The Act of Killing

While I recommend you see "The Act of Killing", the context for the film is missing. I think the filmmakers felt that it wasn't necessary but I am pretty sure younger audiences will feel a bit confused by what has happened. So, the retired history teacher in me will briefly give an overview that I wish had come when the film began: President Sukarno was the first president of Indonesia He was a strong nationalist who worked to gain independence from the Dutch. As the years passed, his administration forged closer and closer alliances with the left--particularly the communists. However, when Suharto deposed Sukarno in a coup, he ushered in an era of fascist-like repression. Suddenly, murder squads sprung up throughout the country and communists and the Chinese minority were targeted for extermination. During this period (mostly from 1965-7), approximately a million people were murdered--often very brutally.

Now, decades later, filmmakers have come to Indonesia to interview folks who were responsible for some of these murders. And, surprisingly, they find that not only are these folks rather unrepentant, but that the culture of murdering the opposition still thrives. For example, Pancasila Youth is a paramilitary organization much like the Nazi SS and SA. They were the folks behind the murders and today STILL are several million member strong--and they are proud of this. What's worse, the government is strongly aligned with them and the film shows the nation's Vice President talking to them and giving his assent for their violence. While the filmmakers did not get interviews with these higher ups, they did get others responsible for the murders to be interviewed and even recreate the killings for the audience! Oddly, they seemed very cooperative and smiled throughout--as if they were very proud of being mass murderers.

As far as the film goes, it is an amazing portrait of evil--especially since many of these folks look very ordinary. Monsters can have families, friends and even be pillars of society...but they are monsters. This is the great message of the film. And, because of this it is invaluable and worthy of receiving the Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. It is worth seeing.

While I strongly recommend the film as it is brave and outstanding in what it achieved, it also is overlong. And, sadly, while the film shows evil up close, after a while it all becomes rather boring. Shortening it a bit here and there would have made it more poignant. Still, it is a must-see film. With a slight editing, I would have scored this film a 10.

I have *never* seen anything like The Act of Killing. It is a documentary of sorts about the Indonesian death squads who killed millions of 'communists' in the 60s. Director Josh Oppenheimer worked with the squad leaders to make a 'film' about their involvement any way they wanted to make it. The result is staggeringly, devastatingly honest. I watched almost the entire the film with my jaw on the floor and my heart in my throat.

The massacres are so impinged upon the collective consciousness of Indonesia, even today, that it appears to permeate every aspect of every person's life. These squad leaders are still feared and celebrated, and their actions are institutionally supported, so, as a result, they get to run around patting themselves and each other on the back for their atrocities. It's bizarre on the highest order, and, though I wouldn't have thought of it, there probably isn't a better way to treat the subject matter than the way this film does.

There are some scenes that are actually hard to watch, too real, even when they're not. Watching Chinese immigrant shop owners getting shaken down by gangsters for money was particularly sad, as was seeing confused, scared children cry ceaselessly after participating in hyper- realistic reenactments of massacres.

Too often, when it comes to documentaries, people implore, "you have to see this one," citing its social, economic, personal, governmental, or scientific importance. Well this film is one everyone should see. It's really hard to believe sometimes that people like these death squad leaders really exist and travesties like this really have and continue to happen.

This film absolutely blew my mind. It is unquestionably one of the very best documentaries I've ever seen.

Watching this film should be mandatory for every man, woman, and child in the world.

I would leave it at that but IMDb has a minimum of 10 lines of text to prove you "mean business" with your review.

This film was utterly astounding in every sense, most importantly in the way it just lets a strange, inexplicable, simple truth emerge on its own. It is not a film that makes you feel better about the world or yourself, but rather one that makes you remember, oh yes, all this is real, and it really matters.

Without providing a spoiler, the final scene also underscores why documentaries are made, and the very real, very important things that utterly cannot be faked with all the acting, special effects, and make up in the world. That life is real.

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I wanted to make one other note to my initial impression, since this film remains my favorite film of the year and possible of a several- year. It is worth highlighting the fact that Mr Oppenheimer spent a good eight or ten years of his life making this film, spending his life in Indonesia with a camcorder and progressively greater levels of logistical and technical help (from what has been made public about the film). Films like this don't get made in a year. Not at all.

It is worth reflecting on the connection between the time you invest in something, and what you get out of it. You get the same impression when you read, for example, one of the major novels of a couple centuries ago, but it is rare to see artistic works this big made anymore. War and Peace wasn't made in a year either. I somewhat feel for Mr Oppenheimer and the expectations that will precede his next work, whatever it is. Nothing like this will get made in the next two or three years, and that makes me the more grateful for this work.

By omitting the historical context behind the 1965–1966 Indonesian killings and letting the Indonesian death squad leaders tell their own story, watching The Act of Killing evokes the Nietschean idea of 'gazing into the abyss'. That if one were to 'gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.' The Act of Killing is a deep ocean of ideas, constantly reflecting the human condition. Every scene was like a wave, with an entirely different idea, crashing over the previous scene and provoked a new thought in me. My thought train spiraled and branched off into different directions.

At first, I thought about the brutality of man. Then it went to how history is written by the victor.

And then I thought about the nature of cinema and storytelling. That in the act of telling their own story, the death squad leaders became conscious of their past actions through the task of having to present it to an audience. The aesthetic distance, interestingly enough, ends up being the distance these death squad leaders needed to truly examine what they have done.

