Flick of the Day: Calm At Sea / Das Meer Am Morgen

Today’s flick of the day is a quiet and affecting drama based on a real life event during the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War. Premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, Volker Schlondorff’s German-French co production was screened yesterday as the opening film of the IFI’s German Film Week, marking a welcome return to the capital of a contemporary German film festival for the first time in four years. Details regarding the remaining films can be found here.

Opening in a French prison camp in 1941, Calm at Sea tells a dark tale from the rich tapestry of dark tales that was the German occupation of mainland Europe during the war. We are introduced to an impossibly young French student named Guy played by Leo-Paul Salmain. He has recently been interned at the camp for supposedly being a troublemaker. He spends his days trying to impress the girls on the other side of the fence, specifically the girl of his dreams Odette while conversing with his fellow inmates who are mainly staunch communists with an intellectual bent. They play boules, box and smoke and all is well. Unfortunately for them, the resistance fighters on the outside are stepping up their attacks against the German occupiers. This leads to the assassination of the German Commander of the town of Nantes for which the Fuhrer demands that 150 French prisoners be executed as a reprisal. Despite the best efforts of the administrators and the cowardice of the French collaborators, the men of Guy’s camp are selected for execution by firing squad.

The film then follows this event with an excruciating level of detail to give the film an almost documentary feel. We learn of the various heart-breaking chances which might have allowed some of the men to escape such as the boy who was due to be released the next day and has to be dragged from his wife’s arms to be shot. Ultimately however, this is a tale of woe. The men go to their fates with their head held high and the script attempts to portray the events as a turning point in the relationship between the people of occupied France and the Nazi administration and perhaps it was but it makes for poor drama.

Where the film shines is in its emotional punch. It would be a hard hearted man who would not feel for these men who even the German officers would admit have done nothing wrong. They are simply facing the wrath of a tyrant and a regime which would go down in history as one of the most monstrous.

The largely French cast give believable turns as the prisoners and the villainous German’s are suitably catty. All in all, this is an important film in terms of documenting this horrific event but perhaps could been dealt with by a documentary rather than a drama given the lack of real drama. We know what will happen to them with about 30 minutes remaining and the film falls away.

Flick of the Day: War Horse

Whisper it gently but its been a ho-hum few years for one of the great and most succesful directors of the modern era, Steven Spielberg. Of his body of work completed in the noughties, there have been more highlights (Munich, Catch Me if You Can, War of the Worlds & Minority Report) then lowlights (The Terminal, Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, AI) but only just. Indiana Jones in particular was just a very poor film. His latest film, an adaptation of the bestselling novel by English author Michael Morpurgo would seem exactly like the kind of story for Spielberg's talents to make the most of. It is a delight then to report that War Horse is exactly that and his finest film in years.

War Horse

Opening before the Great War in sun dappled English countryside, exhibited in gorgeously detailed tracking shots by Spielberg, we are introduced to a horse called Joey at his birth, a thoroughbred foal born in Devon and raised to be sold at the local horse market. The scene of Joey's separation from his mother is heartbreaking and yet not played for sentimentality. Enter stage right Ted Narracott, a tenant farmer played by Peter Mullan, one of the great British acting talents of the last few years. A spendthrift and a drinker, Ted takes a fancy to this horse and bids more then he can afford to secure Joey. He outbids his local landlord Lyons played by David Thewlis  as a moustache twiddling villain. Ted's son Albert, played by Jeremy Irvine  in the central role, who is aware of Joey's potential is set the tasl of training his new horse to be a working farm horse. Together they form a bond  that is stronger then oak. Of course Lyons will have his revenge and threatens to throw the family off their farm unless the rent is paid but all is saved when Albert trains Joey to plough the fields and save the family farm. So far so good, but this is not a happy story and the outbreak of  the Great War brings ill tidings for both Albert and his simpatico horse. Joey is sold to the Army, specifically to dashing young cavalry officer Tom Hiddleston. A fundamentally decent man, he promises Albert he will look after Joey like his own and return him after the war. So begins an odyssey for both Albert and Joey as they seek to find each other once again and return home to Devon. Joey's journey takes him through bloody and disastrous cavalry charges, a pair of Germand deserters, the life of a sickly young French girl and her grandfather, before falling into the hands of the German artillery units who used horses to carry guns to the front while Albert's takes him to the trenches of the Somme and all of the horror that entails. In some spectacular filmmaking, Spielberg manages to document the horrors of the Great War through the eyes of a horse and creates some particularly affecting scenes.

