First They Killed My Father - my review

There have been profound moments in my life where I have learned something I didn’t previously know that made me realize just how much I didn’t know… about this world, about life experiences beyond my comprehension, and about the sort of weight that some people carry silently. And just because there are people walking around that don’t know something of that experience doesn’t make the weight any less heavy, any less painful, any less life altering for the individual who doesn’t have the benefit of not knowing. 

Tonight I watched First They Killed My Father; it came up in the suggestions on my Netflix account.  Now I should preface that despite my love of history and my decent knowledge of the Vietnam War, I’m the first to admit that I’m no expert on the why’s, hows’s, and when’s of certain historical events of war. Jose knows so much about… well, so much, that I find myself often wondering how he fits so much information in his noggin.  We regularly have conversations where I’ll bring something up, and then he responds with details and a story and timeline… it’s baffling. 

So, anyway, almost 12 years ago now, Jose and I were recruited to this company in San Diego and made the move from Denver in January 2006. One of the friends we met out there was originally from Cambodia. He worked in Accounting with Jose, and he sort of had this mystery about him. There was an openness about him and yet a deep privateness about him. I’m not one to ask questions of people even when I’m dying to know their story, because I never want to intrude; you just never know how someone’s pain is triggered. I knew his age, I knew where he was from, and I knew he wasn’t there anymore. But there came a day that has stuck with Jose and I both. It was when this friend commented that he hated Nixon because Nixon bombed his village. It was the first personal thing he had ever said to us. From there, we learned that this friend lost loved ones and neighbors, and he came to the US as a little boy of 8 years old… a refugee. I felt after that conversation that I knew enough about him to know what his story probably was. It wasn’t until tonight that I saw his story play out on my laptop screen through the eyes of a child… the main character of this film… that I realized how shallow my “insight” had been. I realized that I had thought of his memories as playing out through an adult’s mind, which is a terrible thing to be sure, but this friend sees those events through the eyes of a little boy…a little boy the same age as my little boys. And that’s just… there aren’t words for that.

If I could see this friend again, I might not say a word. I might just walk up to him and hug him as hard as I can for as long as he’d let me. I actually hate that I didn’t realize the obvious when he told the story. I’m not sure how I reacted when he told it. Did I say I’m sorry? How small do those words seem to me now that I’m thinking about this through a different set of lenses? But what can you say about something so atrocious that should never ever happen to anybody? I mean we are all human beings, and it’s difficult to fathom how there can be one person this evil, let alone so many that the ultimate domino effect can occur, causing people who might never have become monsters… to become monsters. And these sufferings were not isolated to the Cambodians who were a neutral country and bombed anyway with children torn from their parents, spouses torn from each other. They are happening today in other countries; we have seen footage on our own tv screens. Most of us have seen that precious boy who was pulled from the Aleppo carnage and sat in an ambulance covered in blood, soot, and dust. There are thousands like him. And what must it be like for each of them now and in the future? Where do they go to survive? What additional atrocities happen to them as they try to escape and survive? How do these babies grow up and live with these memories?

I hope everyone will watch First They Killed My Father. It’s a film based on the book written by the little girl when she’s grown. She represents to me someone who my friend in San Diego can identify with… someone who is telling a story that everyone should see and do everything possible to not allow to repeat. It’s too easy with distance to think that some people are just expendable if your definition of the greater good allows for it. And then you see something like this, and, I have to tell you, none of the people in this film seemed expendable to me. See what you think. Watch this film.
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#firsttheykilledmyfather #cambodiabombings #vietnamwar #loungung
www.loungung.com/

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