And then I arrived at the nature of how extreme ideas in society prevail, despite of how illogical or inhuman they may be. That logic is relative, anyone can easily manipulate logic to justify any action. One can make anything sound logical to do whatever they desired in a given moment.

And like that, the film kept on giving infinitely and its themes continually deepened. The Werner Herzog brand of the 'ecstatic truth' is at play here. Each audience member will have their own individual experience of the film's ideas and themes, because the film allows it so. Director Joseph Oppenheimer never puts these men on trial and instead of burrows for something deeper to reflect humanity at its core. These men, like anybody, are just human. And I cared and became invested into their emotional journey through how Oppenheimer displays their humanity, which was perplexing at points. I had to remind myself that they were still mass murderers.

At a two and a half hour running time, the film is too long. It's hard to sit with such heavy material. There is a 115-minute theatrical cut that exists, which is 45 minutes shorter than this director's cut. Joshua Oppenheimer seemingly wants to cover more ground than needed and less definitely would have been more. I stuck with it alright because I was fascinated by the film's subjects, but it may test the patience of general audiences. That said, The Act of Killing is a great story told through subjects that I never ever want to meet in real life. It is an unsettling and powerful experience and is one of the best films of 2013, if not the most important.

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After over one-hundred years of cinema, it's pretty rare to come across a film unlike anything you've seen before, let alone one that begs the question: how the hell did they pull that off? Even though blockbuster films like Gravity try to do this by taking us to great heights (no pun intended) through technological / cinematographic advancements, we somehow end up bored with the result. Who really cares how long and complicated your opening take is if it feels like it lives inside the brain of a computer? Perhaps fiction has been done to death, perhaps we've advanced the tech behind fictional filmmaking so far that it's completely lost touch with reality. This is probably why, today, documentaries have never been more relevant and more capable of blowing your mind. The advantage documentaries have over fiction is that they can show us things so unbelievable they could only exist in the real world. Truth is truly stranger than fiction.

Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing is a very special documentary. What begins as a glimpse into the lives of a handful of former death squad leaders, Oppenheimer then invites them to help produce fictional recreations of their killings, recreations mimicking the style of the murderers' favourite Hollywood movies. As the fiction overtakes the lives of its subjects, The Act of Killing becomes what Oppenheimer has described as "a documentary of the imagination." Never before has such nightmarish and surreal terrain been excavated, revealing a chilling indifference to nothing less than unpunished crimes against humanity.

If you've ever tried to imagine what a Nazi conquered world would be like, this documentary might be closest thing we'll ever have to actually knowing. What we discover is that when history is written by the victors, we see something very frightening emerge: acceptance of brutality as not only necessary, but heroic. Aware of how it's so much easier to see the contents of a fishbowl when staring at it from a distance, The Act of Killing positions its viewers in a way that forces us to question our own perspective on how and why things really are in the world, not in the way we've been brainwashed to believe. The murderous thugs Oppenheimer immortalizes are not behind bars, or on trial for war crimes, or any of their crimes; these men are heroes in their native Indonesia, on parade to be adored by their hero-worshipping countrymen and women.

Considering Oppenheimer cast his subjects inside a surreal, hyper-stylized world of fictional recreations, it's impossible to argue The Act of Killing isn't manipulative. But it's the lengths Oppenheimer goes to -- the soaring heights of absurdity these staged recreations go to -- that confirm, whatever moral compass exists, it is not being directed by someone with a hidden agenda. Ultimately, the fictitious pageantry calls attention to how difficult it is for someone to have perspective when they're lost within a concrete belief system cemented by victory, history, and the applause of an entire nation. If you think you wouldn't have been swept away by the mass-hysteria/nationalism excited by the Nazis pre-WW2, then you're lying to yourself as much as you may have been for having bought into Obama's movement for 'Change.' I know I'm guilty of the latter.

Damning as it is, Oppenheimer's surreal world also acts as an arena for 'art' therapy, treatment both logical and plausible for men who've been playing roles their whole lives. Decades ago these gangsters were young, ego-driven, power hungry men who performed the most horrible acts imaginable...and now as old men, they've perfected their roles as heroic cowboys proud of having defended the homestead. But once the act is over and the veil lifted, these men are revealed to be victims of their own acts, sickened by what they've done, who they are, and the 'act' they've clung to in order to preserve their own sanity. To gain access to the minds of characters so repulsive and sinister is something even the best screenwriters couldn't fathom pulling off; to be able to humanize them, and make them sympathetic is a feat of filmmaking unlike anything I've ever watched before.

Something else I've never seen before is a film with one "anonymous" credit, let alone dozens of them, including one given to a co-director. The gravity of this reminds us the killings proudly re-enacted by the film's subjects are not just nostalgic, but very much a part of the today's way of doing business. By the time the credits scroll we realize the real culprit here, the one we cannot pardon, is Capitalism.

The Act of Killing depicts capitalism at its darkest hour, in a special place where brutality and savagery are necessary and applauded. Immersing us in such a dark place, The Act of Killing shows us how difficult it is to identify the outlines of our own faces once the definitions of "truth" and "justice" are mutated beyond recognition. History asks us: How far removed are we from these crimes? Was it not our governments who supported these atrocities? Whether we knew it or not, we collectively turned blind eyes, condoning a genocide that took the lives of over one million people. These are the realizations we should be most sickened and disturbed by, but are we? We enabled these men to kill so who are we to judge, and if the results coincide with our politics, do we even care?

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