The skill of a talented filmmaker really shows here. Spielberg is particularly adept at creating some striking visuals without being overly visceral in his depiction. As an example, in a very fine scene we view the death by firing squad of two deserters in a lonely field through the rotations of a windmill with the sails shielding us as the fatal shots are discharged. Yet in other scenes, we are not spared the horrors. It is a fine balance and one that Spielberg strikes well.

In this, he is blessed with a fine cast throughout. The cream of European acting talent is on show. Liam Cunningham plays a small but pivotal role in a deeply affecting scene as a British military surgeon. Benedict Cumberbatch  makes the most of an enjoyable role as a deluded cavalry officer who leads his men on a doomed charge and the always watchable Niels Arestrup who was so magnetic in last years Un Prophete appears as a French grandfather just trying to survive the war.

At the Irish premiere last night, Liam Cunningham noted that this is a sad film and it is that but ultimately what I took from the film were two things. Firstly, there is a strong bond between man and the animals they care for and work with and this really comes across in the film. Secondly, the sheer futility and stupidity of all sides in the First World War is deeply ingrained in this film. The human cost of that war is something I was very familiar with but the cost to nature was not something I was aware of. 500,000 horses died in the First World War. The level of cruelty which man is able to stoop to in his dealings with animals is oustripped perhaps only by his cruelty to his fellow man. This dychotomy between the obvious bond between man and beast and the level of cruelty shown is not one easily reconciled here or anywhere else. Ultimately though, there can be no creed or politics or human ideals worthy of such a cost to this planet and its inhabitants, human or otherwise.

A very fine film, perhaps the best of the year and surely a contender for an Oscar in the upcoming awards season. Spielberg's direction is superb with a deft touch missing from his recent work. A fine cast shine throughout including the oft forgotten Emily Watson  in another performance that surely marks her as an actress of the very highest order. The story is epic in scope and structure and yet ultimately never loses sight of the boy and his horse. A triumph.

Flick of The Day: Buffalo Soldiers

It is funny how in the history of cinema, the relative success or failure of a film has hung on a very simple twist of fate. John Wayne's The Green Berets was a critical and commercial failure upon its release in 1968 due to its pro-soldier depiction of the Vietnam conflict and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life was never fully appreciated till it was rediscovered on television. Today's flick of the day is another such film, Buffalo Soldiers. A biting satire of American soldiers stationed in Germany in 1989, it had the misfortune of being set for release in September 2001. After the events of 9/11, its cinema release was put back almost two years and whatever success it might have had disappeared.

Buffalo Soldiers

Set in 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Buffalo Soldiers is the story of Ray Elwood, a brilliant turn from Joaquin Phoenix, as a conniving and ruthless member of the US Army who views soldiering as an entrepreneurial activity. If he isn't selling drugs, he is profiteering with stolen Army merchandise. Elwood and his colleagues are portrayed as drug addled thieves, and with every scene it becomes more apparent why this film was not suitable for a post 9/11 America. After a military accident, Elwood lucks upon a cache of weaponry which he plans to sell to a local hood for 35 kilos of heroin. Of course, Elwood doesn't have it all his own way. A new Sergeant, Robert Lee played by the very underrated Scott Glenn, is onto Elwood and displays an almost psychotic zeal in his attempts to ruin his life. As the film heads for its grand finale, it becomes apparent that while War maybe hell, peace time can be just as dangerous.

This is a very entertaining and darkly comic look at life in the US Army. It paints a bleak portrayal of the readiness of these troops to fight has the cold war ever become hot and this boldness of direction leaves a lot to admire. Joaquin Phoenix proves once again why he is one of the best actors of his generation. His career choices since then have been well documented, but it is a question worth asking that if this film has garnered him the success it should have, where he might now be. The bitter rivalry between his character Elwood and Scott Glenn is a sight to behold. It is central to the film and its most entertaining aspect.

