My Thoughts on "First They Killed My Father"
Note:
This was originally written on Monday March 27, 2023, and was posted on DeviantART the day after on Tuesday March 28, 2023. I've been teasing it for a long time, ever since I started this blog, but it's finally here. I'm finally posting my review of First They Killed My Father, the historical drama film from Angelina Jolie about the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀. I believe that this her second directorial effort if I'm not mistaken. Her first movie of course was Unbroken, a World War II movie about American POWs 🇺🇸 imprisoned and tortured by the Japanese military 🇯🇵. The movie centered around an Olympic athlete named Louis "Louie" Zamperini, who participated in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the one Hitler hosted, and then joined the US Army Air Force 🇺🇸 in September 1941.
This was before the US military 🇺🇸 had its own dedicated air force. The two main branches, the Army and the Navy effectively had their own air forces before the Pentagon decided to create a separate Air Force. And while, the US Navy 🇺🇸 still has its own air fleet because of its extensive use of aircraft carriers, the US Army 🇺🇸 no longer fields its own air fleet. The only aircraft that the Army uses are helicopters. All other air operations are delegated to the US Air Force 🇺🇸, and the Army relies on the Air Force for air support, and also troop and equipment transport since the Air Force uses C-17s and C-130s, which the Army also needs. But, despite this interdependence, or I guess, dependency since the Air Force isn't as dependent on the Army as the Army is of the Air Force, there is a bit a rivalry between the Army and the Air Force. Just like there is a rivalry between the Army and Marines, and the Air Force and Navy.
It's nothing too debilitating, like the rivalry between the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) 🇯🇵 and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) 🇯🇵, it's not like these branches of the US military 🇺🇸 can't coordinate or cooperate with each other. They can, it's just a friendly rivalry if that makes any sense. Marines like to take jabs at Army soldiers, and Army soldiers like to take jabs or digs at Airmen, and Sailors and Naval aviators also like to take jabs or digs at Airmen. The Air Force is always the butt of jokes from US servicemen 🇺🇸, who all insist their branch is the best branch. But, it's all in good fun, and not truly hostile and detrimental to operational effectiveness, like say the rivalry between the IJA and IJN 🇯🇵.
Anyway, I'm way off track with this. The fact that Louie joined the Army Air Force two months before the Japanese 🇯🇵 attacked Pearl Harbor and before the US 🇺🇸 officially entered the war, should tell you that he really did want to be in the military. He didn't just join because the US 🇺🇸 was attacked, and the country was now at war, he genuinely valued military service and wanted to have a career within the military. But, anyway, he was a bombardier, and he saw action in the Pacific theater, on a Consolidated B-29 Liberator bomber nicknamed Super Man. On April 1943, he and his bomber crew carried out a successful bombing mission against the Japanese occupied island of Nauru 🇯🇵 (now an independent country called the Republic of Nauru 🇳🇷), but then they were attacked by three Japanese Zeroes 🇯🇵 which had severely damaged the plane and killed one crew member.
After this incident, Louie and his crew were transferred to Hawaii for reassignment. They were assigned search and rescue duties to fly around the Pacific, and search for a lost aircraft and crew. During this search and rescue mission, their plane had mechanical failures, leading to it crashing the middle of the ocean, 850 miles south of Oahu. Louie was one of the three survivors of the crash, and they were stranded inside of a raft for 47 days lacking food and water 💦. On their 47th day adrift, they reached the Marshall Islands 🇲🇭, which were occupied by the Japanese 🇯🇵, and as soon as they washed ashore, they were immediately taken prisoner by the Japanese 🇯🇵. He and his men would be transferred and transported many different POW camps including three on the Japanese home islands 🇯🇵, where he would remain until the end of the war.
The movie from what I understand, doesn't cover any of that stuff. It doesn't show any of the parts of his plane going down, him get stranded in the middle of the ocean, and then landing on the Marshall Islands 🇲🇭 where he would immediately get captured and imprisoned by the Japanese 🇯🇵. It just covers his time at one of the few POW camps he was held in, and when he was tortured by the prison guard, Mutsuhiro "the Bird" Watanabe, who was added to General Douglas MacArthur's list of wanted war criminals in Japan 🇯🇵 during the US occupation of Japan 🇺🇸🇯🇵 after the war. It also features a flashback to his time participating in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which was all over the marketing.
The movie was based on a book 📖 called Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. It also does have a sequel, called Unbroken: Path to Redemption, but Angelina Jolie did not return to direct it, and none of the people who worked on the first movie were involved in it. Not even the cast from the first one returned to be in Unbroken: Path to Redemption. It was also made into more of a Christian movie ✝️, unlike the first movie, which was much more secular and universal in its themes and messaging. Even though, yes, it was about a guy ♂︎ who converts to Christianity ✝️.
Louie converted to Christianity ✝️ after the war and after he was freed from captivity along with the American POWs 🇺🇸 held by the Japanese 🇯🇵 because I guess he made a promise that he would convert after the war 🤷♂️. But, that wasn't the whole point of the movie. It wasn't made specifically to push Christian values ✝️ or try to convert anyone to Christianity ✝️. It was just about this one guy ♂︎ and his experiences, and the choices he made, and one of the choices he made was to convert to Christianity ✝️ and forgive his wartime captors.
But, the sequel is a Christian movie ✝️, and it was made specific to push Christian values ✝️ and push Christian teachings ✝️. And probably not a subtle or tactful way either since the critics all hated it. It was critically panned and was kind of a commercial failure. It only made $6.2 million 💵 of its $6 million budget 💵, which is not enough to even really break even especially when marketing costs are factored in. It was a really cheap movie. It had a much smaller budget than the first one, which had a $65 million budget 💵.
