Summaries

Synopsis

Across Three Wildernesses: The Journey of Two Poets is a documentary about U Sam Oeur and Ken McCullough who met in the turbulent decade of the 1960s when they were students at the University of Iowa. The film chronicles, through their poetry and a visually striking narrative, the emotional course of their intertwined lives. Sam was the gentle, comforting person Ken turned to when feeling down. They taught each other fluency in their native languages. After graduation they planned spending time in Sam's country, Cambodia, where they would write about the incomparable beauty of the people and translate the country's exotic legends. But Sam returned to his homeland alone. Despite trying to maintain their fragile, and often censored, line of communication, the two friends were not reunited for another 24 years.

Cambodia's quiet life changed quickly. It was secretly bombed by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. A coup led by Lon Nol in 1970 pushed the country into a civil war. From 1975 to 1979 the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, took control of the country and began the slaughter of its own people.

Sam, his wife Sim Syna, their son, and Sam's mother-in-law were herded into six different concentration camps during that reign of terror. Sim Syna gave birth to twin daughters who were immediately strangled by midwives. Pol Pot's planned economy did not permit leave for women to care for their newborn children. They were needed in the rice fields immediately to continue their bone-bending, forced labor in support of brutal utopian goals.

Sam and his family survived the first wilderness of execution in 'the killing fields,' but did not know whether they would be able to safely pass the wildernesses of starvation and disease. The Khmer Rouge now pushed the sick and dying people relentlessly westward for the sole purpose of transforming them into fertilizer. Crops would be richer and double in size if human fertilizer was used, according to the demonic thinking of the Khmer Rouge. Sam, weakened by sickness and lack of food, asked the cadres to allow him to die on the banks of the Mekong River. But he recovered and went on. Sam readily attributes his survival through the three wildernesses to his protection by elves in red shorts who have accompanied him through several incarnations.

In January of 1979, the Vietnamese, rankled by the Khmer Rouge border skirmishes, liberated the Cambodians from their oppressors. Sam and his family returned home on foot, trying to imagine what might be left of the shambles of their lives. During these years, Ken tried to keep up his correspondence with Sam, but was asked to stop when it became apparent to Sam that his mail was being censored. Ken, a thoughtful person and insightful writer, never forgot about Sam and wondered in a poem at the time whether 'that smile is still a part of you, or if it was torn from you by American bombs, or left as dogmeat out in the Khmer Rouge sun.'

Through a worker from an Australian aid organization, Sam requested a copy of his thesis from the University of Iowa. Sam's signal that he was alive was picked up by Ken and Clark Blaise of the International Writing Program. Their elaborate plans were successful in bringing Sam to the United States in 1992. Sam wrote poem after poem describing his life in the Killing Fields, while Ken developed a new literary skill by translating the poems from Khmer into English. They began to have poetry readings around the country, Kens sonorous voice combining with Sam's chanting of the alternate stanzas in the traditional smot style. Their work inspired several works of fine art and an opera by the composer Mark Bruckner called 'The Krasang Tree.' Coffee House Press published a book of the poems titled 'Sacred Vows,' followed my Sam's memoir, 'Crossing Three Wildernesses.' Walt Whitman, 'The Poet of Democracy,' became an inspiration to Sam who, with Ken, translated many of Whitman's poems into Khmer for the first time. Act I closes with a reading of Whitman's 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,' while Sam and Ken ride the Staten Island Ferry overlooking the waters Whitman wrote about. It is a celebration of what unites people across time, distance and cultures.

Act II concerns Sam's monkhood. He was ordained a Buddhist monk in The Bronx, New York, in 2000. He spent a few months at the temple meditating and ministering to the people. He speaks of a hermit once telling him, 'We come to take something or we come for peace. It's the mystery in our nature.' While the second act explores his spiritual side, it is not afraid to delve into the political aspects of Sams journey. He is as angry about the political follies that ruined his country as he is passionate about the universal longing for 'peace, freedom and democracy.'

At the same time, in Act III, Ken realizes a lifelong ambition to travel to Cambodia to trace episodes in Sam's life and to meet Sam's wife, Sim Syna, who remained in Cambodia involuntarily. He is frozen into silence when Syna takes him into the jungle on a motor bike where she finds the house where she lost the twins. They come face-to-face with one of the midwives who murdered her and Sam's twins 24 years earlier. Syna remains gracious, but the murderess is visibly shaken by the encounter. In the emotional climax, Ken walks down to the bank of the Mekong River where he imagines Sam had buried the twins. The movie ends on the positive note of seeing the children of Cambodia enjoying the era of peace, amid Sam's incanted blessing for his people.