Word: davidson
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...move the university into the front rank, the commission, whose co- chairmen are Ralph Davidson, chairman of the board of Time Inc., and Harold Enarson, president emeritus of Ohio State University, makes 29 recommendations. The key one is "to restructure SUNY as a public benefit corporation." By this concept SUNY would become a semi-independent state body, with funds allocated in block grants, under control of the trustees. New construction would be paid for by additional state revenues. Thus SUNY's administrators would presumably have their hands free and enough money to run the store...
Director Joffe and screenwriter Bruce Davidson go to great pains to draw a parallel between Schanberg's abandonment of Pran and America's abandonment of Cambodia. When Schanberg is given an award for his Cambodian coverage, he gives a tear-filled acceptance speech laying the blame for Cambodia's agonies on the long-gone doorstep of the Nixon administration. Just afterwards Rockoff confronts Schanberg in the men's room, reminding Schanberg that the single-minded persistence that got him the award might also have resulted in the death of his friend...
Unfortunately Joffe and Davidson have not managed to create a whole movie, but two separate ones. The first movie is the better one; it ends when Pran is forced to leave the French embassy. The second movie posed a critical formal problem to its makers: how to balance Pran's efforts to get out of Cambodia with Schanberg's campaign to find...
Joffe and Davidson chose to cut between Pran's privations and Schanberg's searching's, contrasting the objective desperation of Pran's position with the psychological desperation of Schanberg's guilt. But since Pran was not allowed to talk and independent thought was considered a crime, Joffe uses voice overs, mental "Dear Sidney" letters to expose the action and Pran's reaction. The technique backfires, and they might have been better off leaving off the whole section in Cambodian. A more intelligent solution would have been to use subtitles, letting the vicious regimentation of the Khmer Rouge speak for itself...
Joffe's and Davidson's defects drag The Killing Fields under the threshold of cinematic glory. But its tough, unsparing depiction of two witnesses to one the 20th centuries greatest tragedies excuses the occasional cinematic botch-ups. The Killing Fields has the courage of its convictions, an encouraging case of substance winning over style...