It just isn't as well regarded as the first one directed by Angelina Jolie. Needless to say, you can skip Unbroken: Path to Redemption. Watch the first Unbroken, but don't bother with the sequel. Hardly anyone else did since so few people saw it in theaters when it came out. BTW, the first Unbroken came out in 2014 and Unbroken: Path to Redemption came out in 2018, a full four years after the first one. First They Killed My Father came out the previous year, 2017, speaking of which...
Rather than limit herself to making a sequel to Unbroken, Angelina Jolie chose to adapt another non-fiction book 📖. This time, an autobiography from a Cambodian woman 🇰🇭♀︎ by the name of Loung Ung. Her book 📖 was of course called First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers 🇰🇭. It chronicled her time living under the Pol Pot regime inside Cambodia 🇰🇭 and the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀 in the mid-to-late 1970s, which was perpetuated by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime known simply as the Democratic Kampuchea. It was a pretty bold choice for her next film project since the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀 is not really a historical topic that gets covered within the West.
Most westerners were and still are unaware of this tragic event. Mostly because it didn't involve the US 🇺🇸 or any western country. But, despite how obscure it is here in the West, the topic is a bit incendiary because the US 🇺🇸 is often directly implied in the events that lead to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge ceasing power in Cambodia 🇰🇭, and the events that lead to the genocide. Like, people do actually blame the US 🇺🇸, and specifically, President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger for the Khmer Rouge taking power in Cambodia 🇰🇭 and killing 1.5 or 2 million Cambodians 🇰🇭, almost 25% of the total population at the time.
Why? Well, because Nixon ordered those bombing raids into Cambodia 🇰🇭 during the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, Operation Menu and Operation Freedom Deal, which many people say destabilized the country which was embroiled its own civil war called the Cambodian Civil War 🇰🇭. It was its own separate war from the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, but it also apart of the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, since the war spanned across the entire region, and featured all of the same players. And that destabilization, and that weakening of the regime that the US 🇺🇸 had supported, the Khmer Republic, was how the Khmer Rouge were able to win the civil war, and Pol Pot was able to cease power and become the dictator of Cambodia 🇰🇭.
There is truth to this, and indeed Nixon and Kissinger did a lot of bad and stupid stuff during the Vietnam War 🇻🇳 that made things worse, and allowed the communists ☭ to win in all three countries: South Vietnam, Laos (which was a monarchy at the time), and of course, Cambodia 🇰🇭 (which had overthrown its monarchy in a coup and was a republic under the control of a military dictatorship). But, the part where people are reaching a bit is when they insulate that the US 🇺🇸 orchestrated the coup in Cambodia 🇰🇭 that brought down King Norodom Sihanouk and brought Marshal Lon Nol to power, which people say lead to the Khmer Rouge winning the civil war.
The US 🇺🇸 really didn't have anything to do with the coup itself, there's no evidence that they did. The Cambodian military 🇰🇭 did it themselves. And the US 🇺🇸 didn't condemn it because they were already fed up with Sihanouk's rule. They hated how soft he was on the communists ☭, allowing them free access through his country into neighboring South Vietnam. So, they were open to a change in government, even if it was through a coup.
It wasn't like in Iran 🇮🇷, where the US 🇺🇸 and the UK 🇬🇧 were behind the coup, and had orchestrated the whole thing like a couple of puppet masters. People who push this myth/conspiracy theory are just trying to make the US 🇺🇸 look bad and seem pure evil. I hate when people do that. It denies the agency of the Cambodians 🇰🇭 in all this, and that they had any role to play in their country's political situation in the 60s and the 70s.
Unfortunately, the movie does kind of push this myth or this idea that the US 🇺🇸 was behind the coup, which I would say is the only bad thing about the movie, and the most historically inaccurate thing about it. That being said, the US 🇺🇸 certainly was not blameless in any of this. There was plenty of blame to go around for how the war turned out the way it did, and for what happened in Cambodia 🇰🇭. And the US 🇺🇸 did abandon the Cambodians 🇰🇭 in their time of need, just as we abandoned the South Vietnamese and the Laotians, and we did leave them at the mercy of an evil tyrant, Pol Pot, who killed millions of his own people. That's on us, and it cannot be denied or forgotten.
To make things even worse, we supported him and the Khmer Rouge after they removed from power, and formed a coalition government-in-exile with Sihanouk and his political party, the National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCIPEC), and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF). And we recognized that government as the legitimate government of Cambodia 🇰🇭, and we supported their insurgency against the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), the Vietnamese client state 🇻🇳 and de facto government inside Cambodia 🇰🇭 at the time (from 1979 to 1989), along with the Chinese 🇨🇳, Thai 🇹🇭, Malaysians 🇲🇾, Romanians 🇷🇴 (communist Romania 🇷🇴☭ that is), Singaporeans 🇸🇬, British 🇬🇧, and even North Koreans 🇰🇵.
All because Vietnam 🇻🇳 invaded Cambodia and toppled Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge's regime, and installed their own friendly government, and all because Vietnam 🇻🇳 was backed by the Soviet Union ☭, and we didn't want to give Vietnam 🇻🇳 or the Soviet Union ☭ a win. We were against anyone who sided with the Soviet Union ☭ on anything or anyone the Soviet Union ☭ sided with on anything, and we were still pretty sour about losing the Vietnam War 🇻🇳. Even if the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 did the right thing by going in, and removing the Khmer Rouge from power.