Ray Elwood: There's basically two types of guys in the army - the motherfuckers and the motherfucked

It helps that there is a decent script at the heart of the film, at times wickedly funny and always memorably quotable.

If the film has a weakness, it is it's overt amorality. Elwood is a ridiculously awful individual and is set up early on for a comeuppance that never arrives. This is a tacit endorsement of his behaviour which deteriorates as the film goes on. His superiors are portrayed as incredibly inept. The always reliable Ed Harris gives a fine turn as Elwood's commanding officer and a cuckolded buffoon desperate for promotion. At every possible opportunity for Elwood to be found out, fate in the form of a scriptwriter's hand steps in to keep him out of harms way.

Ray Elwood: So how come they assigned you here? 

Knoll: I put in for it. My fiancée is here on base, so we arranged for a transfer together. 

Ray Elwood: Oh, how sweet. Who's she? 

Knoll: Margolis, Carol-Anne. Private first class. 

Ray Elwood: You call her by her last name? What do you do, salute in bed?

Overall, this is a worthy film and very entertaining at that. As a satire, it isn't exactly Jonathan Swift but there is much to enjoy. Harris, Phoenix and Glenn deliver strong performances and make the best of a decent script. If the directing is at times heavy handed, it evens out over the course of the picture. Decent if unspectacular but worth a look.

Flick of The Day: Apocalypse Now

All great artistic movements have moved in cycles, with a small scale beginning, a high point of some great work which is swiftly followed by excess, hyperbole and an eventual nadir. The so called New Hollywood movement of the 1970's was no different. Today's flick of the day, Apocalypse Now fits neatly into that curve just past the zenith when the movie brats that had taken over Hollywood began  to become self indulgent creating cinema of monumental excess that would end with Michael Cimino's Heavens Gate. That is not to denigrate Apocalypse for it is a film borne of some amazing talent. A wild ride into the heart of darkness in the Vietnam war. It is, in short, unlike anything else you will ever see.

Apocalypse Now (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

With a principal shoot lasting well over a year and a post production period that dragged on for another 2 years, this is a film that was literally years in the making. Martin Sheen is Captain Benjamin Willard, a special forces operative on the edge of reason. He is despatched by some shady superiors on a mission upriver into enemy territory to track down and terminate "with extreme prejudice" Colonel Walther Kurtz played by Marlon Brando, a deranged officer who has gone too far and set himself as a demigod in the heart of the Cambodian jungle. What follows is one hell of a trip. As Willard moves upriver, he encounters a surf happy Colonel Kilgore in the Air Cavalry played by an amazingly over the top Robert Duvall who goes into battle blasting out Wagner. He encounters Viet Cong, Playboy Bunnies and madness at every turn before finally reaching Kurtz's compound for a final showdown.

Based on Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now isn't so much an account of the Vietnam War as it is an indictment of the madness of all war transposed onto the Vietnam conflict. It is violent to the point of cruelty at times and overlong but there is much to enjoy here. For a production that was beset with difficulties, storms, Sheen suffering a heart attack and Brando turning up on set bloated and overweight, there are some spectacular set pieces. The dawn helicopter raid and the the arrival at Kurtz's camp are particular highlights. Given the amount of film that was shot, it is amazing Francis Ford Coppola managed to produce the film he did, indeed the film is as famed for what was left out as left in. There are a number of expensively assembled sequences which didn't make the final cut and yet it still feels too long by the end given that it takes so long to arrive at its destination. The film was re-cut for a redux version in 2001, which restores 49 more minutes of footage but this version has always felt as overkill to me.

Ultimately though it doesn't really matter about the length because there is just about enough here that is entertaining and enthralling to carry the film till the inevitable conclusion. One sour note that I feel must be mentioned though is the decision of Coppola to hack in a cow to death with machetes for the climax of the film, in homage to a local tradition. This is a reprehensible act and once again reinforces the feeling that this is the beginning of the end in terms of the New Hollywood movement. It earned the film an "Unacceptable" rating from the American Humane Association. One cannot fail to agree with that sentiment.

Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that? 

