Thoughts on Cambodia

Before I ventured into Cambodia, it was hard for me to conceive of it being anything beyond the images left behind by the Killing Fields.

To me, Cambodia was a country forever shadowed by the Pol Pot years of famine, torture, cruelty and unbelievable political stupidity. It was difficult to see the face of the country beyond its history and its problems.

Seeing a country and its people face to face speaks volumes beyond what you read on paper. While people want sympathy in their brokenness, nobody wants to be remembered solely for their mistakes, their tragedies, their dark times. Similarly for countries. Cambodians want to move on. They do not want to just be remembered as the tragic playground for Pol Pot's egotism.

Everywhere I went in Cambodia, it was getting progressively harder to see the fingerprints of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The poverty was still there. The many landmine victims were still there. Toul Sleng was still there. The pyramids of Cambodian skulls were still there.

But the real Cambodia seemed to call out to me to be heard. She did not want to be stereotyped as just another case study of political horror. She whispered, "Look at me. Look. At. Me. Know who I am. Not who you want me to be."

In Toul Sleng - the infamous school turned interrogation and torture centre of the Khmer Rouge, I walk past panel after panel of mugshots of the thousands who passed through the gates and never emerged again. In a room full of discarded rusting leg irons, I suddenly find a crumbling plaster bust of Pol Pot. It is moulding away, defaced and ignored by most of the tourists. I stand over it and stare at it. The feeling of helpless anger over all that Pol Pot did is overwhelming. I find that I am crying as I take photos of it. I curse it. Bastard - I think - you bastard.

In Phnom Penh, a new painfully white NOKIA shop mushroomed in the midst of a dirty street, screamed crassily, "Capitalism is here!" Fresh new billboards advertising luxury goods and dainty cafes in ubiquitous dark wood and cream leather agreed. The many street stall vendors offering fresh steamed corn, Vietnamese noodles, voluptuous milkfruit agreed.

A lovely Cambodian woman tells me in impeccable English that she works as a maid in Malaysia. She dishes out her delicately flavoured coconut fish stew for all people - me, the awkward Singaporean tourist, the sweet-faced Chinese student, the sullen decorated military officer, the construction workers. A Khmer Literature teacher sits next to me and tells me about how difficult it is to teach teenagers these days. I look at him in wonder: 20 years ago, this man would never have been able to declare aloud his affection for Literature. The Khmer Rouge would have bludgeoned him to death for that.

In the rural area of Kratie, giggling Cambodian village children ran freely in the mud - their clothes and bags are obviously donations from the First World. I count at least three shiny F4 schoolbags on my trip. Jerry Yen's beaming white mug is disconcerting in this place. Do these children know that thousands of Chinese girls swoon and scream before the feet of those four pretty boys? They do not. And they don't care. They run barefoot and bare-bodied, next to the swollen pigs and sulking cows. Their feet are fleet, their dirty teeth break out into easy grins, their eyes have not learnt the light of cynicism or boredom. Older children naturally lead the younger, admonishing them to say thank you for the little gifts we give out. These village children know riches of childhood that I suspect their wealthier counterparts have forgotten in their sterile, clean, perfumed cocoons.

A Cambodian orphan boy with the gentle eyes motions to me to make him a balloon sculpture cross. I motion to him to wait as I make balloon dogs for his friends. He waits in patience and quietly watches me twist the balloons clumsily as I pore over the instructions. The boy gracefully picks up a stray balloon and tries to mould his own cross. He fails and tries again. Fails and tries again. And succeeds, displaying his cross to me with a sweet smile. With deft, agile little movements, he shows me how to sculpt it. Then in silent partnership, he joins me and starts making balloon crosses and balloon crowns for all his little friends.

I take him aside to give him a little toy and tell the translator to praise him - that he of all the children will get this special prize because he knows how to be generous and give instead of take all the time. The boy smiles quietly and shyly wanders downstairs. The next time I see him, the little angel has given away his crown, his cross AND the little toy to the other gleeful children. I look at him in wonder, marvel at his charity and think of how Christ loved the poor old woman who gave away her copper coins.

All along he has not said a single word, but he has given me volumes to think about.

Cambodia is not Pol Pot. It is not Toul Sleng. It is not S21 or the Khmer Rouge or the Killing Fields.
It is not poverty. It is not famine.

It is all that but it is much much more.

Something of the real Cambodia is in the smile of that young boy - serene, quiet, trusting, at peace.
Something in his smile says Blessed. It is for such as him that Christ preached the Sermon on the Mount.

I think of Psalm 37:

"For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.
A little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look for them, they will not be found.
But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace.
The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them;
but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming."

Somewhere I romanticise. I dream, I hope - Cambodian children are laughing because the Lord has taught them to laugh in defiance at the wicked.

Evil men might have held Cambodia ransom for four bloody years. But they shall never inherit the land.

I Heart Daniel Craig

Watched Casino Royale last night.

How incredibly SEXY is Daniel Craig as the new Bond?