They pretty much did what we would end up doing decades later in Iraq 🇮🇶, only in this instance, it was a bit more justified since the Democratic Kampuchea attacked Vietnam 🇻🇳 first, prompting a military response from the Vietnamese 🇻🇳. Not only that, but they actually stopped a genocide, which is more than we have done in the majority of our military interventions and invasions.
The only times we got involved in a war, and stopped a genocide that was in progress was World War II and the Bosnian War 🇧🇦. Every other time a genocide has taken place throughout the world, we, the United States 🇺🇸 have done little-to-nothing about it, or we did things that inadvertently lead to a genocide, or exasperated a genocide. Think, the Rwandan Genocide 🇷🇼💀 or the Darfur genocide 💀, and of course, the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀.
Of course, the US 🇺🇸's westward expansion and treatment of Native Americans in the late 18th century and the 19th century constitutes a genocide, meaning that there were a least a few times in our history where the US 🇺🇸 was complicit in or had perpetuated a genocide. This was one instance, where the US 🇺🇸 was definitively on the wrong side of history. We should have supported the Cambodian people through this whole thing, and condemned Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge's actions, and refused to recognize their coalition government and give them the Cambodian seat 🇰🇭 at the UN 🇺🇳.
Ostracize them from mainstream global politics, make them pariahs on the world stage. Better yet, how about indict them for war crimes and crimes against humanity, send ICC warrants ⚖️ out for their arrests, bring them before The Hague. This doesn't mean that we had to recognize the PRK either, I understand that we didn't want to recognize that government because it was a communist government ☭, and it was backed by the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 and the Soviets ☭. As I said, it was pretty much a Vietnamese client state 🇻🇳, just like how the communist countries ☭ in the Eastern Bloc were client states of the Soviet Union ☭. So, it's understandably why the US 🇺🇸 and much of the international community did not want to recognize the PRK.
What we could have done is not support or recognize either government, and instead of push for an international solution. Call for an end to fighting, call on all sides to stop the violence, demand that the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 withdraw all their forces from Cambodia 🇰🇭, and then, have the UN 🇺🇳 temporarily administer the country until a new government could be formed. That's pretty much what ended up happening anyway, only here, we wouldn't be supporting Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge, and legitimizing them in any way. But, we didn't do that, we let the Cambodian people 🇰🇭 down yet again. It was a double whammy of disappointment from the Cambodian perspective 🇰🇭.
But, besides that, the rest of the movie is pretty great. It's one of the best historical movies I've ever seen. I know I really didn't give my opinions on the movie itself in my review since I mostly just used it to talk about Cambodian history 🇰🇭, and even Equatoguinean history 🇬🇶 since I also talked about the Francisco Macías Nguema regime in Equatorial Guinea 🇬🇶, which was just as crazy and brutal as the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia 🇰🇭. But, I really did like this movie. My other main complaint about it is that the passage of time is a bit off. Like, we don't get a good sense of time in this movie. Events that happen over months and years, feel like they take place over the course of a week or a few days. I've seen people levy a similar complaint at The Pacific, but here I think it was a bit more noticeable here and much worse here than in that show.
It doesn't have a lot of action, like this isn't really a war movie. You shouldn't go into it thinking it's a war movie and expecting to see a bunch of battle and spectacle. The movie isn't even really all that violent, like there isn't really that much blood 🩸 or gore. All of the violence is more implied than actually shown in gratuitous detail, and I believe we only see one on screen death in the entire movie, Loung Ung's father, which is what the title of the movie and the book 📖 refer to.
It does make sense in this story why we don't see a lot of action or violence before Loung Ung herself didn't see that much violence or action. As a child during this unfolding tragedy, she mostly worked in the fields with her mother and her younger siblings because the Khmer Rouge forced everyone out of the cities and into the countryside to work on the fields in their misguided attempt to turn Cambodia into a purely agrarian society.
The closest thing to action she saw was that she forced into being a child soldier by the Khmer Rouge in order to defend the country from an on-coming Vietnamese invasion 🇻🇳, which would ultimately bring down the regime in 1979. And when Vietnam 🇻🇳 did invade, everyone around her, all of the other child soldiers she was forced to train with, as well as their adult handlers, their drill instructors for lack of a better word, are all killed, sometimes right in front of her. The Cambodian troops that the Khmer Rouge fielded were not very good.
They were poorly equipped, poorly trained, and poorly lead compared to the Vietnamese military 🇻🇳 which still had many seasoned commanders and battle hardened soldiers left over from the Vietnam War 🇻🇳. The Kampuchea Revolutionary Army (RAK) had a lot of incompetent commanders and leaders, which is why it wasn't a very effective military force. The Khmer Rouge had ruined and hallowed out the Cambodian military, more like destroyed it, and replaced it with a much weaker force. And so, the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 easily mopped the floor with the Cambodians.
But, Loung Ung herself didn't do any fighting. She mostly just ran and hid while the invasion was taking place, because she just a scared child and didn't have the killing spirit. She didn't want to kill anybody, and she certainly didn't want to kill anybody on behalf of the very regime that killed her parents. She just wanted to survive, and that's exactly what she did, which is how she even was able to write a book 📖 in the first place. She wouldn't have been able to write a book 📖 if she didn't survive. Her experience as a child soldier and running and hiding instead of fighting is kind of indicative of the general sentiment of the Cambodian people at the time.
The Democratic Kampuchea was so horrible, that the Cambodian people did not want to fight for it. They did not want to fight for Pol Pot. A lot of the soldiers in the RAK surrendered, barely putting up a fight against the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 before giving up and surrendering, a lot of the civilians stood by and did nothing, and just allowed the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 to roll in and remove the Khmer Rouge from power. They actually welcomed the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 as liberators. Anything to put a stop to the suffering the Khmer Rouge were putting them through.
You could easy make a movie about the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀, or the Khmer Rouge dictatorship that was really violent and bloody 🩸 since this was a violent time in Cambodia 🇰🇭's history, and a really violent regime with an ocean of blood 🩸 on its hands. But, the movie didn't go for that because that wasn't in the book 📖, and that wasn't apart of Loung Ung's experience. I applaud this movie for picking a subject, choosing one aspect of the Cambodian genocide 🇰🇭💀, and then sticking to it. So, this movie is much more focused than some other historical movies which try to paint broad strokes and try to cover as much ground as they can, at the expense of narrative cohesion.
Now, what exactly drew Angelina Jolie to this project? What made her decide to make a historical movie about Cambodia 🇰🇭? Well, the answer she gave in the behind-the-scenes featurette on YouTube is that she's just really fascinated by Cambodia 🇰🇭. I say this in the review itself, but I speculate her love for Cambodia 🇰🇭 started when she starred in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, which had an entire section set in Cambodia 🇰🇭. I even believe that the Cambodian part 🇰🇭 of Lara Croft was actually filmed on location in Cambodia 🇰🇭.
Either way, I speculate that is what started her now life long obsession with Cambodia 🇰🇭. She has an adopted son who’s from Cambodia 🇰🇭, who is of Cambodian descent 🇰🇭, and he was heavily involved in the making of this film as well. And of course, she read the book 📖, and probably thought it was a compelling enough story to make into a feature film. She even worked closely with Loung Ung on the making of the film, like she asked for her input and co-wrote the script with her, to make sure the movie really was authentic and true to her story.
I do think it’s cool that so far, Angelina Jolie has focused on directing movies that focus on Asian history. So many Hollywood filmmakers, and so many actors turned directors, tend to focus on European history, if they make historical movies at all. So, it is cool to see one focus on Asian history, which what I’m mainly interested. I’m interested in Asian history. The only thing is that this movie is on Netflix, it’s a Netflix exclusive. So, it doesn’t have a physical release on Blu-Ray or 4K 💿, which is a shame. And the fact that it’s on Netflix now limits how many people can actually watch it, since Netflix has cracked down on password sharing, and I’m sure that a good chunk of people who used to watch Netflix watched it through password sharing.
They were only able to watch Netflix because someone else they knew had a Netflix subscription, and was willing to share their password with them. Well, now they can’t, and so now the only people who can watch Netflix are the people who have actual Netflix accounts. They’ve made it difficult for anyone else to use their streaming service. It’s an understandable business decision, sure, but it’s so tedious and inconvenient, and kind of makes you not want to use Netflix anymore. My family has pretty much stopped watching Netflix because we don’t have our own account, and we’ve just been using my aunt’s account to watch stuff on the service via password sharing.
But because of Netflix’s new rules, we can’t access her account as easily we did before, and watch anything on the service. So, we’ve just stopped using Netflix entirely, and have moved onto other streaming services like Hulu, Disney+, Paramount+, and Max (formally known as HBO Max). And also VUDU (soon to be renamed to just Fandango at Home) if you want to count that. So, no one else in my family will probably be able to watch this movie besides me and my aunt, but I doubt she’d be interested in watching this, despite the fact that she likes watching Korean shows and movies 🇰🇷 on Netflix. Which is unfortunate because this is a good movie, and it is worth your time.
Speaking of your time, the movie's not too long either. It's 136 minutes long, which is 2 hours and 16 minutes. It's not like it's a 3 hour epic of anything, you know, it's not as long as The Thin Red Line (1998) for instance, which was 171 minutes, or 2 hours and 51 minutes long, almost 3 hours long. Some people might say that 136 minutes, or 2 hours and 16 minutes is a long runtime, but it's really not. That's like a normal length for a movie, especially a historical drama like this film is. So, if you're someone who doesn't like super long movies, then you'll have no problem sitting through and enjoying First They Killed My Father.
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I wasn't sure if I was going to write about this movie or not, but I might as well since I do have a few things to say about it. I watched First They Killed My Father, a biographical drama film on Netflix directed by Angelina Jolie that focuses on Loung Ung, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide 🇰🇭. The movie is based on a book 📖 of the same name that she wrote recounting her experiences living under the Pol Pot regime, and she was heavily involved in the making of this movie. In fact, she helped co-write the script with Angelina Jolie, and Angelina Jolie herself claims that Loung Ung is a close friend of hers, and her and her book 📖 taught her a lot about Cambodia 🇰🇭 and Cambodian history and culture 🇰🇭.
Me personally though, I think Angelina Jolie's love for Cambodia 🇰🇭 really came about when she filmed Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, since that movie has a significant portion that takes place in Cambodia 🇰🇭. Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft even visits a Buddhist temple ☸️ and meets up with some Buddhist monks ☸️ while she's in Cambodia 🇰🇭. That experience of filming in Cambodia 🇰🇭 for Tomb Raider is what planted the seed of Angelina Jolie's adoration of the country and the culture, which ultimately led to her adopting a Cambodian-American son 🇰🇭🇺🇸 (who was also heavily involved in the making of this movie), and of course led to her reading Loung Ung's book 📖, and adapting her book 📖 into a movie on Netflix.
