Are "Rail of the Star ☆" and "First They Killed My Father" The Same Movie?
(These are the posters for Rail of the Star ☆ and First They Killed My Father.)
I wasn't sure if I was going to write this, but I since I started thinking about it, I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I thought, "What the heck?" So, I'm writing it. If you follow my blog, you'll know that I recently covered the two war films, First They Killed My Father and Rail of the Star ☆. Now, these movies might seem different on the surface. First They Killed My Father is a live action historical drama war film that focuses on the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀 and the Cambodian-Vietnamese War 🇰🇭🇻🇳, while Rail of the Star ☆ is an anime historical drama war film that focuses on World War II and the Japanese colonial rule over Korea 🇯🇵. They cover vastly different time periods, and vastly different conflicts. You would not expect them to have any similarities at all, but they do.
These two movies are remarkably similar to each other, and it's thanks to me watching both and reviewing both that I was really able to see the similarities. The main way that these two films that are similar is that they're both from the perspective of a child. Not just any child, a young girl ♀︎, and we're seeing these tragic events unfold through their eyes, and we see how a little girl ♀︎ would react and perceive such things happening around them. Now, the experiences of Loung Ung, the protagonist of First They Killed My Father, are much more dire than that of Chitose Kobayashi, the protagonist of Rail of the Star ☆.
For one thing, Loung Ung and her family were forced to live under oppressive communist dictatorship ☭ where they had no rights or freedoms, weren't allowed to own property, or have any individuality whatsoever. Instead, they were forced to work in the fields, as the Khmer Rouge attempted to turn Cambodia (which they renamed to Kampuchea) into a purely agrarian society free from any western influence. The Democratic Kampuchea was one of the worst communist regimes ☭ of the entire Cold War era, as not only had they adopted an extreme form of Maoism called ultra-Maoism, and did all the things you would expect a communist regime ☭ to do, but they abolished other things and restricted other kinds of freedoms that you would expect to have in any other society.
Money was completely abolished as private ownership was banned and commerce was banned as well, and only collective ownership was allowed. And by collective ownership, I mean everything was pretty owned by the state (the government). Cambodian people didn't own anything while the Khmer Rouge were in power. So, no real need for money, at least by the insane logic of the Khmer Rouge.
Marriage was illegal, you weren't allowed to get married in the Democratic Kampuchea. You weren't allowed to live in the cities, and only allowed to live in the countryside and work in these collective farms and forced labor camps. The first thing that the Khmer Rouge did when they took power in Cambodia was clear out the cities, and forcefully relocate everyone to the underdeveloped rural countryside. Anyone who didn't leave the cities, or couldn't were immediately shot and killed on sight.
Punishment for breaking the rules, refusing to work, or criticizing the Khmer Rouge government was being sent to these prisons such as Security Prison 21 (or S-21) where you would be tortured to death. Very few of the people who were sent to these prisons survived. Of the estimated 20,000 people sent to S-21 prison in particular, only 12 are known to have survived: 7 adults and 5 children. A lot of the people sent to these prisons were political dissents as well as intellectuals, artists, musicians, and filmmakers because the dictator, Pol Pot hated intellectuals or anyone remotely artistically inclined, and was very paranoid of them. He suspected that they were some kind of provocateurs or foreign agents trying to spread western influence within the country.
So, they just had a lot of them imprisoned and killed. This even included trained professionals like doctors. Cambodia lost a good chunk of their skilled and trained doctors during the Khmer Rouge rule. If they weren't killed, then they likely fled the country. Same goes for the intellectuals, artists, and musicians. This, along with a huge outflow of Cambodian refugees fleeing the country caused a massive brain drain as you could imagine.
Not only that, but Khmer Rouge also targeted ethnic minorities within the country, especially the ethnic Vietnamese in the country because Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge really hated the Vietnamese. They were so anti-Vietnamese that they purged any Vietnamese-trained individuals 🇻🇳 from their ranks, and even began attacking Vietnam 🇻🇳 directly. This triggered the Cambodian-Vietnamese War 🇰🇭🇻🇳 and the greater Third Indochina War, in-which Vietnam 🇻🇳 invaded the Democratic Kampuchea, and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime, seeing it as pro-China 🇨🇳 and a threat to their own national security.
