Search - Biography - Pol Pot: Secret Killer on DVD

Shallow, disappointing and brief...

Winthrop Harrison | Seattle, WA United States | 07/29/2002

(2 out of 5 stars)

"A bizarre detail in modern Cambodia's genocide is that we know so little of the paranoid dictatorship that helped make it happen. We know who they were, but they didn't keep notes. There is no paper trail to follow, only accusation and speculation.I can't blame this A&E 'Biography' video for the little footage of Pol Pot - he was rarely seen, let alone filmed. But this brief video falls short in most respects, offering little hard information, tiptoeing around the disasterous consequence of President Nixon's carpet bombing of the Cambodian/Vietnamese border, ignoring China's economic aid and complicity. It does not cover the Khmer Rouge's entrance into '90s Cambodian government, or the kickbacks and UN cowardice that allowed it to happen.OK, what we do get is a 25-minute quick-study of farmer son Pol Pot ('Brother #1'), his education in modern Paris, the rise of the Khmer Rouge, the famine and genocide, and then the (to my mind, wonderful) invasion by Vietnam in '79/'80. One point comes clear - although they despised technology and even basic schooling, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge were similar to the Nazis/Stalinists & Chinese in one way - they wished to change not just the way people act, but the deepest way people can think. Pol Pot's dream of forcing Cambodia to a farm-based "Year Zero" could never work - the famine & chaos proved it - but this video doesn't come close to capturing the horror, let alone the ideas and actions that allowed such insanity to happen. (Saddest thing? Most of my opinions come from books, not this video. Footage of skulls can only tell you so much...)A better choice? I highly recommend the upsetting memories of Chanrithy Him's "When Broken Glass Floats" and Loung Ung's "First They Killed My Father". These two books don't touch on politics often, but they will captivate any reader with a heart. Buy them with confidence, please don't buy this."