BTW, this not Angelina Jolie's first directing gig, as she previously directed the World War II drama, Unbroken, which focused on Americans POWs (prisoners of war) 🇺🇸 in Japanese POW camps 🇯🇵. If you know anything about World War II, or the Pacific War in particular, you'll know that the Japanese 🇯🇵 didn't particularly treat their POWs all that well, in fact, they treated them pretty poorly, often torturing them, mutilating them, killing them, and forcing them to do forced labor, even as they starved and contracted diseases like cholera, dysentery, yellow fever, dengue fever, or Malaria to name a few. One particularly horrifying story involving Japanese POW camps 🇯🇵 was when the Japanese 🇯🇵 killed and ate British Indian POWs 🇬🇧 😰. Yes, some Japanese troops 🇯🇵 did resort to cannibalism during the war, among a myriad other barbaric behavior. But anyway, back to First They Killed My Father.
Probably my favorite part of this entire movie is the intro sequence where we get a bit of a history lesson on Cambodia 🇰🇭, its relationship with the United States 🇺🇸, and its role in the then on-going Vietnam War 🇻🇳. A lot of people forget that Cambodia 🇰🇭 and Laos 🇱🇦 were both heavily involved in the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, despite Cambodia 🇰🇭 being officially neutral and Laos 🇱🇦 being embroiled in its own civil war. Cambodia 🇰🇭 would eventually have its own civil war as well, but it didn't begin in earnest until 1970, when both the Vietnam War 🇻🇳 and the Laotian Civil War 🇱🇦 were well underway. The Viet Cong used the Ho Chi Minh Trail to resupply their forces, and to evade the US 🇺🇸 and South Vietnamese forces, and the trail extended into neighboring Cambodia 🇰🇭 and Laos 🇱🇦.
They even established bases in these two countries, and supported the communist insurgents ☭ in both countries, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia 🇰🇭, and the Pathet Lao 🇱🇦 in Laos 🇱🇦. It could more accurately be said that the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, the Cambodian Civil War 🇰🇭, and the Laotian Civil War 🇱🇦 were all apart of one big war, rather than three separate wars happening at the same time, which is why the Vietnam War 🇻🇳 is sometimes referred to as the Second Indochina War.
It was a massive war that engulfed the entire region, it dragged Cambodia 🇰🇭 and Laos 🇱🇦 down with it. They couldn't ignore or escape from it, even if they wanted to. Laos 🇱🇦 became the most heavily bombed country on Earth 🌏. The US 🇺🇸 dropped more bombs during the Vietnam War 🇻🇳 than they did in the entirety of World War II, and most of those bomb landed on Laos 🇱🇦 in vain attempts to destroy the Ho Chi Minh Trail. All three countries, Vietnam 🇻🇳, Cambodia 🇰🇭, and Laos 🇱🇦 are still littered with landmines and unexploded bombs to this day.
(This is the flag of the Kingdom of Cambodia 🇰🇭, which existed from 1953 to 1970, and then was re-established in 1993 after all the turmoil of the 70s and the 80s. This flag was first used by the First Kingdom of Cambodia 🇰🇭, that one ruled by Norodom Sihanouk before he was ousted by a military coup, and then it was readopted by the Second Kingdom of Cambodia 🇰🇭, the one that was established after the UN mission 🇺🇳 in Cambodia concluded, and Norodom Sihanouk was restored as the country's monarch, and his son, Norodom Ranariddh was elected as the country's first post-war prime minister.
But, the pro-Vietnamese communist 🇻🇳☭ known as Hun Sen would end up ousting him in a coup in 1997, and then would go on to win the next election in 1998, and become the country's next Prime Minister even though he was already the Prime Minister thanks to the coup, but he needed to win an election give his rule a little bit of legitimacy. This is where he would remain for next two decades, only stepping down in 2023. Cambodia 🇰🇭 is not a democracy. It's a de-facto one-party state with Hun Sen's party, the Cambodian People's Party dissolving its main opposition party, and dominating the country's entire political system.
Hun Sen ruled as a dictator, an autocrat, and a pretty brutal one at that, and he handed the reigns to his son, Hun Manet, who will presumably continue the authoritarian one-party system that his father set up. So, Cambodia 🇰🇭 is basically a hereditary dictatorship, where one family holds absolute power and the dictator is succeeded by a member of their own family, usually one of their own children, just like Syria 🇸🇾, North Korea 🇰🇵, and Gabon 🇬🇦 before that military coup that ousted Ali Bongo Ondimba in 2023.)
But anyway, the intro covers how Cambodia 🇰🇭 was officially neutral in the conflict, and how the US 🇺🇸 respected its neutrality at first, until the Vietnam War 🇻🇳 really intensified, and the Viet Cong started crossing the border into the country through the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Then, it covers the secret bombing of Cambodia 🇰🇭 by the US 🇺🇸 during the Nixon administration, where they carpet bombed huge sections of Cambodia 🇰🇭 with B-52 Stratofortresses, under guise of bombing the Sihanouk Trail, the Cambodian side of the Ho Chi Minh Trail 🇰🇭.
Then the intro covers the coup d'état against King Sihanouk, the ruler of Cambodia 🇰🇭, and the establishment of the Khmer Republic led by Cambodian general 🇰🇭, Lon Nol as a military dictatorship. The intro tries to make it seem as if the US 🇺🇸 orchestrated the coup d'état against Sihanouk, as in most historical retelling of these events (especially from a Leftist or anti-American perspective 🚫🇺🇸), but no evidence of direct American involvement 🇺🇸 in the coup has ever really been found, though some observers suspect American involvement 🇺🇸. The only things known for sure is the US 🇺🇸 secretly bombed Cambodia 🇰🇭, and invaded the country sometime afterward, both of which did have destabilizing effects on the country.