Lance: What? 

Kilgore: Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. 

[kneels] 

Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like 

[sniffing, pondering] 

Kilgore: victory. Someday this war's gonna end... 

All in all, this film broke new ground in its portrayal of war, and despite its many flaws, is worth seeing if only for it's place in the history of cinema and the career's of the fine cast which populate it.

Flick of The Day: Good Morning, Vietnam

Today's flick is a landmark comedy set in the Vietnam war, Good Morning Vietnam and the first film to prove that there was more to Robin Williams then a great stand-up act and Mork & Mindy. In an wonderful performance, he brings his improvisational humour to bear and elevates the film to a different level.

Good Morning, Vietnam (Special Edition)

Robin Williams is Adrian Cronauer, an Airman sent to Saigon in 1965 from Crete to act as a DJ on the US Armed Forces Radio Station in Vietnam. His crazed stream of consciousness humour is in stark contrast to the staid by the book announcers the station normally employs and Cronauer is soon in trouble with his immediate superiors, in particular the uptight Sgt Major Dickerson played by J.T Walsh much to the alarm of the underling assigned to look after him, Private Garlick, an impossibly young Forest Whitaker. Cronauer soon meets and fall in love with a Vietnamese girl and befriends her brother along the way. It soon becomes apparent that Dickerson is willing to go to any length to get rid of Cronauer, despite the support he enjoys amongst the top brass and the reality of the War in Vietnam soon hits home.

The real reason to see this film is of course Robin Williams. He inhabits the character of a Radio DJ completely. Many of the on air scenes are improvised, with Williams proving his abilities as a funny man without peer. 

Dickerson: This is not military issue, airman. What sort of uniform is that? 

Adrian Cronauer: Cretan camouflage sir. If you want to blend in with a bunch of drunken Greeks there's nothing better. 

Dickerson: That is humor. I recognize that. I also recognize your brand of soldier.

Watching the film today, it is is easy to see why Williams won such acclaim for his performance including an Oscar nomination.  However humour alone would not be enough to carry the film, the film contains real heart and recognises the tragedy that was the Vietnam conflict. For all that the pithy and satiric humour carry the film, it would be a lesser film if it didn't take a serious turn in the final act.

Barry Levinson handles this transition well, and Williams is as adept at scathing remarks about the futility of the war as he is one-liners. This is a great film and a worthy addition to the genre.

Flick of The Day: The Great Escape

Some subjects and events in history have been explored so many times in various guises throughout the history of cinema, that one would imagine that there is nothing more that could be added by yet another film on the topic. The Second World War is surely one such topic, having been a staple of Hollywood from its inception to at least the mid 1960's followed by a mini-revival in the 90's. There are too many fine films on the War to list here but some highlights would include The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan, and today's flick of the day, The Great Escape.

The Great Escape

From director John Sturges, this is one of the classics of the genre. With an ensemble cast of some of the biggest actors of the day, this is an old school adventure tale of the highest order. The Germans as is their wont have spent a small fortune capturing various allied prisoners of war and irritated at their continuous attempts to escape decides to dump all the bad eggs in one basket, from which there will be no escape. There is the Americans; Steve McQueen as a pilot with a penchant for motorcycle stunts and a bit of a rebel and James Garner as a man who can acquire things inside the prison. The British; led by Richard Attenborough, a gentleman with a steely resolve. An Australian, played by James Coburn and a Pole played by Charles Bronson who excels in digging tunnels. Together they plot an escape by digging three tunnels out of the camp. The film is an action packed adventure culminating in  an attempted mass escape.

Treated with contempt by critics upon its release, it is only in recent years that the film has been reappraised as the classic it is. From the motorcycle stunts attempted by McQueen which had never been seen on the big screen before then to the groundbreaking way in which it manages to handle a fundamentally tragic tale with warmth and a good deal of humour, this was a far superior film to others of its era like The Battle of the Bulge or The Guns of Navarone. It has one of the great ensemble casts in terms of male actors of the era, including a cultural icon in perhaps his most iconic role, Steve McQueen. This is not to mention the fantastic work by less starry names of British cinema like Donald Pleasence and David McCallum. This is a film with an emphasis on action rather than dialogue but there are some memorable quotable lines in there.

