Word: cambodia
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SWIMMING TO Cambodia is as much about swimming as My Dinner With Andre was about food. It is instead about Cambodia, which screenwriter Spalding Gray says is beyond his imagination yet succeeds in vividly describing...
Swimming To Cambodia...
Gray's story is truly funny in parts, truly horrifying in others. On the surface, it concerns Gray's experiences while filming The Killing Fields, in which he had a small role as an American ambassador's aide. However, as his story of the US bombing of Cambodia in April 1975 unfolds, it becomes apparent that Gray's real message is that "an invisible cloud of evils surrounds the earth and lands anywhere...even America...
Sounds like a great story with fast-paced action and quick scene changes, right? Wrong--Swimming to Cambodia is simply a monologue, filmed before a concert audience. However, Gray's mesmerizing story and Jonathan Demme's brilliant use of lighting and sound make the viewers forget that it is simply watching a man speak. The audience becomes wrapped up in the story as though it were a film with a Plot, characters and scenes...
Gray also mocks the US administration, both lightly and with dark severity. He tells us that the CIA put Lon Nol in power in Cambodia although "no one knew anything about Lon Nol except that Lon Nol spelled background is still Lon Nol." And he compares Pol Pot to Hitler, saying the reason the US continued to support Pol Pot is because no Americans speak Khmer and therefore don't care about the genocide which occured for five years in Cambodia...