The Vietnamese 🇻🇳 then set up their own friendly government called the People's Republic of Kampuchea, which was still authoritarian, but not as crazy or self-destructive as the Democratic Kampuchea was. Like, the Cambodian people were objectively more free than they were under the Democratic Kampuchea and the leadership of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Like, their living conditions and standard of living were way better. At least, then they could live in cities again, or get married if they wanted to. But, despite this, the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was still only partially recognized by the international community. The only countries that recognized the PRK were the Soviet Union ☭ and the other countries in the Eastern Bloc, which of course was under Soviet control and influence ☭.
This then lead to a 10 year long occupation of Cambodia (or Kampuchea as it still called under the pro-Vietnamese communist regime 🇻🇳☭) by the Vietnamese 🇻🇳, a short border war with China 🇨🇳, and an insurgency in the border regions of Cambodia fought by the Khmer Rouge, who attempted to regain power, and other anti-Vietnamese 🇻🇳 Cambodian groups such as the royalist National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC) and the right-wing Khmer nationalist party, the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF). An insurgency which was supported by foreign powers such as Thailand 🇹🇭, China 🇨🇳, the United States 🇺🇸, Malaysia 🇲🇾, North Korea 🇰🇵, communist Romania ☭🇷🇴, the United Kingdom 🇬🇧, and Singapore 🇸🇬.
There was other violence going on throughout Indochina during this time as well such as the communist insurgency ☭ in Thailand 🇹🇭 which had started in 1965 during the Second Indochina War (better known as the Vietnam War 🇻🇳), the FURLO insurgency inside Vietnam 🇻🇳 which had actually started during the Vietnam War 🇻🇳 against both North Vietnam 🇻🇳 and South Vietnam, and an insurgency in Laos 🇱🇦 that started in 1975 after the Pathet Lao 🇱🇦 defeated the Kingdom of Laos during the Laotian Civil War 🇱🇦, and had toppled the monarchy, establishing a communist regime ☭ called the Lao People's Democratic Republic, or Lao PDR 🇱🇦 for short.
The insurgency that fought against the Lao PDR 🇱🇦 was made of royalists, people supported the monarchy and wanted it to be restored, and Hmong insurgents, who wanted to protect themselves from the Lao PDR 🇱🇦 which was very anti-Hmong and was violent, oppressive, and discriminatory towards them, and gain greater autonomy within the country.
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Many of the Hmong fighters fighting in this insurgency fought previously for the US 🇺🇸 and the Kingdom of Laos during the Laotian Civil War 🇱🇦 as the CIA set up a secret army made up entirely of Hmong fighters to fight the Pathet Lao 🇱🇦 and the North Vietnamese 🇻🇳 since North Vietnam 🇻🇳 invaded and occupied the eastern half of Laos in 1958 in order to set up the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Of course, the reason why the CIA favored the Hmong, and primarily chose them to fill out the ranks of their secret army is that the Hmong were more determined and loyal than the regular Royal Lao Army.
The Hmong knew what they were fighting for. They were primarily fighting to preserve their freedom and autonomy (and perhaps gain more of it), which the Pathet Lao 🇱🇦 threatened because of how racist they were towards the Hmong. So, the CIA knew that they could rely on them much more than they could the regular Royal Lao Army. And thus, they received better equipment and better training from the CIA. The Hmong were probably the most effective fighting force on the anti-communist side during the war. They were better motivated, better trained, better lead, and better equipped than the Royal Lao Army, which was dysfunctional, corrupt, and incompetent.
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Some of these Hmong fighters and their families fled the country, and were given US citizenship 🇺🇸 in return for fighting on the Americans' side 🇺🇸. But, a lot of them stayed, and continued armed struggle against the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) after they took power and proclaimed the Lao PDR 🇱🇦.
The communist insurgency ☭ in Thailand 🇹🇭 did eventually come to an end, with the Communist Party of Thailand ☭🇹🇭 giving up armed struggle against the Thai government 🇹🇭 in 1983. The party itself would cease to exist in the late 1990s. The FURLO, or United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races, would continue its insurgency against Vietnam 🇻🇳 until 1992, when the organization ceased all operations and officially dissolved, with many of its forces laying down their arms, and then being granted asylum in the US 🇺🇸.
While the insurgency in Laos 🇱🇦 continues to this day though to a much lesser extent, as royalists continue to fight to restore the kingdom, and the Hmong and lowlands ethnic minorities continue to fight for their freedom. The insurgency died down significantly since the 1980s and 1990s, but it kind of sort of regained steam again after Hmong-American 🇺🇸 leader, Vang Pao was arrested by the US government 🇺🇸 for plotting to overthrow the Lao PDR 🇱🇦 in 2007.
