The documentary wasn't really anything like any other documentary I've seen before, to be honest. There's isn't really a narrator other than brief screens of text at certain points during the film to explain context or other similar details, but for the most part the direction of the film is traced by the words of the principal subjects of the film, Anwar Congo and his fellow former executioner friends and gang members related to the paramilitary organization Pancasila. Most of what's shown is meant to speak for itself or left open for the viewer to interpret; while on one hand, it's easy to simply react with shock to everything seemingly wrong about this society, I think the real purpose of this film isn't to shock the viewer, but to make them ponder why a messed up society like this is possible, and why people are capable of committing human atrocities against each other. If anything, by the end of the film, I was feeling more sensitive or perhaps even empathetic to the concerns of some of these men themselves, even though they still are murderers. And even now I'm wondering if that's at all appropriate.
The basic premise given by the director, Joshua Oppenheimer, is that he's come up to these men, who people recognize as heroes for their extermination of the communists of the 1960's, and asked them to relive those killings in whatever manner or film genre they see fit. Since Anwar and his buddies were huge fans of the American gangster films of the 60's among other things, the scenes that they end up filming for this take on varying forms reminiscent of those movies. We don't ever get to see the entire final film that these men make (it isn't actually clear whether they finished or not), but we do get to see a set of seemingly random, unrelated scenes and the making of those scenes, including a few surreal moments involving dancing native women, war ghosts and evil spirits, a drag queen, a decapitated talking head, and a giant statue of an open mouthed fish among other things.
But the bizarre imagery is just an extra touch added to the more disturbing real life moments depicting the process Anwar and his friends undertake in order to realize this film. This includes recruiting local folks to reenact the roles of the victims of his crimes, and reunions and interviews with other old friends who also had a role in allowing the killings of the 60's to take place. There's another scene in which Anwar's neighbor reveals midway through the film to the film makers that he was raised by a Chinese stepfather that got lynched... while smiling (perhaps nervously) the entire time he's telling that story, as a way of saying, "I'm not judging you guys; I'm just giving you suggestions for your movie!" And in the midst of everyone writing it off as an unlikely scene to be filmed for logistical and other reasons, you get the sense that inside they're all uncomfortable with what might be this can of worms they've opened, uncovering secrets and realizations that no one is really ready to face. One of the former co-conspirators, Adi, admits this as much. And in the aftermath of the next scene they film, in which Anwar's neighbor acts as the torture victim, you see the tears start streaming down his face and wonder if he's acting his part in the scene, or if he really is feeling upset at that moment.
But the bizarre imagery is just an extra touch added to the more disturbing real life moments depicting the process Anwar and his friends undertake in order to realize this film. This includes recruiting local folks to reenact the roles of the victims of his crimes, and reunions and interviews with other old friends who also had a role in allowing the killings of the 60's to take place. There's another scene in which Anwar's neighbor reveals midway through the film to the film makers that he was raised by a Chinese stepfather that got lynched... while smiling (perhaps nervously) the entire time he's telling that story, as a way of saying, "I'm not judging you guys; I'm just giving you suggestions for your movie!" And in the midst of everyone writing it off as an unlikely scene to be filmed for logistical and other reasons, you get the sense that inside they're all uncomfortable with what might be this can of worms they've opened, uncovering secrets and realizations that no one is really ready to face. One of the former co-conspirators, Adi, admits this as much. And in the aftermath of the next scene they film, in which Anwar's neighbor acts as the torture victim, you see the tears start streaming down his face and wonder if he's acting his part in the scene, or if he really is feeling upset at that moment.
The most disconcerting aspect of the entire film is the realization that the entire genocide incident is treated in Indonesian culture as simply a normal facet of life and their history, decades after the event. Anwar and his friends are still seen as heroes for what they did in the 60's, and ironically, as a talk show host interviewing him puts it, for having discovered a "humane way of exterminating communists." What others in the Western world would consider crimes as humanity are seen as normal and even necessary in this society, and it exemplifies that adage, "History is written by the victors." Ironically, part of the reason the West didn't react when this incident took place was due to the Cold War and the US policy of containment, which would consider an incident such as the mass murder of communists to be desirable outcome as it impeded the spread of communism in southeast Asia in the long run. And this incident in particular pretty much was responsible for wiping the Communist Party of Indonesia (the PKI) from the face of the country.
