Where Bad Ideas Lead: Netflix’s ‘First They Killed My Father’ Reveals Real Horrors Through the Eyes Of a Little Girl By Bryan Preston
First They Killed My Father tells the story of Luong Ung, a happy five-year-old girl in Phnom Penh. Her father was a high-ranking government official. Her family was Cambodian upper middle class up until April 1975. Then the Khmer Rouge swept the government aside and destroyed all in their path in the name of imposing Marxism with a Cambodian twist — the “Khmer” being the nationalist brand to the “Rouge,” meaning “red” for communism. The clever grafting of racial identity with communism set Cambodia on a terrible path.
First They Killed My Father debuted three years ago this week, though you’ve probably never heard of it despite the major star who co-wrote and directed it. More about that later. It received overwhelmingly positive reviews but no buzz. It’s currently available on Netflix, which funded it.
It’s a worthy companion to the multiple Oscar-winning The Killing Fields, from 1984, which I recently reviewed. Both films cover the same story but from very different angles. The former captures the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror mostly from an American perspective, though its principal survivor is a Cambodian journalist. This film sees Cambodia’s communist holocaust through the eyes of a little girl caught up in the terrible events. Her bewilderment pulls the viewer right down with her through the jungles and into the mud on the collective farms and paramilitary training camps.
First They Killed My Father’s perspective brings a stream-of-consciousness that keeps the story moving despite the heavy content and sparse dialogue. There are no expository scenes after the opening sequence, no journalists or generals explaining the story to establish the location or even the time. The audience knows what Luong knows. This forces the viewer to pick up the details and make sense of events as they happen along with her.
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