One Evening after the War

“One Evening after the War” is really one of the good Cambodian drama films despite few weaknesses.

After the war, is it certain that peace will come instead? And will people live in harmony and peaceful lives? The answers are all revealed in this film.

“One Evening after the War” is a 108-minute movie directed by Rithy Panh and was premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. The film shows about a life of a soldier who receives nothing at all after the war.

When the civil war ended, Cambodian people struggled to go back to their normal lives – the peaceful lives. Savannah (Narith Roeun) is a soldier who is a survival of the war, and whose family were killed almost all in Pol Pot regime. He lives with his uncle in Phnom Penh and makes a living by being a boxer. He meets a 19-year-old bar girl, Srey Poeuv (Chea Lyda Chan) and falls in love with her. He wants her to stop working as a bar girl, but she cannot since she is indebted to the bar owner and is forced to keep working. Sovannah wants to clear her debts so he teams up with an ex-soldier and plans a crime, robbery, which could give him some money.

The film perfectly reflects the reality in society in 1990s in Cambodia. Soldiers hardly find a well-paid job after the war. Therefore, they will inevitably face poverty, the enemy of every people. With guns they have from the war and the pressure from the poverty those people could possibly do anything even the evil ones such as crimes.

The characters also make very good performances even though they are not quite famous and not often appear in the other films. Sovannah and Srey Poeuv, the main characters, and the others can change their moods, facial expressions and act as if they were in the real situation.What is special which makes this drama film different from a number of Cambodian films is that all the characters use their own voices to express their emotion in each plot. Most films in that time did not use the natural voice of the characters but from the other professionals.

One weakness in the film should be the plot in which Savannah and his partner go to rob the gold sellers and leave Srey Poeuv behind in the car parking a little bit far from the robbed house. Rithy Panh should have parked the car with the already-stated engine at the nearest part to the house so that the two robbers could escape immediately. They should not have had a long run to reach the car.

Rithy Panh, the director, should also have made the police arrest Srey Poeuv because it is by no means certain that she is Sovannah’s accomplice.

However, compared to the others, this movie is very good. Audiences, especially the Cambodian people should search for and watch it with their own eye in order to find out how lives of soldiers were after the war and evaluate the quality of the film by themselves.

By Veng Rachana