KILLING FIELDS, THE 193
box office and awards success. For example, Vincent Canby wrote, “The Killing Fields
is a faithful adaptation... Yet something vital is missing, and that’s the emotional
intensity of Mr. Schanberg’s first- person prose. The movie is diffuse and wander-
ing. It’s someone telling a long, in ter est ing story who can’t get to the point” (Canby,
1984). The film’s use of John Lennon’s utopian anthem “Imagine” as its closing
theme, underscoring the moment when Schanberg and Pran are re united, also gen-
erated some controversy. Some commentators found the juxtaposition deeply
affecting or cleverly ironic, whereas others denounced it as nauseatingly sentimen-
tal and pretentious.
Real History Versus Real History
In general terms, The Killing Fields is a faithful adaptation of Sydney Schanberg’s
account of the fall of Cambodia, his relationship with Dith Pran, and Pran’s sub-
sequent survival odyssey. Yet the movie’s emphasis on the “love story” between
Schanberg and Dith Pran is problematic in several ways. First of all, it tends to
gloss over the po liti cal complexities that led to genocide in Cambodia. For exam-
ple, Lon Nol (1913–1985), the Cambodian general whose pro- American military
government ruled his country for five years (1970–75) until it was overwhelmed
by the Khmer Rouge, is mentioned only once and in passing. Inexplicably, Pol Pot
(1925–1998), diabolical leader of the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until 1997, is not
mentioned at all. The film’s focus on the relationship between Schanberg and Pran
also has the effect of mostly casting them as passive victims of vague, sweeping
historical forces rather than depicting them as the hardworking, risk- taking jour-
nalists that they were. And, as some film critics have noted, the film’s central nar-
rative dynamic, the story of an enduring friendship, is not entirely effective on its
own terms. Furthermore, that story may be exaggerated or worse. American pho-
tojournalist Al Rockoff— the only surviving principal in Schanberg’s Cambodia
chronicles who refused to be involved with the film’s production— has gone on
rec ord denouncing the late Sydney Schanberg as “a coward who put other people’s
lives in danger.” Rockoff also alleges that Schanberg “used and abused Dith Pran
and personally tried to have me thrown out of the safety of the French Embassy in
April 1975.” Rockoff also suspects that Schanberg destroyed his career as a photo-
journalist by having him blacklisted: “Schanberg left on the first convoy out of the
French Embassy and asked me for the rolls of film that I’d shot. When I told him
that I was on day rate for Newsweek and that he could only have the pictures they
didn’t want he said ‘See if the New York Times ever runs any of your stuff again.’ ”
In the end Newsweek only ran three of Rockoff’s photos. Upon his return to the
U.S. Rockoff was relegated to the journalistic margins, the vast majority of his work
unseen (Kyne and Rockoff, p. 5). In the scene depicting Schanberg’s Pulitzer Prize
award night, the movie does acknowledge Rockoff’s bitterly contrarian point of
view and even gives it some credence, but the overall thrust of the movie contra-
dicts Rockoff’s moral indictment as a minority opinion.