Over the course of the making of his own film, Anwar himself starts to undergo what seems to be almost a cathartic process, of realizing the full scope of his crimes. He admits that ever since the killings (and in particular after seeing the eyes on the head of a man he decapitated), he has suffered from nightmares on a regular basis and frequently has trouble sleeping. With the shooting of each successive scene for the film, Anwar noticeably appears increasingly uncomfortable, commenting on how much worse each scene turned out than it did in his head. Adi, on the other hand, shrugs Anwar's evident distress away as an illness of the nerves, and recommends that he visit a psychiatrist instead. Adi himself has managed to figure out how to live with the weight of his past, simply by not regretting or dwelling on it, which has been aided by the fact that society and history have declared his faction the victors. He even goes as far as to say that the Geneva Conventions don't matter. So what if they try to come back and punish him in the future, he says. They'll just respond with their own "Jakarta Conventions" instead.
In the meantime, Anwar's progression comes to almost a sort of a climax in one of the final scenes, where the man himself is cast as the victim of a torture scene in a noir-style film context, with the execution method used being the same as that which he used on his own victims, an improvised garrote made from wire. Anwar has to cut the scene short at the last minute; it seems to be too much for him, and he appears exhausted and in need of water. On watching the final cut of that last scene (ironically with his grandkids, although they're clearly not as responsive to the scene), he asks an off-screen Oppenheimer behind the camera, "Did my victims feel the same way that I did in that moment?"
"No, they felt much worse. You knew it was just a film; they knew they were going to die."
What follows in the few minutes left in the film after this scene is a nighttime return to a rooftop visited earlier in the film during the day, in which Anwar had happily boasted about how he'd developed the improvised garrote technique to reduce inconvenient blood splatter and pointed out the exact spots where people had died. This time, at night, he recalls the same deaths, the same moments, but in a more somber tone, which is interrupted when he suddenly retches on the spot and turns away from the camera to vomit in a corner, which goes on for a couple of minutes. It's probably the most uncomfortable moment to watch in the entire film. And then he leaves the building, as the credits roll.
For an outsider looking into this culture, these scenes, and Adi's responses, it's easy to fall back into an automatic mode of response, of shock, of disbelief, of judgment on all of those involved in this tragedy. It feels natural to say that Anwar and Adi clearly deserved to be punished for all of those murders they committed, even if they were just part of the executioner squad of a war in which these incidents were to be expected. Likewise, it seems sort of obvious to explain the transformation that Anwar seems to undergo throughout the film as a sign of him comprehending the true magnitude of his sins, of coming back to a sort of normal state that society up till now has prevented him from reaching, what with its celebration of what he did. The process of making this film, of forcing him to relive his past, has allowed Anwar to become... human again, in a sense.
And to be honest, I felt mostly along those lines throughout the course of the film. I saw individuals like Anwar's neighbor, still affected by the memories of his stepfather's murder, and Anwar himself as fundamentally broken people as a result of a fundamentally broken society and culture. I know we tend to use the word "broken" a lot in Christian contexts, but having been raised around that sort of worldview, it was very hard to not see this exactly as a prime example of that. I'd say it was primarily because of the dominant prevailing culture, one that encourages racism and genocide even up to governmental levels, that such atrocities were allowed to occur, that individuals were enabled to commit crimes against their fellow humans, and given options to carry through with them without the need to feel remorse or guilt. It's as Adi said - if their own society won't punish him for it, why should he care?
But at the same time, part of me wonders how much of this all is just a Westernized interpretation of things. For all we know, Anwar simply recovered from his minor physical illness the next day and went back to his normal, everyday life, no different than usual. And it's typical of us in the West to simply look at the entirety of a situation as such and explain it all as the result of abstract concepts like culture and society and fundamental brokenness, as if the knowledge of such things might allow for more readily understandable solutions like "awareness" or "social reconstruction" or "racial reconciliation" or even "healing" or whatever crap terms we like to employ (especially us Christians). Perhaps in a world that conformed to our idealized human understanding, such solutions would be feasible, but this is reality, where what we perceive as brokenness and injustice is just another facet of life most of the time no matter where you go in the world, and where there are no easy or quick fix solutions to the underlying problems we see. Or maybe that's just the jaded person in me speaking right now.
That all said, I appreciate the effort that Oppenheimer undertook in making this film available to the greater public, and especially with regards to the free online distribution of it in the country of its making. One could probably make a greater argument (actually, I've seen this in the advertising) for the power that film and cinema have in helping people achieve their own self-actualization, just as in any other form of work. And in making The Act of Killing available to the Indonesian public at large, there's the hope that it might help bring about, even if only in small steps now, a greater societal catharsis that has been decades in the making, moreso than any of us mere foreign viewers removed from that context could have achieved. Or perhaps it'll end up being overlooked as just another afterthought by some lesser known documentary director... although I sincerely hope for the former. But we can only wait and see.