Daniel Craig + white short sleeve shirt + wry smile = RWWWWWWWOOOOARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Happiness Looks Like This

I can't begin to tell you how goofily happy I get when I look at this picture. Love. At. First. Aw.

Love Actually?

Last night, we were wondering about what was the last romantic movie we enjoyed. There was some bantering about Love Actually, Pride and Prejudice, When Harry Met Sally.

Curiously, I never realized how few of those romance movies I actually love. I liked some of them not because I found them particularly romantic. In fact, my favourite scenes were those with that hard-edge of realism. Maybe it’s my inner cynic – heh.

My favourite story in Love Actually was the morose one about near-adultery - where Alan Rickman reduces Kristen Scott-Thompson to wrenching sobs over a Joni Mitchell CD. I loved Before Sunrise and Before Sunset not because I thought the relationship in there was cool – but because I liked Julie Delpy’s awkward burst of anger as she confronts Ethan Hawke about how he had left her behind when he got married. I liked 2046 for the way it painted the ugliness of secret longings and selfish love – it was fitting to see the Tony Leung character alone and morose at the end of the whole show.

Okay the exceptions - I liked High Fidelity because it was …charming. Or rather John Cusack is charming, haha. I also liked Roman Holiday because it was just sweet, old-fashioned and cute. Who can say no to Audrey on a Vespa and Gregory Peck in a suit? Gregory Peck. 1950s Man in 1950s suit, Sigh.

The one fairly recent serious romantic movie I like is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I thought the ending was quite genuinely romantic. It was a screen relationship that I actually thought was worth rooting for. The whole movie cleverly used the metaphor of a memory-erasing technology to show how a beautiful, realistic love story has to be built upon remembering the good and the bad about each other. It was quite sweet to see the two leads tentatively agree to fall in love with each other again after reliving all the best and worst memories of their relationship.

I guess I am generally picky about films- especially when I have to shell out $8 for them. J Films that have managed to grab me successfully over the past few years all had to be pure fun (X-men, Batman Begins), clever or at least brutally realistic (Hotel Rwanda. The Constant Gardener).

On a tangent – I realize all my favourite “clever” films used a fantastical device to make a strangely grounded, frank observation about the things that we do to each other and to ourselves: American Beauty, Unbreakable, Eternal Sunshine, Memento, 2046, The Matrix (only the first) and now The Prestige. It is quite funny how appropriate analogies and metaphors are in talking about the human condition!

Currently reading: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Thinking of reading: John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener, Persepolis 2

the prestige: vengeance and the death of self

I watched The Prestige last week for director Chris Nolan and writer Jon Nolan. The Nolan brothers’ Memento is one of my fave movies of all time. Christopher and Jon Nolan must be an interesting pair of brothers: their work shows a Gothic fixation with Man’s inherent unreliability and propensity for the darkest kind of self-deception, obsession and egoistic self-deception.

Although I kind of saw the twist in the Prestige coming, I still was taken aback by the clever playing out of the Nolan brothers’ favourite Gothic theme. It’s one of the most genuinely disturbing endings I have seen in a while. I don’t think you can watch The Prestige for its ‘twist’ alone because the twist is fairly obvious after a while and can be unsatisfying if you don’t appreciate the odd mix of old-fashioned story-telling and sudden introduction of science-fiction that traditionally requires suspension of reality.

Memento was a tribute to the fickleness of memory: how it colours the way we perceive our grievances, moulds our selves and defines the lives we end up living. Memento succeeded at two levels: it was an old-fashioned Gothic story about the dark horror of Man’s capability for self-deception and murderous; it was also an intelligent noir detective thriller. Likewise, The Prestige is both a Gothic study of Man’s dark heart as well as a sci-fi/thriller/drama.

Once you get past the sci-fi device, The Prestige is a film that really gets you thinking about the horror of vengeance and how far we are willing to kill our Selves to get there. Although the ending would have us believe Angiers (Jackman) to be worse, I don’t think Fallon/Borden (Bale) is supposed to be any better.

Angiers kills himself literally and figuratively in his desperate search to be the best magician, to earn the adoring of the crowd. He sacrifices his human identity, his love for his wife and the possibility of love with a new woman. Worse, he knows what he is doing: he chooses blind stage hands backstage so that they cannot see the horror of his sin. Borden/Fallon kill themselves figuratively – they never experience true love for they sacrificed honesty in their relationships with family, friend and lover. They too have blended two lives so well that they lose their identity and no longer know who they actually are anymore.

The recurring questions in the show centre around “Are you willing to dirty your hands?”, “Do you know what sacrifice means?”. After all the clever pyrotechnics of this film have faded away, these questions I think remain far more outstanding. At the bottom of all their self-justification and pain, both Angiers and Borden/Fallon are essentially the same - impulsive, self-destructive, self-mutilating and willing to cheat on their nearest and dearest to get exactly what they want. Even the ‘happy’ ending where Borden/Fallon gets his daughter back is tainted. His daughter – like his wife/mistress - never had him and apparently never will truly have him as long as the wall of deception never drops.