The Act of Killing (2012)

The synopsis is available elsewhere and I have no idea how to review a film like this so here are a few simple lines: I have never seen anything remotely like this and would go as far as to say that it is one of the most honest portrayals of several aspects of the human psyche I have ever experienced in any medium. It's not a pleasant film but I can't give it any less than full marks for its bravery, arrogance and honesty when dealing with an uncomfortable aspect of our species.

Joshua Oppenheimer (dir.) understands the social norms of his subjects' environment and also their own egos and greed, shows us so that we also understand and then uses all he has learned to get them to openly reveal all directly to the audience, pretty much by luring them. It's obvious that with the backstory and footage used he already had more than enough for a documentary film and it seems as though he thought 'I have a better plan' and then made this film instead, in the ultimate quest for knowledge. Beyond words and essential.

Note: There is a companion to this called 'The Look of Silence', which is a different type of film altogether and one that sheds much extra light onto the the events of this time and place but from a different perspective and this is also recommended, albeit not as strongly.

I didn't really know where to start with this uniquely constructed documentary. The director has assembled a collection of brutes like the enigmatic Anwar Congo and an whole slew of other paramilitary leaders from Indonesia's recent past, and asked them to recreate some of their more murderous scenarios as if they were filming an edition of "Glee"! There are serious conversations with some of the warlords responsible for unspeakable atrocities on both a mass and an individual scale - which does beg a question as to why these people aren't already behind bars; there are rehearsals for their scenes of torture and violence and there are even musical pieces that could have featured in a Ziegfeld folly. These re-enactments serve as a fascinating conduit for the telling of a story of state-sponsored cruelty carried out with impunity by many - all in the name of anti-communism - little older than teenagers. Equipped with uniforms that looked like those you could buy from an high street sport shop and addressed frequently by senior soldiers as national heroes, these "Pemuda Pancasila" had something worryingly of the Hitler Youth to them as they marauded the community armed with their machetes completely uninterested in any form of legal process. Naturally, their political agenda also allowed for plenty of old grudges to be settled along the way and these graphically imagined reconstructions actually serve to quite effectively point out that sometimes it is very difficult for a detached observer to distinguish between Hollywood zeal and Indonesia real. What's also striking here is the complete lack of remorse from those still at liberty and astonishingly proud of their actions in "defence of their motherland". The fact that these are dramatisations does make it slightly easier to watch, but it all still leaves a very acrid taste in the mouth and is a sad indictment of a society where hate and fear walked hand in hand just like they were really at the O.K. Corral or in a "Corleone" Sicily.