film review
a kiwi take on the killing fields Brother Number One Director: Annie Goldson Reviewer:
Paul Sorrell
I
n August 1978 young New Zealander Kerry Hamill was captured by Khmer Rouge forces when his yacht Foxy Lady strayed into Cambodian waters. Kerry and an English companion were taken to a notorious prison in Phnom Penh where they were interrogated, tortured and finally executed. It is impossible to watch this documentary, which depicts the attempt to retrace Kerry’s final days by his brother, ace rower and Olympian Rob Hamill, with any sense of detachment. We are left in no doubt of the toll that these harrowing events have taken on Hamill and his family. While the raw immediacy of the telling drew me into the film, I was emotionally exhausted by the time the lights came up. Yet, while this story is well known to a local audience, it adds up to much more than the record of one man’s unbearable loss. By threading a series of visits and interviews through the drawn-out trial of Kang Kek Iew, or Comrade Duch, head of the notorious Tuol Sleng torture and execution centre where around 13,000 people were put to death, the film revisits the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge regime — a bloodbath in which Kerry Hamill was but one small statistic. Duch becomes the third protagonist of the film, after the Hamills, and his 2009 trial before the Extraordinary Chambers of the Court of Cambodia (ECCC), at which Rob Hamill spoke, not just for his brother, but for all the innocent dead of the killing fields, adds tension and unity to the film. While Duch cannot deny his involvement 28 Tui Motu InterIslands April 2012
in the atrocities he oversaw, he claims to have been acting under orders he could not refuse. His late conversion to Christianity — he was working for aid agency World Vision when arrested in 1999 — does little to mitigate the impact of his self-serving testimony in the dock. Skilfully woven from extended visits to the sites of Kerry’s capture and imprisonment, and interviews with victims and perpetrators (they are often difficult to separate), family and friends, jurists and journalists,
as well as documents painstakingly unearthed by Hamill, the film shows us a man at the limits of his emotional endurance — perhaps at the point of obsession (Rob is intending to testify again at the upcoming trial of four Khmer Rouge leaders). In a film that chronicles one family’s involvement in one of the twentieth century’s greatest atrocities, reconciliation, forgiveness and redemption are sounded as muted notes. A movie for stout hearts and strong stomachs. n
The Easter Story by Joy Cowley
$19.99 +$4 p/pkg
Just released, with beautiful original colour illustrations by Donald Morrison complementing Joy Cowley’s text on the story of Easter and what it means for us. The stress is on love and healing, on growing in prayer through talking to Jesus, leading the reader to gratitude for “the wonderful Easter Story”. Published by Pleroma Press
Freephone 0508 988 988 order@pleroma.org.nz 38 Higginson Street, Otane Central Hawke’s Bay
www.christiansupplies.co.nz