Speaking of which, the intro also covers the invasion of Cambodia 🇰🇭 by the United States 🇺🇸, which took place after the coup and the proclamation of the Khmer Republic by Lon Nol and his military junta. But one thing that isn't really covered in most historical retellings that after Sihanouk was deposed, the North Vietnamese 🇻🇳 invaded Cambodia 🇰🇭 first, at the request of the Khmer Rouge, and the US 🇺🇸 counter-invaded the country, in order to root out the North Vietnamese PAVN forces 🇻🇳, the Viet Cong forces, and the Khmer Rouge forces.
Most historical retellings make it seem like the US 🇺🇸 invaded Cambodia 🇰🇭 of its own fruition after it removed Prince Sihanouk, or did so specifically to remove Sihanouk, which is not the case. The coup against Sihanouk had already happened by the time the US 🇺🇸 invaded the country and began its assault on the communist forces. And the Americans 🇺🇸 insist to this day that they had no prior knowledge to the coup, nor did they have any role in orchestrating it. They insist that Lon Nol and the Cambodian military 🇰🇭 acted alone. Whether you believe the US government 🇺🇸 on that or not is up to you. I think it's possible that Lon Nol acted alone. We've seen throughout history, even just in the 20th century, that militaries are more than capable of carrying out coups without outside help or outside orchestration.
I mean, to name two Southeast Asian examples, since this is set in Southeast Asia, Thailand 🇹🇭 has had a lot of successful military coups throughout the 20th century, especially post-World War II. It had a coup recently, a decade ago in the 2010s, which once again brought the military back into prominence in Thai politics 🇹🇭 as they fully reestablished their dominance over the Thai political system 🇹🇭; creating this quasi-democracy where there are elections, but they are not free or fair, and at the end of the day, the military is still in charge. The US 🇺🇸 wasn't involved in any of those. Thailand 🇹🇭 is an ally of the US 🇺🇸, why would help out in any of the military coups? In fact, I believe the US 🇺🇸 was upset by the most recent in the 2010s, and they condemned the military junta's crackdown on peaceful protesters 🪧 in 2021, when all of those protests 🪧 against the government were going on.
Speaking of which, Myanmar 🇲🇲 is another Southeast Asian country that's had its fair share of coups throughout its history. It had a coup right from the get-go after it gained independence from Britain 🇬🇧 because the military had lost faith in the civilian government to keep the country together. Then, I believe, it might've had another coup in the 1960s and 70s, which brought a more socialist-leaning government to power. Or I might be mistaken, and the military was still in power, but it rebranded itself as a socialist government, I'm not entirely sure. But, either way, the military loosened its grip on power, as Burma 🇲🇲 (later renamed to Myanmar 🇲🇲), embarked on an experiment in democracy with Noble Peace Prize winner, Aun San Suu Kyi as leader, for a brief period until recently in 2021, when the military staged a coup against her, imprisoned her, and reestablished total dictatorial rule over the country.
The US 🇺🇸 wasn't involved in any of those coups. It was too busy and concerned about with other things to care about what was happening in Burma 🇲🇲 during the Cold War. And the US 🇺🇸 condemned the military junta when they overthrew Aun San Suu Kyi, and ceased power in the capital, Yangon (also known as Rangoon) in 2021, and imposed some sanctions on the military junta. But, besides that, the US 🇺🇸 hasn't really done anything to resolve the current political crisis in Myanmar 🇲🇲, or punish the military junta in any way, or support the rebels against the junta in any major way. I guess history is sort of repeating itself, as the US 🇺🇸 is once again way too busy and focused other things to care about what's happening in Myanmar 🇲🇲. But, you get what I'm saying. It's more than possible for Lon Nol to have staged a coup against Sihanouk without the US 🇺🇸's help or knowledge.
When you also include this detail about the North Vietnamese 🇻🇳 invading first, it makes everything murkier from a moral perspective, and it definitely doesn't make the US 🇺🇸 look like the cartoonish evil bad guy that a lot of people make it out to be in historical retelling of this conflict. And when the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 invaded Cambodia 🇰🇭 (known then as the Democratic Kampuchea) in 1979, it wasn't complete unprecedented or new, since they had already invaded the country before, when they were just North Vietnam 🇻🇳.
Granted they invaded Cambodia 🇰🇭 the first time in 1970 at the request of the Khmer Rouge, and when they invaded the country again as the reunified Vietnam 🇻🇳 in 1979, they had completely turned against their former allies, as the Khmer Rouge had massacred some Vietnamese civilians 🇻🇳 along on the Cambodian border 🇰🇭; Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge became extremely anti-Vietnamese 🚫🇻🇳 once they got into power, and they did everything they could to provoke a war with Vietnam 🇻🇳, which they eventually got, and lost.
But anyway, as the intro shows, the American efforts in Cambodia 🇺🇸🇰🇭 completely fail, and the Khmer Republic is soon overthrown, and the country is taken over by the Khmer Rouge, who establish the Democratic Kampuchea in its place. And the rest of the movie is from the perspective of a young Loung Ung, and its through her that we see Cambodia 🇰🇭's rapid decline, and descent into madness as the Khmer Rouge establish one of the most repressive and murderous communist regimes ☭ of the Cold War era, or even of the 20th century overall.
(This is the flag of the Democratic Kampuchea and the Khmer Rouge.)
All the while, the intro is set to The Rolling Stones song, "Sympathy for the Devil," which is a very fitting song for this movie given the time period and given what happens next. I just love this stuff, I love this history stuff, I'm fascinated by this time period in history, like Southeast Asian history in the 1970s. The 1970s was a fascinating time for other parts of the world too, and it is often seen as a "dark period," where most countries weren't doing too good, and that included Cambodia 🇰🇭.