He was a major general in the Royal Lao Army, and he immigrated to the US 🇺🇸 after the Laotian Civil War 🇱🇦, where he became a leader within the growing Hmong-American community 🇺🇸. And he had plotted to overthrow the current Lao government 🇱🇦 in a coup d'état, but was caught and arrested by the ATF, the FBI, and the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). How did he get caught? Because he was obtaining large amounts of heavy weapons and ammunition, probably through illicit means, to carry out this coup attempt. And why did they arrest him? Because his plot to overthrow the Laotian government 🇱🇦 was in violation of the Neutrality Act.
But, the charges were dropped, and Van Pao was allowed to go free. And the case did highlight the human rights violations committed by the Laotian government 🇱🇦 against the Hmong, Laotian refugees, and political dissents. However, his arrest did still inspire Hmong people, royalists, and right-wing rebels inside Laos 🇱🇦 to continue fighting against the Laotian government 🇱🇦. But, like I said, the insurgency has been pretty low-level since 2007, and has not sparked a larger civil war like the Laotian Civil War 🇱🇦 of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, nor has it really has it lead to any real political change inside Laos 🇱🇦.
The LPRP are pretty well cemented in Laos 🇱🇦, they have a tight grip on power, and it would take a lot to actually remove this party from power. And by that I mean, the only way to remove the LPRP, and have regime change in Laos 🇱🇦 is violence, through a major civil war, or through a military invasion by an outside power. And no body really wants to do that, and although, there are insurgents, they aren't powerful enough to topple the LPRP on their own. It's a low-level insurgency, not big enough to make the LPRP nervous or cede power. And even if the Laotian people 🇱🇦 hate their government, I doubt many of them particularly have an appetite for war.
But, for the most part, most of the major fighting was in Cambodia, as the Third Indochina War had started in Cambodia with the Vietnamese invasion 🇻🇳, which only happened because of the Democratic Kampuchea's repeated unprovoked attacks on Vietnam 🇻🇳. Had the Khmer Rouge never come to power in Cambodia, and had they never attacked Vietnam 🇻🇳 in the first place, the Third Indochina War would've never even happened. So, the blame for that war falls squarely upon the shoulders of the Khmer Rouge.
So, many people had died in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge's rule that it constituted a genocide 💀, which is why it's called the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀. An estimated 1.5 to 2 million people died, about 25% of the total population of Cambodia at the time. The Khmer Rouge themselves had executed so many people and dug so many mass graves that they were called the Killing Fields. And this is what Loung Ung had gone through, what she experienced. She had survived a genocide.
In addition to that, she lost both of her parents, who were each murdered by the Khmer Rouge. Her father was killed first, which is why the book 📖 and the movie are called First They Killed My Father. He was killed because he was an officer in the Khmer Republic military called the Khmer National Armed Forces (FANK), and the Khmer Rouge were targeting anyone who worked for the previous regime, whether they worked in the Khmer Republic government, police, and military.
Which is why the Khmer Republic became unpopular with the urban Cambodian youth, and why it ultimately lost the civil war to the Khmer Rouge. However, despite being the national flag of a somewhat divisive government within Cambodia 🇰🇭's history, the flag is still used today. It's used as the official flag of the opposition party, the Khmer Republican Party, or KRP for short. It's also used by other other opposition and protest groups to show their opposition against the current regime inside Cambodia 🇰🇭, which is an authoritarian one.)
The Khmer Republic government and military were kind of one and the same since it was a military dictatorship. And his wife, and Loung's mother was killed because she was married to him. They didn't just target the individuals themselves, they also targeted their spouses, and their children as well. Which is why Loung's mother told her and her siblings to run away, and hide in the jungle because they would've been killed too, and she wanted to make sure that they at least survived. You know, mothers, they always put their children's well being and survival before their own.
And while Loung and her siblings were in hiding, they split up and went their separate ways to ensure their own individual survival, and while we never learn what happened to Loung's siblings before the Vietnamese invasion 🇻🇳, what happens to Loung is that she's caught by the Khmer Rouge, and is forced to become a child soldier, training along with other conscripted children to defend the homeland from a Vietnamese invasion 🇻🇳, which the Khmer Rouge tried to prepare for, but ultimately failed to stop. Loung is reunited with her siblings after the Vietnamese invasion 🇻🇳 and the collapse of the Khmer Rouge government.