Sedgwick: Danny, do you speak Russian? 

Danny: A little, but only one sentence. 

Sedgwick: Well, let me have it, mate. 

Danny: Ya vas lyublyu. 

Sedgwick: Ya ya vas... 

Danny: Lyublyu. 

Sedgwick: Lyubliu? Ya vas lyubliu. Ya vas lyublyu. What's it mean? 

Danny: I love you. 

Sedgwick: Love you. What bloody good is that? 

Danny: I don't know, I wasn't going to use it myself.

Based on a true account from a former POW, the film amends a few details but is largely historically accurate apart from increasing the importance of the American involvement which is no surprise in an American film. If there is one criticism of the film, coming in at nearly 3 hours, it does feel overlong. That said, a rainy afternoon can be easily batted away by catching this on TV. A classic adventure film with a great ensemble cast, this is well worth a look.

Flick of The Day: Munich

Steven Spielberg has attempted historic epics before with film's like Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan but rarely has he examined an issue without voicing a point of view on an event. With today's flick of the day, Munich, Spielberg does exactly that, neither questioning the reasoning behind the Israeli actions nor portraying the Palestinians as heartless, faceless evildoers. It is a meditation on the effects of seeking revenge and of the moral consequences of doing so.

Munich (Widescreen Edition)

Produced in the same year as Spielberg's blockbuster remake of War of the Worlds, much as he had done in 1993 with Jurassic Park and Schindlers List, Munich is a sombre thriller if such a thing is possible. Opening with a meticulous recreation of the events that occurred at the Munich Olympics in September 1972, while this has been done before in Kevin Macdonald's excellent documentary One Day in September, it is still well done. The use of news footage is particularly striking, given that it was sports reporters covering the Olympic Games which largely documented the hostage situation. After the massacre unfolds and the death of the Black September terrorists, largely due to a botched German rescue attempt, the film outlines the resolution of the Israeli government under Golda Meir to track down and kill those responsible. Mossad agent Avner, played by Eric Bana with a ruthless intensity, is recruited by Geoffrey Rush to lead the team. The team chosen are interestingly not professional assassins, but ordinary Israelis with military training and the kind of special skills required for the job including Daniel Craig and Ciaran Hinds. Both excel in their roles, each character given a background to work with. The fact that they are for want of a better word, normal, is what makes this film interesting. How they deal with the effects of having to devote their lives to seeking revenge and of having to do the actual killing is what drives much of the film. Each deals with it differently but as the story unfolds, it weighs on them all.

Coming in at just under 3 hours in length, the film feels over-long at times but then as Avner and co jump from locale to locale, taking out their targets along the way, it is thrilling and largely holds your attention. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film is that Spielberg seems to take the opinion that both the Palestinian terrorists and the Mossad assassins are morally equivalent or at the very least offers this for our decision. In one entertaining scene, the undercover agents enter a safe house they have hired only to find it double booked by a group of Palestinians. Pretending to be fellow revolutionaries, they fall into conversation and Avner and their leader discuss the wishes of the Palestinian cause. I suppose ultimately the question at the heart of the film is whether it is right or not for a State to seek revenge in the form of an eye for an eye?

Ephraim: We have 11 Palestinian names. Each had a hand in planning Munich. You're going to kill them, 11 men, one by one. They're all in Europe now. You'll stay there as long as it takes. Europe only, not the Arab countries. That's for us, not you. And not Eastern Bloc. Don't upset the Russians. Who needs it? You'll have no contact with us. 

Avner: You're not going to give me any information? 

Ephraim: We deposit money from a fund that doesn't exist into a box we don't know about, in a bank we never set foot in. We can't help you because we never heard of you before. You'll do what the terrorists do. You think they report back to home base? They don't. We want them dead.

By posing this question, Spielberg is very much asking the audience to look at the events of today, where for the past decade the US government has pursued the planners of 9/11 in just such a manner as the Israelis. If the events of the past days have been proof of anything, it is that America has been as equally as effective as Israel in this quest for retribution.

