Swimming to Cambodia

A film that watches a man sitting at a table. Spalding Gray is the narrator. In front of him a table, a glass of water, a notebook, and a map behind him. He starts talking and that is the whole film. What he describes is a shoot. He had a small part in The Killing Fields and stayed in Thailand for months. From there the narrative keeps scattering and gathering itself. On one hand he describes Cambodia. The American bombing, the Khmer Rouge, and what the country went through. On the other he describes himself. A hotel room, drugs, the sea, a relationship, and the search for a part. He puts the two lines side by side deliberately. An account of a genocide and his own small anxieties appear in the same sentence. This is uncomfortable and the narrative knows it. What he is looking for is a moment. Gray speaks of a "perfect moment" and goes looking for it in the Indian Ocean. What the narrative is interested in is not Cambodia but the one looking: its idea is that an American looking at history mostly sees himself, and that he admits it. The form is entirely fixed. The camera does not leave the table and the set does not change. The only things that change are light and music. Jonathan Demme builds the cuts, the light shifts and the moves closer to the narrative's rhythm. The music is by Laurie Anderson. The text is a monologue Gray performed on stage for years and the film records one performance of it. The running time is a little under eighty minutes. Spalding Gray, Sam Waterston and Ira Wheeler appear. Jonathan Demme directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes monologue theatre and films carried by speech. Who it is not for: anyone looking for visual storytelling; there is a man and a table on the screen and that is all.