First They Killed My Father (2017) Review!!!

Synopsis – Cambodian author and human rights activist Loung Ung recounts the horrors she suffered as a child under the rule of the deadly Khmer Rouge.

My Take – Whether you like her or not, there is no denying that Angelina Jolie is one of the biggest movie stars of the world! Unfortunately for her (debatable), her life as an actress, despite winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for 2000’s Girl, Interrupted and starring in money spinners like Maleficent, has always come in secondary in tabloids. Whether it’s her charity work, relationship with her six kids, or allegations from ex-husbands, or her fall out with her soon to be ex, Brad Pitt, her cinematic works in recent times have rarely made it to the front news. But somehow in the background, Jolie has been mixing it up to reform her image as a serious filmmaker since the release of her 2007 documentary, A Place in Time, and her 2011 feature film, In the Land of Blood and Honey, and followed it up with the brilliant 2014 film Unbroken, and the uninspiring 2015 art film, By the Sea. While, most might have thought, back in 2001, her adoption of a Cambodian child, during the filming of Tomb Raider, as a PR stunt, but it seems like she somehow had some spiritual connection to the place, as here, she goes back to the country to retell one of its most horrifying times in this Netflix film. Based on a memoir by the Cambodian author/activist Luong Ung, who was just 5 years old when the Khmer Rouge regime came to power by marching into her city, Phnom Penh, the national capital, and went on to kill one quarter of the population of Cambodia between the years of 1975 and 1979. Driven by militarism and a feverish agrarian socialism, Cambodia committed a bizarre self-genocide, purging itself of its own people through forced labor and starvation until the barely-functioning country fell to an invasion from neighboring Vietnam.

Here, director Jolie with utmost fortitude and devotion tells the story of Luong’s family and their struggle to survive following the fall of Cambodia’s government to the communist party, as a fragmented yet incredibly moving story. Yes, the film is sometimes a slow affair, and throughout has little dialogue, but in the end this works well in telling this story from a child’s perspective. The film, which is entirely in the language of Khmer, has been chosen as Cambodia’s entry to the Best Foreign Language film category at the Oscars, which, at the very least, means Jolie has earned some of that country’s respect. Angelina Jolie’s adaptation of Loung Ung’s memoir of the period is a sincere attempt to paint a portrait of a country gone mad. Set right after the United States lost interest in bombing the country in order to flush out the Vietnamese in 1975, the story follows Loung Ung (Sareum Srey Moch), a seven year old, who along with her parents (Phoeung Kompheak & Sveng Socheata) and her siblings were among the thousands of residents of Cambodia’s capital, Phmon Penh, who were forced to leave. Told that they were in danger of being bombed & that they would be gone for only three days, the city-dwellers were forced to head towards the country side. Initially settled in a work camp where the parents warn the children not to reveal their true identities, in order to avoid being targeted for execution thanks to their father’s previous position in the ousted royal government. Shortly thereafter, they are forced to remove all color from their clothes, cut their hair, and conform to society under Angkar, the communist Khmer Rouge. After a number of days in the camp, Loung Ung’s elder siblings are removed from the family to aid the cause in separate regions, meaning they were being sent to the front lines to battle the army of Vietnam. Even though they are hungry, broken, and exhausted, the father assures the remaining members that they are safe. Until, the oppression begins to ramp up, from mandating that everyone had to labor in the fields to drafting children into military units where they plant land mines and learn to fire automatic weapons. Emotion is forbidden; Ma is only allowed a few seconds of grief after being told one of her children has died. It was only then that, inexorably, they discovered that this was to be their new life – scrambling for shelter and food, working in the fields, being indoctrinated into Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s new society and watching as, gradually but with extreme prejudice, anyone other than mere workers were taken away, never to be seen again, and the first one of Luong’s family to be taken was her father. The basic story is involving and realistically viewed, but the film unfolds at a sluggish pace, especially in the first half hour with too many scenes focusing on the hardships occurring before the actual titled event even happens off-screen. Plus, the historical aspects of the story are rarely addressed for any filmgoers who may not know the back-story of the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime and the genocide and enslavement that followed in mid-70’s Cambodia. Director Jolie‘s direction starts off shaky and uneven. Her film is wildly accurate and hyper-realistic at times and yet languid and tedious in its details in other moments.

Using her “Sympathy to the Devil” opening montage with archival newsreel footage and scenes of American involvement in the War without a Name is a class in Cliché Filmmaking 101. Get past that muddy prologue and you’ll witness what may be one of Netflix’s finest films to date. Give its director a chance, because this film is the first work of Jolie’s as a director that legitimately connects as it securely defines itself as a hypnotically focused and intimate vision, one of horror and lost innocence. In broad strokes it plays as a historical thriller, unflinching but not obscene. And in the halls of historical melodrama, this one deserves a studied view for its visually sound and emotionally daring presentation. Yet if one doesn’t lose interest and continues on this journey, the film builds to an emotional conclusion. It is in the film’s second half where Jolie delivers with many striking images (a tearful child clutching onto her long lost stuffed animal, a dead body washed ashore and seen by gaping children, child laborers being victimized and abused), All of these images resonate. Her direction is most effective in other scenes of violence and brutality, as in her climactic battle sequence involving land mines that is intensely filmed and riveting. (Special mention to Anthony Dod Mantle for his stunning cinematography.) The immediate comparisons to be made are with Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation — which follows a similar story line set in Africa but is a superior film in every way. Jolie seems to lack the artistry to extract emotions from the audience without dressing up the scene. The cinematography and make up, for instance, is way too clean for the kind of gritty settings showcased in the film. Perhaps the reasoning is that Jolie wants to portray Ung’s journey as a nightmare in a garden of paradise, but she doesn’t quite succeed. Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, for instance followed a similar theme of hell in a beautiful paradise, but still rendered the ugliness of the situation with far more expertise. It’s never easy to make a feature film about atrocity. The whole point of an oppressive regime is to strip away humanity, and films that tackle the topic often unintentionally do the same. Horror replaces story; characters are stifled by misery. Jolie, a still learning but a skilled and sensitive filmmaker, convincingly depicts the illogical hell of the Khmer Rouge era, but she seems more interested in the events than in Loung as a person. Loung’s face, initially cute and wide-eyed, steadily grows battle-hardened, offset by eyes that radiate ferocious intelligence. Jolie’s sentimentality evolves into a startling vision of wilderness hell that’s navigated by fixating on immediate and minute elements. Here’s a film less fascinated with the mechanics of Pot’s handiwork, and more in capturing the feelings of Ung’s bewilderment. Where films like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and Son of Saul get hung up in the pain of war, explicit violence, and big emotional moments, director Jolie’s interests lie elsewhere as she wants to respect and convey Ung’s tale in an appropriate fashion, and as a historical polemical work, the film is refreshingly humane even when its presentation turns harsh and this creative decision works. Prologues will give you what you need, contextually. As a director, Jolie’s biggest success is extracting a tremendous performance from the child actors, particularly Sareum Srey Moch. The camera stays on her face for long periods of time, reflecting a thousand stories. Phoeung Kompheak, Sveng Socheata, Mun Kimhak & Heng Dara play their parts well too. On the whole, ‘First They Killed My Father’ is a compelling & an atmospheric story of one of history’s worst atrocities.