Customer Reviews

S21 The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Rithy Panh's award-winning documentary, endorsed by Human Rights Watch, will be painful for any compassionate human being to watch. The documentary brings together two surviving prisoners and a group of former Khmer Rouge cadre, interrogators, executioners, guards, record keepers, and the photographer who staffed the infamous S-21 prison where over 16,000 Cambodians were tortured, interrogated, and trucked off to be killed and cast into mass graves.

The scenes were filmed inside the still standing prison and at the Choeung Ek killing field. The Khmer language dialogue is crisply and accurately subtitled in English.

The executioner sits in his home enduring the lecture by his mother, who bemoans the fate of her son, turned into a killer by the Khmer Rouge. She raised him to know better. His father urges him to speak the truth and take responsibility for those he killed.

Former prisoner Chum Mey collapses in tears in front of the prison, unable to speak, as painful a scene as I have ever watched on film.

Interrogators sit holding photos and confessions of their victims and discuss specific cases -- beatings, torture, forcing female prisoners to strip off their clothes, unspeakable sexual violations. Former guards re-enact their prison routines on site, escorting incoming prisoners, monitoring the cells, taking prisoners to interrogation, taking them to the trucks headed to the killing field. Executioner and driver re-enact the execution and burial routine. The former prison staff re-enact political indoctrination and training meetings they attended in the prison, using genuine archival photos and documents preserved by the superb NGO, the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which is led by Cambodian-American director Mr Youk Chhang. The interrogators admit "embellishing" the interrogation reports. The prisoners admit "implicating" everyone they knew because that was what the interrogators wanted.

Surviving prisoner Vann Nath sits with the shamed former Khmer Rouge staff to try to fathom what was in their minds when they carried out the atrocities. "There are no more ideals, no more human conscience. We become dust in the wind." One of the final scenes is of dust blowing inside the upper floor of the prison during a thunderstorm.

It is in vogue this very week for some of our leaders to publicly challenge Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, calling them haters of America with ridiculous charges not to taken seriously. God knows the work of these two organizations is intended in part to insure that we never have to sit in shame in front of any human who suffered abuse at our hands or in our name. Documenting human rights violations around the world helps us to keep constantly alive in our minds the stark differences between "freedom-lovers" and "evil-doers." We must operate with the utmost transparency and openness with daily international inspections and demand the same from all of our momentary allies of convenience around the world.

Every American interrogator, intelligence officer, and prison guard and military officer should watch and learn and pride himself in knowing that he is in no way like the interrogator in the film who says, "I was arrogant. I had power over the enemy. I saw him as an animal."

Rithy Panh tracks virtually evry facet of the institution known as Tuol Sleng, or S21, the torture centre in Phnom Penh during the Pol Pot regime. Interviews with some of the few remaining victims are held in conjunction with those of the former guards and torturers. Panh shows the anguish and post traumatic shock experienced by both, and the film's most chilling point is the reenactment by a young guard of his nightly duties in tormenting and controlling the rooms of shackled prisoners. All in all, an excellent study of abuse of human rights under a totalitarian regime.

A different kind of a documentary yet incredibly powerful and moving.

When we were young we were told that after our life on earth we would be resurrected before the God of death. Our crimes, every bit of them down to the minutest detail would then be read out and the punishment for the crimes would then be executed in Hell. Based on the intensity of the crime the appropriate mode of punishment would be meted out sparing no one and most importantly no little sin or crime committed during our earthly life. No would be allowed to die but endure the full measure of his/her punishment. To avoid telling lies or stealing or being dis-obedient a frightening and detailed list of various kinds of punishments were also told to us.

The Khmer Rouge brought a hell worse than this to earth. Their hell defies human imagination. Unlike the hell we used to be told in the stories, at S21 none of the victims knew what crimes they had done in their previous lives or in their present. There is so much talk about Karma in the documentary. The victims were not allowed to die, or even commit suicide. They had to go through torture, then forcibly sign confessions of crimes they never did and then executed for those crimes. So they were looked after to be tortured unto death. They were also told that their punishment would be reduced if they divulged the names of other people. Out of pain and fear of torture victims would name their own kith and kin. The Khmer Rouge had just found another good reason to rope in more victims.

Like another reviewer wrote, these guards manning the prison and indulging in such crimes under the orders of the Khmer Rouge supremos were suffering from some collective mental disorder. Were the perpetrators doing all this out of fear of their own survival in the Khmer Rouge. Like Macbeth after the first murder and the second the rest just seemed like a habit. People were slaughtered like animals. The worst of torture methods performed on them.

The documentary is about the meeting of painter Vann Nath and carpenter Chum Mey, survivors of S21 with the former guards of the prison. Van Nath and Chum Mey were two of the 7 survivors of the 14,000 prisoners who were tortured at S21 and subsequently killed at Choeung Euk. Vann nath himself admits in the documentary how lucky he has been as many painters, some even better than him were executed.