The film is not without its flaws, in one of the closing scenes, flashback footage of the massacre is inter-cut with Avner making love to his wife implying that he is haunted and seeking solace in his wife. However, given that the footage is not news footage and bare in mind that Avner was never at Munich, what are we to draw from this? How could he be so haunted by imagery he never saw?

Avner: If these people committed crimes we should have arrested them. Like Eichmann. 

Ephraim: If these guys live, Israelis die. Whatever doubts you have Avner, you know this is true. 

[Avner walks away] 

Ephraim: You did well but you're unhappy. 

Avner: I killed seven men. 

Ephraim: Not Salameh. We'll get him of course.

In the end, this is a satisfying and beautifully shot examination of the after effects of the Black September massacre. Dealing with complex and dense issues, it makes for an entertaining if at times slow film. It also never comes to a resolution of the question it poses about the morality of state-sponsored revenge. Well worth a look.

Flick of The Day: The Pawnbroker

A couple of weeks back in a review of The French Connection, we noted the importance of the production code and its affect on artistic expression up the 1960's. That film was one of the first to take advantage of a grittier post production code era. Well, if one film could have been said to have well truly torn the code asunder it was today's flick of the day, The Pawnbroker. A film so far ahead of its time, it retains the power to shock even today and is one of the first film's to deal openly with The Holocaust from a survivor's perspective.

The Pawnbroker

In an amazing performance, Rod Steiger portrays Sol Nazerman, an ageing Jewish pawnbroker and survivor of the concentration camps. Told at least partially in flashbacks and shot in stark black and white, The Pawnbroker was atypical in the Hollywood of the 1960's. Sol survived the camps but his wife and children did not. Deeply scarred and emotionally dead inside, Sol has treated from all life and all interaction. He finances the lifestyle of his family on Long Island but withholds any form of approval. He carries on an affair with a fellow survivor but withholds any deep and meaningful contact. His store becomes a convenient front for a local hoodlum unbeknownst to him. All of this stems from his inner belief that he should have died in the camps and a feeling of despair that everything he loved was taken from him leaving him powerless. Ultimately Sol cannot overcome his emotional wounds and it takes the death of somebody he belatedly realises he is close to to open his mind to the world around him.

Shot in a style reminiscent of the French New Wave, the flashbacks to the concentration camp manage to convey the horror of those events. Small references set Sol's mind off, remembering the loss of his wife. The sight of a prostitutes bare breasts causes a flashback to the debasement of his wife at the hands of the camp guards. Walking through a door between carriages on the subway flashes back to the cattle cars used to transfer the prisoners. It is an extraordinary performance from Steiger, a great actor but one who's best performances are often bombastic grandstanding, particularly in A Fistful of Dynamite and In The Heat of The Night. The role of Sol requires a more measured sombre tone, allowing the characters inner despair to seep out rather then explode.

Of course Steiger is aided by having a fine script with which to work. Based on a novel by Edward Lewis Wallant, It tells its tale with a minimum of fuss but there are some fine passages of dialogue for the actor to get his teeth into.

Sol Nazerman: You people? Oh, let's see. Yeah. I see. I see, you... you want to learn the secret of our success, is that right? Alright I'll teach you. First of all you start off with a period of several thousand years, during which you have nothing to sustain you but a great bearded legend. Oh my friend you have no land to call your own, to grow food on or to hunt. You have nothing. You're never in one place long enough to have a geography or an army or a land myth. All you have is a little brain. A little brain and a great bearded legend to sustain you and convince you that you are special, even in poverty. But this little brain, that's the real key you see. With this little brain you go out and you buy a piece of cloth and you cut that cloth in two and you go and sell it for a penny more than you paid for it. Then you run right out and buy another piece of cloth, cut it into three pieces and sell it for three pennies profit. But, my friend, during that time you must never succumb to buying an extra piece of bread for the table or a toy for a child, no. You must immediately run out and get yourself a still larger piece cloth and and so you repeat this process over and over and suddenly you discover something. You have no longer any desire, any temptation to dig into the Earth to grow food or to gaze at a limitless land and call it your own, no, no. You just go on and on and on repeating this process over the centuries over and over and suddenly you make a grand discovery. You have a mercantile heritage! You are a merchant. You are known as a usurer, a man with secret resources, a witch, a pawnbroker, a sheenie, a makie and a kike!

