And we were supposed to support that adventure

Rating: 10/10 (9 April 2007)

This is a cult film in many ways even if time is making it a lot less poignant than it used to be. It is definitely a denunciation of the Cambodian caper of President Nixon. The bombing and then the invading of Cambodia were neither justified nor in any way effective. The Vietnam war was lost when Nixon decided to invade Cambodia and this invasion spread American troops and military means over two wide a territory to even pretend the war was not lost. The invasion of Cambodia was the last straw that broke the camel's back. We could wonder today whether Kissinger let Nixon do this mistake to bury him in this war and thus enable himself to negotiate some kind of a peace agreement. An American journalist lost in this chaos and overwhelmed by the arrival of the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh was a witness to this senseless and absurd caper or continuation of a ridiculous war. But he had to use the services of a local journalist to be the interface between him and the locals. Unluckily this Cambodian journalist stayed too long and he could not escape from the claws of the Khmer Rouge. Then it is a story of resistance and resilience to survive the most horrendous conditions. He will manage to escape absolutely alone though he had started in a group of six or seven. Even the child he had been entrusted with will die along the way blown up by a mine. This is a true story, a testimony about one of the most astounding catastrophe and tragedy of our modern world, a war unjustified and lost even before being started waged by the USA in a country that they did not even know leading to one of the worst ever genocide in modern history performed by the Cambodians themselves onto the Cambodian people they made regress to some medieval state in just a few months and for a few years that lasted centuries. We westerners love exporting our worst nightmares to foreign countries and some of us never learn a lesson and are always ready to do better than some others before us. If the French lost the Indo-Chinese war in 1954 there was absolutely no reason why the Americans could win it. If the French lost the Algerian war in 1962 and the British lost the Middle East and Egypt quite some time before there is absolutely no reason why the Americans could do better. This film is a testimony to the suffering the vanity of some of our inspired western leaders imposes onto millions of people around the world. For one case that ends with a little bit of joy, millions of cases end in plain death.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne