First They Killed My Father (2017), directed by Angelina Jolie
A review of First They Killed My Father / មុនដំបូងខ្មែរក្រហមសម្លាប់ប៉ារបស់ខ្ញុំ (2017), directed by Angelina Jolie
This is another one of my “I found this on Netflix while procrastinating studying” finds, but I was especially intrigued by the fact that this was Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut and she chose to do it in the Cambodian language. I saw that and didn’t even read the plot, and oh man I was in for a surprise. I also didn’t know about the source material that this movie was pulled from—it’s a memoirist’s personal experience, this is about her family, and the main character, the little girl in the movie, is the memoirist (you know because of the same name).
The moment I realized this film was going to be brutal was once I realized the setting was specifically the late 1960s/early 1970s and the family we follow witnesses the Khmer Rouge invade their city. Under the guise that the Americans are going to bomb their city, everyone is forced to leave, kickstarting the series of tragic events that are to come.
Content
As mentioned before, this film is set in Cambodia during the era of the Khmer Rouge. If you need a small history lesson, with the onset of the Vietnam War nearby, the communist party in Cambodia saw this as the perfect opportunity to strike and take over the country. With this came absolute destruction, poverty, and forced starvation of Cambodians. In this era of Cambodian history, over two million people starved to death or were murdered. Academics, educators, and high-ranked people were specifically targeted and killed originally.
Our main character in this film is Luong, a five-year-old girl whose father is a high-ranking official in the Cambodian government. There are whispers of the Khmer Rouge taking over Cambodia, but, for a brief second, it seems all is well for our family. But then the Khmer Rouge arrive in their town, heavily armed, and tell everyone to evacuate. Anyone who is caught as a government official is rounded up and implied to be murdered. Luong, her parents, and her siblings all pack what little they can and then flee with the other refugees.
We follow this family as they are slowly split across labor camps and life and death. This is the era of despair in Cambodian history, one that doesn’t seem to hold happy outcomes. They are forced to work in the camps, where they live on borrowed time. It seems they should’ve died in the beginning, when they should’ve been caught as having connections to the government. But, instead, they are tortured with the concept of being alive during this horrific era.
What made this even more devastating was how beautifully it was shot. As the girl’s father is led away to be killed, after the first death in the family already, the sun blocks his face, as if he’s already gone. Then, we see the mother’s face as she crouches by the fire, tired, hungry, and defeated. Another stunning shot is we see Luong navigating the land mines she herself had set as she watches her fellow refugees step into them and meet a terrible fate. Horrific, we watch children and grown adults lose the naivety they once held, forced to watch tragedy and human-led despair.
Overall Thoughts
I will admit, I shed a tear while watching this. I find films about real historical tragedies hard to watch, especially once I find out that the narrative was a real person’s (like this one). I find it fascinating, too, that the woman who wrote this was originally a privileged person in Cambodian society. You see this when refugees are originally fleeing on foot and Luong’s family has a car. But I think this is an important movie to watch because this is actually recent history; most people my parent’s age from Cambodia are survivors of this genocide. This was a great debut from Angelina Jolie and if she keeps putting out movies like this, I’ll definitely watch. A thing to note though: I am not Cambodian, so I can’t attest to the authenticity of the film.
