As It Happened: The Last God-King
Produced by Jim Gerrand
SBS, Thursday, July 11, 8.30pm (8 in SA)
Reviewed by Eva Cheng
Being remnants of a social system that has no place at all in today's globally operated capitalism, monarchs — notwithstanding the superficial glamour — often turn themselves into clowns. Norodom Sihanouk, king of Cambodia, is one of them.
Sihanouk is a particularly pathetic case, not only because of his amazing eccentricity — as adequately captured in The Last God-King — but for the utterly unprincipled political role he has played, always looking after his own interests first and foremost.
This has involved opportunistic wheeling and dealing with the US and Vietnam (at different times, partly to pit one against the other), being bed-fellows with butcher Pol Pot, seeking protection from the Chinese government (which is based on an ideology that he professes he knows nothing about, which explains why he feels totally at ease continuing to seek a Chinese shelter despite China's changing colour and with different bureaucrats running the show).
All the raw facts can be found in The Last God-King, but presented in an uncritical light. Sihanouk is largely portrayed as a "pragmatist", with the navigational skills to steer Cambodia to survival in a difficult context. His repressive measures, especially in the '60s, and rebellion against them receive only a minute or two in the two-hour production which is soaked with footage and "evidence" that he is a beloved king, a moral authority who holds the country together.
However, extensive quotations from Sihanouk — for example, his admission that he does not like being criticised and his admiration for the powerful Angkor period, including the absolute monarchy on which it was based — provide enough basis for viewers to draw a different conclusion.
The Last God-King tries to capture the unique role that Sihanouk has played in Cambodia since he was put on the throne more than five decades ago. This covers an entire epoch of dramatic but disastrous changes for Cambodia. How imperialism — first French, then US — and Stalinist bureaucracies — USSR and China — dominated and shaped Cambodia to their needs comes through only in the background.
The Last God-King is a useful two hours of the modern history of Cambodia (but requiring critical scrutiny), amusingly coloured by the stupid excesses of the "god-king".