The guards, most of them who were in their teens when they did these crimes look serenely calm but having gone through hell themselves you wonder what is going on in their minds, remorse? regret? Sometimes they seem lost too maybe having realized what they have done and why they could do nothing about it. The enactments seem so natural and automatic as they might have done it ritually a zillion times. Even when Van nath asks them in an offending fashion they reply calmly, but not remorselessly or feeling offended. From deranged minds to minds of calm they look like victims who have been through hell too in the post-Khmer Rouge era. The death cries and screams, blood and the suffering of the victims they tortured and killed will never leave them and will haunt them till their own deaths.

In the beginning of the documentary when the Cambodian song is being played there is a black and white picture of the Cambodians working hard in the fields. It is a pathetic sight of them running around and working. So sad they never could reap the benefits of that labour, whether they worked hard out of fear or for the betterment of Cambodia. Also earlier in the documentary one of the killers (perpertrators of the crime) is shown handling a baby, his own I guess. I was wondering if the
thoughts of killing babies and children ever went through his head or maybe it still does and haunts him as he says he many a time suffers severe headaches and goes without eating for nights. At the end of the film, Van Nath is seen searching through some burnt rubble and picks up a button. How many times would have the victim wearing the shirt or skirt used that button on his/her cherished dress. How many times would have she or he cleaned it, polished it...

An innovative style of documentary making. Highly recommended if you are aware of the Cambodian genocide or better still, if you have watched Roland Joffe's "The Killing Fields".

There are numerous outstanding elements within this documentary concerning the Khmer Rouge's murder center in Phnom Penh. My problem with the film though was that there was not a broad narrative spoken or alluded to with which to guide and inform the viewer. I would have liked to have seen a good 45 minutes of background analysis here before we joined former (and viciously tortured) prisoners Nath and Chum Mey on their tour of Tuol Sleng Prison. Their encounter with their former guards was both educational, memorable, and disturbing. Nath's observations struck a chord with me. Indeed, this was particularly true when he pointed out that he could not even bring himself to forgive those who persecuted him because none of them appeared remotely remorseful or asked for his forgiveness. He is correct regarding the great majority who eerily and vigorously reenacted their daily tasks at the prison for the camera. These scenes are especially chilling. As with everything in life though there are areas of gray. Former guard Houy is remorseful and admits that the experience ruined him forever. He feels a profound sense of guilt over what he has done but is incapable of communicating it to Nath or Mey. Instead, we hear his anger expressed at the Khmer Rouge and that his past continues to haunt him. S21 was a noble venture, but it moved far too slow and lacked a proper historical introduction in my opinion.

In this emotional and gripping movie Rithy Panh confronts former killers and the few survivors (among the thousands of inmates) of the slaughtering in the horrible S-21 prison in Phnom Penh during the Red Khmer regime in Kampuchea.
The guards show the place were people were clubbed to death, not shot. The sound of gun shots would have created panic among the group of prisoners waiting to be killed.
The inmates confess blatantly that under untenable torture they told their interrogators everything those wanted to hear and denounced as traitors even the most innocent of their compatriots.
The movie creates a nearly unbearable emotional climate by showing the extreme excesses of a Marxist ideology going mad, killing even intentionally children and babies. A one party State was installed where the top forced a terror regime on the entire population.

This movie is a must see for all those interested in the history and the nature of mankind.

Vann Nath is someone I would want to meet in this lifetime, what he has been through is beyond description! Facing and questioning the guards that held and tortured so many people, the strength it must have taken.

I rated this documentary 3 stars; because of the endless reenactments of the guards, lack of footage of Pol Pot, and no sense of the real genocide it was. Where were the paintings Vann Nath created depicting these events? I saw more in just a few minutes on Globe Trekker Cambodia (on PBS), then I did in this documentary.

this one is also very informative and a must have for anyone's historical documentary collection...offers insight into what was the horror called the khmer rouge and their horrific crimes against humanity

Having visited Tuol Sleng museum in Phnom Penh several times, I was highly fascinated by this brilliant DVD. It shows the Khmer Rouge henchmen from that dark period, who seemingly for the first time admit to their misdeeds. All of them however feel not guilty of any crime, since they were 'only following orders'. What's new. What I found a bit dissapointing is that there is almost no mention of the few western prisoners who perished in Tuol Sleng, by doing so I think the director could have invoked a lot of extra world-wide attention on his film. But other than that, this film is a must-see for anyone who's interested in the Pol Pot-era.

It is hard not to give this documentary 5 stars. What Vann Nath went through during those turbulent years that he spent in Tuol Sleng is simply unimaginable. To Acually get former Khmer Rouge guards together to re-enact their roles as prison guards at S21 is a feat in itself considering the whole "loss of face" that dominates S.E. Asian culture. It is totally understandable why Vann Nath would have a hard time forgiving his former captors but it is equally understandable as to why these former guards would shy away from taking responsibility and pass the blame to their superiors since to defy the Khmer Rouge "henchmen" could have cost them their own lives and again "saving face" which includes not OUTWARDLY admitting fault or taking responsibility even when you share in that responsibility is an unfortunate part of S.E. asian culture that is very diffcult for westerners to comprehend.

