Movie Review: The Killing Fields: Sydney Schanberg and Dith Pran

Sydney Schanberg and Dith Pran

"In blood and disposition they were an unlikely duo from the beginning. Sydney Schanberg, a hard-ass New York Times correspondent with a hair-trigger temper, went to Cambodia in the early 70s hunting for headlines. Dith Pran, a wily Khmer tour guide with a silky-smooth manner, agreed to take the ruddy-faced foreigner on dangerous news safaris, using bribes and the arts of persuasion to bring home the stories Schanberg was looking for. Over time, as they shared both the exhilaration and nausea of covering a bloody civil war, the men grew to love each other like brothers."

-PeopleMagazine

December 10, 1984

Vol. 22

No. 24

Multimedia from NYTimes.com:

The Last Word: Dith Pran

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/multimedia/20080320_DITH_PRAN_LAST_WORD_FEATURE/index.html

The New York Times framed Sydney and Dith Prans story very similar to the movie. It gives it validity, because in the documentary they verify many scenes that happened in the movie.

Sydney-
Journalist for the New York Times.

"I was sent in to help at Saigon, and took the opportunity because I still had this little bug inside me, this obsession with Cambodia to go to Cambodia after my tour in Vietnam."

-Sydney in documentary

"When you don't know him I say he is a tough guy to work with but when you get use you know it. Once in a while he gets a bad temper that when he get angry he try to do something it doesn't work out he gets so mad and he forgets everything. I get insulted I get humiliated by him, but he still keep my out of the eye of public so nobody know that I was kicked I was insulted by him. But after a while when he know himself he's wrong so he apologized but for me when I get used I know that this is habit so I really don't blame him too much because that's the way people were born that way. "

-Pran in documentary

Sydney on NPR

October 15, 2012

Cambodia's former King Norodom Sihanouk, an important figure in much of his country's recent turmoil, has died. Sydney Schanberg, whose reporting for The New York Timesinspired The Killing Fields, and NPR commentator Ted Koppel talk about the life and legacy of Norodom Sihanouk.

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162948735/killing-fields-reporter-remembers-cambodian-king

Pran-

Photojournalist for the New York Times.

"Forced to do farm labor 16 hours a day in a Khmer Rouge work camp near the village of Dam Dek, Pran ate one spoonful of rice daily, sometimes supplemented with grasshopper, snail or rat meat he acquired on his own. Desperately hungry, he sneaked out to a rice paddy one night and was caught putting grains of rice in his pocket. "They grab me and tie me up and then call the whole village," says Pran. "Everybody beat me like crazy, but luckily my team leader asked them not to kill me because I'm such a good worker."

-People

"We became over time very close. He became very indespensible to me. Not just as an interpretor and guide but a much larger sense. I relied upon his judgements. His good sense his character of the weight one should give to a politicians statement."

-Sydney in documentary

Religion-Budhist, Religion was a big part of his optimism.

"I believe that Buddha help me when I get into danger," says Pran, who lives with his family in New York, where he works as a photographer for the Times. "Now I pray that all the politicians—everywhere—leave Cambodia alone. We had enough killing. We had enough suffering."

-People

"Pran saved Schanberg from being gunned down by a steely-eyed band of peasant revolutionaries. Three days later Schanberg stood by helplessly as Pran, facing almost certain execution by the new Khmer Rouge government if he tried to leave Cambodia with his American friend, joined a flood of refugees being herded toward slave labor camps in the countryside."
-People

Pran died from pancreatic cancer on March 30, 2008. He was 65.

"He looked at my face and I looked at his, and I can't tell you who decided what. But it was clear he was as obsessed as I was in seeing the story to the end," says Schanberg."

-People

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20089356,00.html

A picture speaks a thousand words

From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/nyregion/31dith.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Dith Pran, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose struggle to survive the murderous regime of Khmer Rouge-era Cambodia was depicted in a 1984 movie, died on March 30, 2008. Left, Mr. Dith in April 1975, the month that the Khmer Rouge gained control of the country.

Photo: The New York Times

A 1974 photo by Mr. Dith of the wife and mother of a government soldier as they learned of the soldier's death in combat southwest of Phnom Penh.

Photo: Dith Pran/The New York Times

In 1979, Mr. Dith escaped over the Thai border. He returned to Cambodia in the summer of 1989, at the invitation of Prime Minister Hun Sen. At left, Mr. Dith visited an old army outpost in Siem Riep where skulls of Khmer Rouge victims were kept.

Photo: Steve McCurry/Magnum

A 1974 photo by Mr. Dith of shells being fired at a village northwest of Phnom Penh.

Photo: Dith Pran/The New York Times

Mr. Dith, right, interviewed a government soldier in August 1973 about the American bombing of Cambodia as The Times correspondent Sydney H. Schanberg took notes. With the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, Mr. Schanberg was forced from the country, and Mr. Dith became a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communists. Mr. Schanberg returned to the United States and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Cambodia, which he accepted on behalf of Mr. Dith as well. Mr. Dith, despite Mr. Schanberg's frantic efforts, was sent to the countryside to join millions working as virtual slaves.

Photo: From "The Death and Life of Dith Pran" by Sydney H. Schanberg

In this March 1974 photo by Mr. Dith, a government soldier hurled a grenade at Communist-led insurgents southeast of the capital city of Phnom Penh.

Photo: Dith Pran/The New York Times

In August 2002, Mr. Dith photographed young visitors perched on the base of "Liberation" by Nathan Rapoport in Liberty State Park in Jersey City. The bronze sculpture is a memorial to American soldiers who helped to liberate Nazi concentration camps.

Photo: Dith Pran/The New York Times

Mr. Dith's greatest hope was to see leaders of the Khmer Rouge tried for war crimes against his native country; preparations for these trials are finally under way.

Photo: The New York Times

Mr. Dith joined The Times in 1980 as a staff photographer. He photographed people rallying in Newark in support of the rights of immigrants on Sept. 4, 2006.

Photo: Michael Nagle/Getty Images

Mr. Dith and his wife, Meoun Ser Dith, and their children, clockwise from far right, Hemkarey, 12; Titony, 15; Titonath, 10, and Titonel, 7, in a photograph taken shortly after Mr. Dith escaped from Cambodia and came to America.

Photo: Gordon Clark