Certainly, Pol Pot is one of the most brutal dictators and worst mass murderers of the 20th century, and his regime is one of the cruelest and murderous of the 20th century. They killed over 1.5 million or 2 million people, in a country that only had 7.8 million at the time, in what can really only be described as genocide. The only regime in history (or at least, 20th century history) that comes close to matching the brutality, cruelty, and complete disregard for human life of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge is that of Francisco Macías Nguema in Equatorial Guinea 🇬🇶, who was in power around the same time as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were in Cambodia 🇰🇭, and who's regime was so bad that the country was described at the time as the "Dachau of Africa."
But unlike Pol Pot, Francisco Macías Nguema did actually face justice for his crimes in Equatorial Guinea 🇬🇶, and was executed by a Moroccan firing squad 🇲🇦 by decree of the Supreme Military Council which sentenced him to death after finding him guilty of all charges including embezzlement, mass murder, and genocide. The reason why Moroccan soldiers 🇲🇦 were used to carry out his punishment rather than Equatoguinean soldiers 🇬🇶 is that Macías Nguema claimed that he would use his magic powers to come back to haunt whoever shot him, and the Equatoguinean soldiers 🇬🇶 were superstitious, and didn't want to carry out the order and risk getting haunted by the ghost of Macías Nguema.
It's all very weird stuff, Macías Nguema was one of the most bizarre dictators in African history, or world history as a whole. We're talking about a guy who referred himself paradoxically as a "Hitlerian Marxist," whatever that means 😕. The guy truly was bonkers, which some (including those in the French secret service 🇫🇷) have attributed to venereal disease, which Macías was never formally diagnosed with. Whether his crazy, weird behavior was due to a venereal disease or not, it wasn't helped by the fact that he was also a drug addict, as he consumed raw cannabis, and iboga, a hallucinogenic drug commonly found in the region.
The Supreme Military Council BTW was established by the military dictatorship that overthrew Macías Nguema in 1979. Pol Pot never received any sort of justice for what he did in Cambodia 🇰🇭, not from a Cambodian court 🇰🇭⚖️, or an international court ⚖️, and was able to remain free and die in peace in 1998; albeit of a heart attack 🫀, which admittedly isn't that peaceful of a death.
It is so sad to see how much better Cambodia 🇰🇭 was under Sihanouk, or even under Lon Nol, with the Khmer Republic. It wasn't perfect, but it was far better than the hellscape that was the Democratic Kampuchea. The capital city, Phnom Penh was even referred to as the "Paris of the East," or the "Paris of Southeast Asia," prior to the war, and prior to the Khmer Rouge rule. It was actually seen as a more attractive city for tourists than even Saigon in South Vietnam; which makes sense, Saigon was a city in an active war zone, and it was attacked and destroyed during the Tet Offensive. We see how much better Loung Ung and her family's life was prior to the Khmer Rouge ceasing power, how happy they were, and we see her innocence slowly be sapped away from her over the course of this movie, as the situation in the country deteriorates further.
We see her and her family working the fields since the Khmer Rouge forced the entire population out of the cities, including Phnom Penh to the countryside (a lot of times on foot 🦶 ) to work in the fields on collective farms; all to meet Pol Pot's unrealistic development goals, similar to Mao Zedong, the man who inspired Pol Pot's tyrannical ruling style. This left Phnom Penh, and the other cities and towns in the country empty and eerie ghost towns, something that shocked the few foreign journalists that managed to get into the country after the country fell to the Khmer Rouge; since the Khmer Rouge banned all foreign journalists from entering the country, and banned all foreigners in general, in a sort of self-imposed isolation.
Then, we later see Loung being drafted essentially as a child soldier by the Khmer Rouge when the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 invaded the country in 1979; more on that later. The Khmer Rouge used a lot of child soldiers, during the civil war, during their rule over the country, and during the war against Vietnam 🇻🇳, which is something that this movie does a good job of showing.
We never see the infamous S-21 prison, which was a prison that the Khmer Rouge created by converting a secondary school (which is middle and high school for us Americans 🇺🇸) into a prison for political dissidents, or at least, anyone the regime considered to be a political dissident, and they basically tortured people to death inside of that prison. We never see that prison in this movie, despite that being one of the most well-known aspects of the Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge rule. This movie is thoroughly and narrowly focused on Loung Ung and her point-of-view, and of course, she never went to the S-21 prison, nor did anyone else in her family. She probably wouldn't be alive today to tell the tale if she did, since that prison had an extremely low survival rate; only 7 people are known to have survived that prison out of the estimated 20,000 people that were imprisoned there.
But, we do sort of see the Killing Fields, as both Loung's parents are killed by the Khmer Rouge and their bodies are dumped in mass graves. They killed her father first because he was a soldier or an officer in the Khmer Republic military, known as the Khmer National Armed Forces (FANK), and the Khmer Rouge wanted to kill anyone who had connections to the old regime under Lon Nol. That's where the title of the movie and book 📖, First They Killed My Father comes from. And they killed Loung's mother because she was married to her father, and anyone associated with someone who worked for the Lon Nol regime or had connections with it was also killed, including the spouses and the children.
That is the part of the movie where we see Loung and her siblings leave the protection of their mother in the forced labor camp, and part ways in order to avoid being discovered and killed by the Khmer Rouge because of their father's connections to the Lon Nol regime. That is where we see Loung being forcefully taken to a training camp, where the Khmer Rouge try to turn her and a lot of other kids into soldiers to fight against the Vietnamese 🇻🇳, who had invaded the country by that time.