It would have been nice if this documentary provided some background information for people who are unfamiliar with the atrocities that took place in Cambodia from 1975-79, but even if one is not familiar with Cambodias' genocidal past, this documentary may help motivate people to learn more about this period in history. As far as providing footage from this period? What footage? There is none or at least very little since Pol Pot did not allow himself to be filmed and sealed off Cambodia to the rest of the world during the Khmer Rouge years, so very little (if any) footage of signifigance exists and this is the whole purpose for the re- enactment.

Vann Nath should serve as an inspiration for human kind. A man who endored so much tragedy and still was able to walk away not only with his life but with his dignity intact.

Compared to the European Holocaust, in which six million Jews as well as multitudes of other human beings were slaughtered in the concentration camps, the more recent events in Cambodia, where somewhere around 2 million people (perhaps 20% of the entire country?) died in only four years of Khmer Rouge rule, are relatively little known or discussed outside Cambodia itself. Of the 17,000 imprisoned and tortured in Tuol Sleng, the focus of this chilling documentary, only SEVEN survived. Perhaps only three are still alive today, forty years later.

Watching this documentary, in which two of the survivors engage in discussions about the camp with their former guards and captors and in which those guards re-enact their daily routine, is horrifying. Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil; these individuals personify it. The opening scenes are of one of the guards in his ordinary life today, planting rice, holding his baby, talking with his parents. Over a series of meetings with Vann Nath, the Khmer artist who was one of that tiny handful of survivors, however, the viewer becomes aware of what lies in the past of this guard and others -- some of whom were only 13 or 14 years old -- and how they still try to force it to the back of their minds.

There are scenes in this film -- which is free of any overall narration that might allow the viewer to distance himself or herself from the material in any way -- that will remain with me for a long time, such as one guard showing, in excruciating detail, how he 'cared' for the prisoners in the former schoolroom entrusted to him at Tuol Sleng, fetching rice soup and water, and threatening to beat them for sitting up or moving too much. In another scene, one former guard sits at the interrogator's desk, reading from a transcript of an interrogation, while four others carry in what first looks like the body of a prisoner, but turns out to be a chair in which the prisoner would sit and be tortured into a confession. Without the confession to give the regime a 'legal' pretext for their decision to order the 'destruction' of the individual, the execution often didn't proceed. And some of those confessions, as Vann Nath tries to get the guards to realize, were improbable in the extreme. One points out to him that it seemed rational at the time. "I gave her a choice (that she was spying for) the KGB, the CIA or the Vietnamese enemy," one former guard says. The 19-year-old girl, too illiterate to write her own confessions, chooses the CIA, and eventually confuses to defecating in hospital operating rooms on CIA orders.

There are few heroes of this documentary. Even the other survivor, as Vann Nath gently points out to him, named some 64 other people in his own 'confession', each of which probably was in turn arrested and murdered. Nath himself has obviously wrestled extensively with the moral and spiritual questions that such horrific events raise in the mind of any thinking individual, rather than shying away from them as his subjects do. They still define themselves as victims. In that case, what about the thousands of Tuol Sleng inmates who are murdered -- what are they? Nath enquires. "Secondary victims," one guard responds. And yet, 70% of the guards survived. Nath, on the contrary, emerges as a Khmer version of Primo Levi and Simon Wiesenthal, making his life's work not only remembrance and justice, but also simply trying to get today's Cambodian regime to agree that the Khmer Rouge did something wrong.

Even after visiting Tuol Sleng in 2002 (where my guide was a woman of my own age with her legs scarred after having been whipped with barbed wire by the Khmer Rouge) this documentary told me much that I didn't know and gave me immense insight -- however disquieting -- into the minds of the perpetrators. The director -- a French citizen who escaped the genocide -- is to be commended for his ability to coax them into participating in the film: for all that German and Austrian governments and individuals have rejected Hitler and his regime more formally than today's Cambodian regime, I can't imagine an SS guard re-enacting what it was like to shove people into the gas chambers, while these former Khmer Rouge show exactly how they murdered their victims at the 'killing fields'.

Viewing this as Duch, the former head of Tuol Sleng, is being tried for war crimes in Cambodia -- in what is likely to be the only trial of its kind, given that some perpetrators like Pol Pot and torturer Ta Mok are now dead and others have been reabsorbed into the political system -- was particularly intriguing and thought provoking. For anyone interested in learning more about Tuol Sleng, I'd recommend reading Nic Dunlop's fascinating tale of how he discovered Duch, The Lost Executioner: A Story of the Khmer Rouge, or The Gate, a story of one man's encounters with and kidnapping by the Khmer Rouge before they rose to power.