Over the course of the making of his own film, Anwar himself starts to undergo what seems to be almost a cathartic process, of realizing the full scope of his crimes. He admits that ever since the killings (and in particular after seeing the eyes on the head of a man he decapitated), he has suffered from nightmares on a regular basis and frequently has trouble sleeping. With the shooting of each successive scene for the film, Anwar noticeably appears increasingly uncomfortable, commenting on how much worse each scene turned out than it did in his head. Adi, on the other hand, shrugs Anwar's evident distress away as an illness of the nerves, and recommends that he visit a psychiatrist instead. Adi himself has managed to figure out how to live with the weight of his past, simply by not regretting or dwelling on it, which has been aided by the fact that society and history have declared his faction the victors. He even goes as far as to say that the Geneva Conventions don't matter. So what if they try to come back and punish him in the future, he says. They'll just respond with their own "Jakarta Conventions" instead.
In the meantime, Anwar's progression comes to almost a sort of a climax in one of the final scenes, where the man himself is cast as the victim of a torture scene in a noir-style film context, with the execution method used being the same as that which he used on his own victims, an improvised garrote made from wire. Anwar has to cut the scene short at the last minute; it seems to be too much for him, and he appears exhausted and in need of water. On watching the final cut of that last scene (ironically with his grandkids, although they're clearly not as responsive to the scene), he asks an off-screen Oppenheimer behind the camera, "Did my victims feel the same way that I did in that moment?"
"No, they felt much worse. You knew it was just a film; they knew they were going to die."
What follows in the few minutes left in the film after this scene is a nighttime return to a rooftop visited earlier in the film during the day, in which Anwar had happily boasted about how he'd developed the improvised garrote technique to reduce inconvenient blood splatter and pointed out the exact spots where people had died. This time, at night, he recalls the same deaths, the same moments, but in a more somber tone, which is interrupted when he suddenly retches on the spot and turns away from the camera to vomit in a corner, which goes on for a couple of minutes. It's probably the most uncomfortable moment to watch in the entire film. And then he leaves the building, as the credits roll.
For an outsider looking into this culture, these scenes, and Adi's responses, it's easy to fall back into an automatic mode of response, of shock, of disbelief, of judgment on all of those involved in this tragedy. It feels natural to say that Anwar and Adi clearly deserved to be punished for all of those murders they committed, even if they were just part of the executioner squad of a war in which these incidents were to be expected. Likewise, it seems sort of obvious to explain the transformation that Anwar seems to undergo throughout the film as a sign of him comprehending the true magnitude of his sins, of coming back to a sort of normal state that society up till now has prevented him from reaching, what with its celebration of what he did. The process of making this film, of forcing him to relive his past, has allowed Anwar to become... human again, in a sense.
And to be honest, I felt mostly along those lines throughout the course of the film. I saw individuals like Anwar's neighbor, still affected by the memories of his stepfather's murder, and Anwar himself as fundamentally broken people as a result of a fundamentally broken society and culture. I know we tend to use the word "broken" a lot in Christian contexts, but having been raised around that sort of worldview, it was very hard to not see this exactly as a prime example of that. I'd say it was primarily because of the dominant prevailing culture, one that encourages racism and genocide even up to governmental levels, that such atrocities were allowed to occur, that individuals were enabled to commit crimes against their fellow humans, and given options to carry through with them without the need to feel remorse or guilt. It's as Adi said - if their own society won't punish him for it, why should he care?
But at the same time, part of me wonders how much of this all is just a Westernized interpretation of things. For all we know, Anwar simply recovered from his minor physical illness the next day and went back to his normal, everyday life, no different than usual. And it's typical of us in the West to simply look at the entirety of a situation as such and explain it all as the result of abstract concepts like culture and society and fundamental brokenness, as if the knowledge of such things might allow for more readily understandable solutions like "awareness" or "social reconstruction" or "racial reconciliation" or even "healing" or whatever crap terms we like to employ (especially us Christians). Perhaps in a world that conformed to our idealized human understanding, such solutions would be feasible, but this is reality, where what we perceive as brokenness and injustice is just another facet of life most of the time no matter where you go in the world, and where there are no easy or quick fix solutions to the underlying problems we see. Or maybe that's just the jaded person in me speaking right now.
That all said, I appreciate the effort that Oppenheimer undertook in making this film available to the greater public, and especially with regards to the free online distribution of it in the country of its making. One could probably make a greater argument (actually, I've seen this in the advertising) for the power that film and cinema have in helping people achieve their own self-actualization, just as in any other form of work. And in making The Act of Killing available to the Indonesian public at large, there's the hope that it might help bring about, even if only in small steps now, a greater societal catharsis that has been decades in the making, moreso than any of us mere foreign viewers removed from that context could have achieved. Or perhaps it'll end up being overlooked as just another afterthought by some lesser known documentary director... although I sincerely hope for the former. But we can only wait and see.
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