The Vietnamese military 🇻🇳 was full of battle hardened veterans of the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, men who had spent years fighting against the American 🇺🇸, the Australian 🇦🇺, the New Zealander 🇳🇿, the South Korean 🇰🇷, the Filipino 🇵🇭, the Thai 🇹🇭, and the South Vietnamese forces, so the comparatively poorly trained and equipped Khmer Rouge forces were no match, and we see Loung's unit of entirely child soldiers get decimated by the Vietnamese 🇻🇳.
Then, we see her get reunited with her siblings, including her older brother who was taken away by the Khmer Rouge around the time the family first entered the forced labor camp, and they spend time inside of this refugee camp set up by the Vietnamese 🇻🇳, who the Cambodian people 🇰🇭 came to see and welcome as liberators who had saved their country from those evil, cruel, murderous goons who had destroyed their country. And the movie ends with showing the real Loung Ung and her siblings as adults praying 🙏 at a Buddhist temple ☸️ in the present day.
So, I would say that I definitely like this movie. This is a topic that I'm very interested in, this period of Cambodian history 🇰🇭 and Southeast Asian history as a whole, so this movie really tickled my fancy. Even if, admittedly, it didn't get all the historical details right or it left certain things out. It's definitely the kind of movie that's meant to make you cry 😭, or at the very least, make you feel sad 😔, since it's about such a dark subject matter. It's literally about a genocide, that's not something you want to make light of, and this movie doesn't. This movie is very respectful and tasteful in its approach to this subject matter, and it's respectful to all the survivors of the genocide.
But, I didn't cry at this movie 😭, but I imagine that it'll make a lot of other people cry 😭, especially women and girls ♀︎. I feel this movie will resonate more with a female audience ♀︎ since it's directed by a female director ♀︎, it's written by women ♀︎, it is from the perspective of a little girl ♀︎, and it focuses a lot on the female struggle during this genocide ♀︎, during the Khmer Rouge rule.
Like, we see how Loung's mother struggled through this whole ordeal before her death, how she lost her husband, and the difficult choices she had to make to make sure her kids survived. Those are things that resonate more with women ♀︎, and not so much with men ♂︎. There aren't any war scenes, like there no huge explosive battles, the closest thing to a battle in this movie is where Loung's training camp gets attacked by the Vietnamese 🇻🇳. But, even then, we hardly see any action, as Loung is just running and not fighting. That makes sense given that she was just a scared kid, and had no interest in fighting.
The only thing that I didn't like was the timeline of this movie. The timeline of this movie is really weird and confusing, like when we see Loung walking in the countryside during the forced mass exodus from the cities, they say it's only been three days since the Khmer Rouge said the people could return to the cities in three days; which was a lie, if you couldn't already tell. So, makes us think the movie's only taking over the course of a few days.
There's no indication that this is taking place over the course of four years, since Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were in power for four years, from 1975 to 1979. We don't see the kids age at all, like they're all pretty much the same age that they were when the Khmer Rouge first took control in 1975. But then, we see Loung get recruited or drafted into the Khmer Rouge military forces, and being trained to become a soldier along with other kids to fight against the Vietnamese invaders 🇻🇳.
And as I said, the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 didn't invade the Democratic Kampuchea until 1979, so there's no way that this movie taking place over the course of days. If it is, then that would really inaccurate. I don't think this movie did a good enough at establishing that this movie takes place over the course of four years, rather than just a few days, weeks, or months. The time progression just isn't there. Also, there's a scene in the forced labor camp, where one of the huts or canopy, whatever you want to call it, where we see portraits of Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, as well as Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
That maybe a bit inaccurate because despite being a communist regime ☭, the Democratic Kampuchea was not aligned with the Soviet Union ☭. It was aligned with China 🇨🇳, and it adopted an extreme form of Maoism, known as ultra-Maoism. And Maoism of course, is a unique form of communism ☭ created by Mao Zedong, the founder and the first ruler of the People's Republic of China 🇨🇳, that was at odds with the Soviet form of communism ☭ known as Marxist-Leninism. Which was partially the reason why China 🇨🇳 invaded Vietnam 🇻🇳 after Vietnam 🇻🇳 invaded the Democratic Kampuchea in 1979 and established a friendly government called the People's Republic of Kampuchea.
The Sino-Soviet Split 🇨🇳☭ had already happened by that time, and Vietnam 🇻🇳 was aligned with the Soviet Union ☭, while the Democratic Kampuchea was aligned with China 🇨🇳, and China 🇨🇳 didn't want lose an ally in that region, and it didn't want to give the USSR ☭ a win by letting Vietnam 🇻🇳 occupy Cambodia 🇰🇭 and establishing this puppet regime full of pro-Vietnamese Cambodian communists 🇻🇳🇰🇭.
Plus, Pol Pot didn't have much understanding of Marxist thought. He wasn't much of an intellectual, and he hated intellectuals, which is why he had many Cambodian intellectuals 🇰🇭 killed during his rule. So, it probably would make sense to have the Khmer Rouge display portraits of Mao Zedong, rather than any Soviet leader ☭, or of Marx or Engels. Or at least, have a portrait of Mao as well as Stalin and Lenin.
But, besides those things, I think this movie is really good. I don't know if it won any awards or if it was nominated for any, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. Angelina Jolie definitely is a good director, as well as being a good actress. If you want to learn more about this period in Cambodian history 🇰🇭, and you want to know more Pol Pot himself, then I'll link a few different videos for you to watch. I'll even throw in a video about Francisco Macías Nguema and Equatorial Guinea 🇬🇶, since I mentioned them.
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Link to biography on Pol Pot:
Link to a video about the S-21 Prison:
Link to a video about Francisco Macías Nguema:
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