ngor, a doctor and real-life veteran of the Khmer Rouge's labour camps. This was Ngor's first performance, and it deservedly won him an Oscar. Sam Waterston is well cast as Schanberg, and John Malkovich gives a memorable performance as photographer Al Rockoff. On the other hand, the real Ro...
When the journalists are forced to leave, Dith is left to the mercy of the new regime. He passes himself off as a taxi driver, pretending not to speak English or French. The languages would immediately give him away as being middle-class and having worked with foreigners, either of which would have earned him a summary execution. The two-and-a-half...
Some of the facts of Dith's escape have been switched around, but the significant historical details are all present and correct: the Vietnamese invasion, Dith's flight over the border to Thailand, and the shocking recreation of the killing fields themselves. These vast dumping grounds, where the Khmer Rouge left the bodies of their victims, were d...
It's hard to know whether the real Al Rockoff or the real Sydney Schanberg is right about certain minor details. But the main storylines of this movie – US involvement in Cambodia, the rise of the Khmer Rouge, the abuses and horrors of the regime – are not only accurate but, for many viewers, enlightening. The Killing Fields uses real archive foota...
Aug 9, 2023 · Movie Summary of ‘The Killing Fields’. ‘The Killing Fields’, directed by Roland Joffé, is a cinematic interpretation of ‘The Death and Life of Dith Pran’. The film follows the same trajectory as the book, illustrating Pran’s life under the Khmer Rouge regime and his eventual escape to freedom with riveting visual storytelling.
Feb 19, 2024 · The film begins in 1973, in the capital of Cambodia. The national army had just engaged in war against the Khmer Rouge, who are trying to take control of the country and turn it into a communist nation (air quotes around communist here). One of our protagonists in Dith Pran, who is a journalist and interpreter working with The New York Times.
The Killing Fields: Directed by Roland Joffé. With Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor, John Malkovich, Julian Sands. A journalist is trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody 'Year Zero' cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million 'undesirable' civilians.
The Killing Fields (1984), a remarkable and deeply affecting film, is based upon a true story of friendship, loyalty, the horrors of war and survival, while following the historical events surrounding the US evacuation from Vietnam in 1975.
