Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll ****

I enjoyed this film—for what it was and for what it did not do.  Sure, it could have been deeper.  It could have been darker.  But even the title indicated it wasn’t trying to do those things.  And it was nice to see a country through a different lens than the one permanently smudged and smeared with a dreadful past.   After all, there are more to countries’ (and people’s) stories than their scars.

Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten looks at the rise of popular music in Cambodia through the 50s, 60s, and 70s.  The movie highlights Phnom Penh’s place as a center of activity in music and arts in Southeast Asia as the country worked to find its own footing after gaining independence from France.  I found very interesting the influence of France, Brazil, and Cuba on its musical growth.  And then came the conflict in neighboring Vietnam.  And rock and roll.

While US forces were in the nearby waters, their ships broadcast American music (meaning American music plus a lot of music we played but that originated across the pond).  And Cambodia picked up that music.  Their young men and women copied the style, worked on their choreography, and entertained their own youth.  Youth, after all, are those who can appreciate the changing tides of music and its rhythm.

For a while, rock and roll captivated the youth in Cambodia.  But anyone familiar with Cambodia’s past knows that this snazzy era of rock and roll and fun did not last.  Instead, in 1975, the Khmer Rouge gained power and control, and near two million people were killed.  Included in these numbers were most of the artists—-and teachers, and doctors, and, well, basically all professionals and intellectuals.  Killed.  Executed.  Murdered.

Here is where my movie companion wished the movie had gone deeper.  And I agree that the film but glossed over this part of the story.  After all, very little, if any, was discussed on how the Khmer Rouge works its way in.  What allowed them to keep the power while they did.  How corruption bled across all the areas of government and power and influence and the people.

What the movie did do, though, was work in the US bombing of this country as a topic—that happening after the evacuation of American personnel and citizens.  Granted, the movie didn’t go deep enough here either.  I was left with more questions about those bombings of this professed neutral country, wondering just how much the Khmer Rouge had gained power before these bombings and whether that was more of America bowing its chest in the region.

But then again, this wasn’t a movie intended to focus on war or the killings or the country’s unintended role around the Vietnam War.  The film, using interviews of musicians (or their family members) who survived, focused on the impact the killings had on music and the arts.  The new music that had emerged, giving Cambodia’s youth their own voice, was suppressed  It disappeared.

Oppressive power and war have a wider impact than what’s on the surface.  I applaud this film for being willing to shine its light on this other side of dark pasts.  It’s because of this I assign four stars to this film.  Sure, it could have done more.  But it never pretended that it would.  And for what it intended to do, it did it well.