Movie Review: First They Killed My Father

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Angelina Jolie   

Written by: Loung Ung & Angelina Jolie based on the book by Loung Ung.

Starring: Sareum Srey Moch (Loung Ung), Phoeung Kompheak (Pa Ung), Sveng Socheata (Ma Ung), Tharoth Sam (Khmer Rouge Leader).

 

It is fairly common when an actor becomes a director for critics – and others – to describe their films are vanity projects. Often, this is because the actor, of course, casts themselves in the lead role. Angelina Jolie got (more) than her fair share of that when she made By the Sea – her third film as a director, and the only one she also starred in, alongside then husband Brad Pitt (I really need to see By the Sea – I somehow missed it). It’s also unfair, given that Jolie has now made four films behind the camera, two of them in a language other than English, and three of them without her in them. If nothing else, I hope that goes away with First They Killed My Father – which I don’t think is a great film, but is one that I think has greatness in it – and shows just how talented Jolie is behind the camera. She is the real deal as a filmmaker.

 

The film opens with a montage of American talking heads – mainly Nixon and Kissinger, talking about Cambodia – pretty much denying that they are conducting a secret war and bombings inside that country during the Vietnam war (spoiler alert – they’re lying), before putting us on the ground in Cambodia in 1975, after American troops have left Vietnam. Those scenes are the only bit of context that the film will give you for the next two hours and fifteen minutes, until the end credits, which will provide a little bit more. The rest of the movie stays focused on Loung Ung – who was five in 1975, and witnessed the atrocities that were about to happen in her country, saw and learned things she never should have had to, and somehow made it through. Because she doesn’t really understand what is happening and why, the film never explains to us either. And because she is five, and doesn’t truly understand, the emotions in the film are strangely muted as well. This is a film where horrific things happen, yet it ends of a slightly up note, and yet it is never quite as harrowing or inspirational as you would think it would be.

 

This seems to be by design for Jolie. Her biggest film to date – Unbroken – told a harrowing and inspiring story as well, but the film itself was rather muted in terms of those emotions. That didn’t make all that much sense to me than watching that film – but it does here. Children are strange in their ability to adapt to whatever situations they find themselves in – sure, they may cry, but then they soldier through. First They Killed My Father is about how Loung Ung does just that. We first see her being forced, alongside her whole family, to leave their home – she doesn’t understand why, and believes the soldiers. She doesn’t quite understand why her father is telling her to say he’s a dock worker either, since he doesn’t do that. She doesn’t understand when they take him away – or why her mother tells her and her siblings to split up run away. And on and on and on – she just doesn’t quite understand – she just listens to the adults around, and does what she is told – because that is what children do.

 

They film is very well made by Jolie – with great cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle, who stays on the same level as the film’s child protagonist. Because of the structure of the movie, and its point-of-view, it does at times feel like it’s a parade of misery – a rather by-the-numbers “then this happened” feel comes over the film at times. Still, I do think that’s deliberate on the part of Jolie. The film was co-written by the real life Luong Ung, and based on her book. She is looking back at her childhood with a strange mixture of horror and detachment – and the film gets that tone right.

 

What the film makes clear is that Jolie is a real filmmaker – she is not out to do a vanity project, and she doesn’t want to make a film full of false dramatics and phony uplift – but something closer to the ground. The film probably should have been shorter, and less repetitive, but overall, it is a solid, very well made film.