So, what Loung Ung experience during her childhood in Cambodia in the mid-to-late 70s is infinitely worse and more traumatic than what Chitose Kobayashi experienced during her childhood in Korea in the early-to-mid 40s. Loung Ung lived under an oppressive murderous communist dictatorship ☭ under the control of a delusional madman, she was forced to live and work in a forced labor camp, both of her parents were murdered by the regime, she and her siblings were forced to flee into the jungle just to survive and avoid meeting the same fate as their parents, her and her siblings split up, and she gets captured and is forced to become a child soldier. The only silver lining or bright side to any of this was that her siblings survived, and she got to reunite with them after the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 invaded and liberated the country from the Khmer Rouge's tyrannical and murderous rule.
Compare that to what Chitose Kobayashi went through. Not to diminish her own experiences, and her struggles, but compared to Loung Ung, Chitose had it pretty easy. First of all, her experience was radically different than that of Loung Ung's. She lived in Korea with her parents, aunt, and grandparents when it was still under Japanese rule 🇯🇵. Her father had a pretty lucrative job as the CEO of a coal mining company 🪨 in the northern region of the peninsula. And given that Japanese 🇯🇵 had a dominant and advantageous position within the Korean colony, Chitose's family enjoyed a life of relative luxury and privilege compared to the average Korean, who was seen and treated as a second class citizen.
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Chitose's mother had a Korean maid known simply as Ohana, who Chitose herself befriended and took a liking to, but her mother fired after she blamed her for a near fatal accident that Chitose had gotten herself into. Chitose had sat on a sewing needle 🪡 that penetrated her bone, probably somewhere on her pelvis, and she had to be rushed to the hospital to get it removed. The doctors tell her mother that had the needle stayed in lodged in her butt and her pelvic bone, it would have killed her. Likely due to a bacterial infection or internal bleeding 🩸 or something. The point is she would have died, had she not been treated, and had the needle 🪡 removed as quickly as she did.
So, her mother just blamed Ohana for the whole thing, as she was an easy scapegoat, and she was willing to let her go because she was Korean and not Japanese 🇯🇵. Had she been Japanese 🇯🇵, it's pretty easy to assume that Chitose's mother probably wouldn't have been as harsh, and would've kept her around. And given that she was Korean and a woman ♀︎, Ohana's job prospects were not very good after losing a pretty safe and comfortable job as a maid. Later on the movie, we see her working as a prostitute, which is something that happened to a lot of Korean women ♀︎ in Japanese Korea 🇯🇵.
A lot of Korean women ♀︎ straight up became sex slaves mostly to Japanese men 🇯🇵♂︎ which the Japanese 🇯🇵 euphemistically referred to as "comfort women ♀︎." This is why South Korea 🇰🇷 wants reparations from Japan 🇯🇵 BTW, because of this comfort women ♀︎ issue. This only happens because Chitose had an accident, and injured herself, and her mother blamed Ohana for it, and is somewhat prejudiced against Koreans. Ohana wouldn't have had to become a prostitute, or an escort, had Chitose's mother not blamed her for her daughter's injury and fired her over it.
But, before she injures herself, and gets Ohana fired, the first instance of Korean discrimination that Chitose sees is when a Korean boy ♂︎, close to her age, or a bit older, is bullied by a trio of Japanese boys 🇯🇵♂︎ for using his Korean name. Japan 🇯🇵 had outlawed the Korean language, culture, and names, and every Korean had to adopt a Japanese name, adopt Japanese culture, and speak Japanese. So, if you were a Korean at that time, using a Korean name would get you arrested, and probably killed by the Japanese authorities 🇯🇵. The Japanese 🇯🇵 committed a lot of human rights violations inside Korea if you hadn't noticed by now. So, these Japanese boys 🇯🇵♂︎ had mocked and beat up this Korean boy ♂︎ for daring to use his Korean name, and tried to intimidate him into using his Japanese name.
Chitose is kinder to the Korean boy ♂︎ than the three Japanese boys 🇯🇵♂︎ were, but given that she's only 7 years old, and she's Japanese 🇯🇵, she doesn't understand what he's going through. She doesn't really understand the struggle because she never faced it herself. That's a key difference here with Chitose and Loung, that while the Koreans struggled a lot under the Japanese colonial rule 🇯🇵, we don't see much of that struggle because the whole story is told from Chitose's perspective, and she never experienced the same hardship as the Koreans because she wasn't Korean.