The film is ground breaking in so many ways from Boris Kaufman's cinematography to the large minority cast to the use of foreign language dialogue and finally the first nude scene to include exposed breasts. Something that wouldn't raise an eyebrow now but was very controversial at the time. Great cinema should always push boundaries and this does so in so many areas. This was the first of series of blows against the production code which led to its abandonment in 1968. Director Sidney Lumet and Rod Steiger all went on to bigger and better things from this film. Steiger in particular  ascended to the top of his profession after receiving an Oscar nomination for his performance. A must see film and an important one at that.

Flick of The Day: The Killing Fields

Films with a political undercurrent are difficult to pull off. For one, the viewer can become irritated by the feeling they are being preached to and rally against the underlying message of the film. There are some subjects that are above politics however, that get to the very heart of the human condition. The tale told in Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields is one such subject. It tells the tale not just of the rise and fall of the Khmer Rouge and their inhuman regime in Cambodia but also a much simpler tale, that of the friendship between two journalists, an American Sydney Schanberg and a Cambodian Dith Pran.

The Killing Fields

I first read of the brutal atrocities committed under the auspices of the Khmer Rouge's Year Zero campaign in Cambodia many years ago in an article in The Irish Times. My initial reaction was incredulity that something like this could be allowed to happen in the modern world. Where was the force of international opinion that should have intervened to save Cambodia and its people? Of course, as the years go by you come to accept that genocide occurs far too often in this world and that the international community is so often selective in its determination to intervene on behalf of the oppresssed. To Cambodia, you can add Rwanda 1994, Bosnia 1992 and Sudan 2010 as a list of bloody genocides where the world stood by and watched until it was too late. You could add innumerable others.

The film opens in 1973 in Phnom Penh as New York Times journalist Schanberg, played with steely determination by Sam Waterston is covering the ongoing conflict in Cambodia with his interpreter Dith Pran, a wonderful Oscar winning performance from Haing Ngor. They cover the ongoing secret war being perpetrated by Richard Nixon's administration and the various atrocities it leads to. The film the moves forward to 1975, to the American pull-out and the ensuing mayhem it created. Schanberg arranges for Pran's family to be evacuated but pressurises Pran to stay and help him cover the final days of the war. Of course, as it turned out all involved had underestimated the brutality of the Khmer Rouge. When they take Phnom Penh, they instigate their brutal policy of Year Zero, of forced migration to the countryside, of labour camps, of murder, of torture, of the systematic removal of all intellectuals. Initially the pair take cover in the French Embassy with all of the foreign journalists however eventually they are evacuated including Schanberg, leaving Pran behind. The remainder of the film tells the story of Pran's experiences under Pol Pot's regime and a guilty Schanberg's attempts to find his friend.

"We must be like the ox and have no thought, except for the Party. No laugh, but for the Uncle. People starve, but we must not grow food. We must honour the comrade children, whose minds are not corrupted by the past."

The film is at times deeply moving and the images of the killing fields will live with you long after the film has ended. Having visited Cambodia I can attest at first hand the emotional power of a site like the killing fields, even today. The film is at times hard to watch but it is worth it, the emotional payoff comes as Pran struggles to freedom as the Khmer Rouge fall from power. The film ends on 9th October 1979 as Schanberg and Pran are reunited.

This is a film that should be seen by as wide an audience as possible, not just so that the Cambodian conflict is not forgotten. That is reason enough however on its own it is a very finely made film. Chris Menges cinematography captures both the horror and the beauty of Cambodia. The film never preaches, you never feel as if an issue or point of view is being shoved down your throat. The facts are presented and you are left to draw your own conclusions as to the how and why. It is undoubtedly the case that the actions of the Nixon administration in secretly bombing Cambodia for year after year contributed to the rise of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. However, it must also be said that the international community was once again remiss in doing very little to stop the horror. It took an invading Vietnamese Army to finally remove the Khmer Rouge from power.

If the film has any message, it is the strength of human friendship and maybe that is what should be taken from this tale. Watch it.