She's just kind of an observer seeing these people be mistreated over their ethnicity, and being too young to understand it fully or really do anything about it. Even if she wanted to do something about it, she couldn't because she was a child and wasn't in the Japanese government, police, or military 🇯🇵, and is thus powerless to affect any real change within Korea. And she is still benefiting from that system, she's able to live the comfortable life she lived before the war because of it. But, she at least saw some cracks in the system, and did know that the way the Koreans were being treated was wrong. At least she realized that much.
Her hardship and tragedy begins after the war with the United States 🇺🇸 and the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 begins, and her father is drafted into the military to fight in the war. Not only did she experience the sadness that comes with having a parent join or be drafted into the military and then be deployed to war and not knowing if they'll ever come back, but she loses her little sister, Miko after she contracts typhoid fever, and she fails to recover due to her family being unable to treat her or cure her. Then, she has that near-fatal injury involving the sewing needle 🪡 that gets her sent to the hospital, and gets Ohana fired. Her father returns from the war, but then, Japan 🇯🇵 loses the war, and the northern half of Korea is occupied by the Soviet Union ☭.
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This puts her and her family in a dire situation as all Japanese 🇯🇵 left in northern Korea, are at risk of being evicted from their homes due to them living on of stolen land, detained due to their association with the colonial administration or the Japanese government and military 🇯🇵, and of course killed. Now that Japan 🇯🇵 has lost the war, and has lost control over Korea, and the north is occupied by the Soviets ☭, the Koreans in the north are using this opportunity to exact their revenge on the Japanese 🇯🇵, getting back their stolen land, arresting Japanese 🇯🇵 were in the police or military during the colonial rule, and forcing Japanese 🇯🇵 to live in shanty houses, these cramped apartment buildings with multiple families. The Japanese 🇯🇵 in the Soviet occupation zone ☭ had quickly become second class citizens, just as the Koreans were throughout the entirety of Korea, when Japan 🇯🇵 was in control, when they were the masters. From the Koreans' perspective, the Japanese 🇯🇵 got what they deserved. You reap what you sow.
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So, Chitose and her family are forced to make their escape to the south, to the American occupation zone 🇺🇸 because their chances of survival will be much higher, and they'll be more likely to be repatriated to Japan 🇯🇵, which is their ultimate goal in the second half of the movie. So, Chitose's struggle becomes a refugee struggle, as her and her parents flee to the 38th parallel along with a bunch of other Japanese refugees 🇯🇵 from the north, and having to avoid troops, survive the elements, and keep themselves from getting too exhausted or dying from thirst, starvation, or even disease. You know, the usual stuff. At first, they attempt to travel by train, but then the train is stopped and searched by Soviet troops ☭, and they're forced to get off.
So, they have to continue the rest of the journey on foot, which comes with its own difficulties as you can imagine. They almost don't make it, and one guy and his elderly father (or grandfather, I'm not sure) is forced to stop, and turn back because his elderly father is physically unable to continue walking. And the only reason why they're even able to make it to the 38th parallel is that a generous Korean man ♂︎ is inexplicably willing to help them, despite him facing injustice from the Japanese 🇯🇵 during the colonial rule and during the war. He does it because he's a good man ♂︎, and wants to do the right thing, and help these people who in dire need, and will die if they don't make it. He's one of those people who doesn't like seeing other people suffer, regardless of what they did or what happened to him personally, and wants to help when and if he has the power and the ability to do so.
So, while yes, Chitose did struggle, and face hardship during her time in Korea, especially post-World War II, she didn't face that much hardship due to her position as a Japanese person 🇯🇵. Her being Japanese 🇯🇵 in a land conquered and owned by Japan 🇯🇵 meant she was already in a privileged position, and was able to live the kind of life she did because of it. Even if it was at the disadvantage of and at the expense of the Korean people.
Chitose and her family were living on stolen land, just like every other Japanese person and Japanese family 🇯🇵 living in Korea at the time. They were exploiting the Koreans just as much as the other Japanese 🇯🇵 did. Had Chitose been born Korean instead of Japanese 🇯🇵, her experience living in Korea would have been radically different, and would have been way more difficult. Her troubles didn't truly begin until World War II happened, and until after it ended.
So, she didn't suffer nearly as much, or as face as much trauma as Loung Ung did living under the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. And that was despite her being younger than Chitose was in her story. Loung Ung is only 5 years old at the beginning of the story when the Khmer Rouge take power, and is 9 years old by the time the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 invade in 1979 at the end of the story. While Chitose is 7 at the beginning of the story before World War II, and is 13 by the time the story ends in 1946 after the war ends, and Korea is jointly occupied by the Soviets ☭ and the Americans 🇺🇸.
That is, the historical flashback portion of the movie (which makes up the majority of it). In the "present day" scenes, Chitose is an adult either in her 20s or 30s. Probably 30s given how much time had passed since the events of the war. I assume those scenes with Chitose as an adult take place sometime in the 1960s, which lines up perfectly with her age range and level of technology we see in those scenes. The cars and the TVs look very 60s. And Loung Ung still experienced more hardship and suffered way more than Chitose.
But, regardless both of these films decided to their stories, to explore their particular historical topics, from the perspective of a young girl ♀︎. And they do both explore how a child experiences and processes such tragic events, and they both ultimately have happy endings with the protagonists surviving their respective ordeals, and reuniting with their families; what's left of them anyway. Both films actually end with the protagonists' homeland being occupied by a foreign military power, who happen to be communist ☭. In the case of Rail of the Star ☆, it's the Soviets ☭, and in First They Killed My Father, it's the Vietnamese 🇻🇳.
It's also different in Rail of the Star ☆ because Korea isn't technically Chitose and her family's homeland. It's their adopted home, they moved there sometime after their country, Japan 🇯🇵 conquered it and made it into a colony in their empire. Like I said, stolen land. But, even if it was stolen land, it was still their home. It was still a big deal to have a foreign military power occupy it, and then forcefully evict them from their house. Sure, it's not technically their land, it's the Koreans' land, and it is somewhat justified when you consider that and when you consider all the other bad stuff Japan 🇯🇵 during World War II, and during their rule over Korea, but still. Losing your home is not fun for anyone, even if they themselves were foreign occupiers.
A similar thing happens in First They Killed My Father, when the Khmer Rouge force Loung Ung and her family out of their home in Phnom Penh when they forcefully empty out all the cities in the country, and force the entire population to relocate to the rural areas to live in forced labor camps and do backbreaking manual agricultural labor. But, that happens at the beginning of the movie, rather than at the end, and the Khmer Rouge were not foreign occupiers, but an insurgent force overthrowing the government. Kind of like the Taliban.
The foreign occupation happens at the end after Vietnam 🇻🇳 invades the Democratic Kampuchea, and removes the Khmer Rouge from power, but by then, no Cambodians were living in the cities, and they had no homes to be evicted from. And why would they? The Vietnamese 🇻🇳 were liberators who had freed the Cambodian people from their tyrannical tormentors. The only ones that they forced out were the Khmer Rouge themselves, the tyrannical tormentors. Again, to use a more contemporary example, this would be like if Tajikistan 🇹🇯 invaded Afghanistan 🇦🇫 to liberate the Afghan people 🇦🇫 from the Taliban. The Taliban would be the only ones that the Tajiks 🇹🇯 would be driving out and ostracizing, and the Afghans 🇦🇫 would rejoice at being liberated from such tyrannical, sexist, and violent religious extremists.
But, your average Cambodian rejoiced, and was allowed to return to their homes in the cities, if they lived in the cities. So, in this case, the Cambodians were a lot more comparable to the Koreans in the same that they were ones who welcomed the foreign occupiers, and celebrated when the government or authority was toppled. Not at all the same situation, but similar in the very broad sense of a foreign occupation by a communist country ☭.
While there had been other movies in the past about the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀, such the 1984 film, The Killing Fields, First They Killed My Father differentiated itself by focusing on a little girl ♀︎. As STEVEM said in his review of Rail of the Star ☆, given that they did focus on little girls ♀︎, both movies are able to avoid more contentious issues or avoid showing too much graphic violence.
A movie about the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀 and the Khmer Rouge regime could be really gruesome, and hard to watch, like you could make one that's like NC-17. But, First They Killed Father didn't do that because it was from a perspective of a little girl ♀︎, and we're only shown what she experienced, and she didn't really experience the worst and most violent atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. So, we're only getting very narrow picture of these events, and we aren't seeing everything. Same goes for Rail of the Star ☆, but for different reasons.
While Rail of the Star ☆ is much more progressive and "woke," compared to a lot of other Japanese World War II films 🇯🇵 (as in World War II movies made in Japan 🇯🇵 by Japanese filmmakers 🇯🇵), anime or live action, and is a lot more honest about how Koreans were treated under the Japanese colonial rule 🇯🇵 inside Korea, it still doesn't show everything, and doesn't delve that deeply into it. The movie leaves a lot of things under-explored as far as the Japanese Korean 🇯🇵 experience is concerned, both on the Korean side and on the Japanese side 🇯🇵.
We don't even see any of Chitose's father's wartime experience, we never learn where he deployed to, or what he even did. The only thing we learn about his wartime experience is that he got sick while on the frontlines, and then was discharged after he was hospitalized for an extended period of time. And the movie is able to get away with this because it is focused on a young girl ♀︎ who's only 7 years old and doesn't understand the world yet. Plus, it's only 80 minutes long, which is 1 hour and 20 minutes. There's only so much ground you can cover in 80 minutes.
If the movie had attempted to go more deeply into the hardships faced by the Koreans under Japanese rule 🇯🇵, it probably wouldn't have gotten made in the first place. Like I said before, the comfort women ♀︎ issue is a very contentious issue, and the Japanese government and Japanese media 🇯🇵 are still somewhat unwilling to admit the full extent of the atrocities committed by the Empire of Japan 🇯🇵 before and during World War II. The Japanese people 🇯🇵 as a whole still have not fully reconciled with their own history, and accepted and come to terms with, and fully apologized for what they did. So, the filmmakers behind Rail of the Star ☆ got around this by focusing on a little girl ♀︎, and that's probably why they chose to adapt that particular book 📖.
That's another distinct and clear similarity between these two movies: they're both based on books 📖. They're based on memoirs of women ♀︎ who wrote about their experiences living through these events and living through these two different time periods as children. Rail of the Star ☆ is based on a book 📖 of the same name, and First They Killed My Father is based on a book 📖 almost of the same name, but the full title of the book 📖 is First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers 🇰🇭. They just removed the subtitle, and kept the main title, First They Killed My Father because it's catchier and shorter.
And as STEVEM said about the book version of Rail of the Star ☆ in his review of the anime adaptation, the original books 📖 that these two movies are based on are longer and probably go into far more detail than the movie adaptations were able to do. Even if the movie adaptation of First They Killed My Father is longer than that movie adaptation of Rail of the Star ☆. The movie version of First They Killed My Father is 136 minutes long, or 2 hours and 16 minutes.
But, while the book version 📖 of First They Killed My Father is widely available, and can be found at Barnes & Noble (both in-store and online), and probably any book store 📖🏬, the book version 📖 of Rail of the Star ☆ is pretty much unavailable, at least, outside of Japan 🇯🇵. There isn't even a Wikipedia page for it, or the author, Chitose Kobayashi herself. The same goes for the movie adaptation.
The movie version of Rail of the Star ☆ is really obscure, and really hard to find. It isn't available on any streaming service, and the only physical media copy you can get of it is on VHS 📼. So, the only most people will be able to watch it is on YouTube, in relatively low picture quality. Like, we're talking 360p here. Like, STEVEM said in his review, hopefully one day, we'll get an HD version of this movie. Though, I won't hold my breath on that anytime soon.
It kind of feels to me that they're not trying to bury this movie because of its subject matter and its themes. Even though this movie doesn't go as hard into Japan 🇯🇵's poor treatment of the Koreans as some would wish, even just the little bit of honesty and criticism towards Japanese rule 🇯🇵 in Korea might be too much for the Japanese government and media 🇯🇵. So, it's better to hide this movie, and make it pretty much impossible to find through conventional and legal means in their minds.
The movie version of First They Killed My Father is comparably a lot easier to find. It's a Netflix exclusive, and you can watch it anytime you want as long as you have a Netflix account. If you don't have one, then you're shit out of luck because Netflix has restricted password sharing. So, even if you didn't have Netflix account of your own, and you're using someone else's, you can't use Netflix anymore. You have to have your own account to use that particular streaming service.
The movie does not have a physical media release on DVD or Blu-Ray 📀💿. So, the only way you can see it is on Netflix, and if Netflix ever decides to delete it off of their platform, then you're shit out of luck because then the only means of watching it will have been eliminated, and the movie itself will cease to exist because it was digital only. Anyway, these are some of the similarities, as well as the differences I noticed between these two historical movies. These movies had a lot more in common than I expected.
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