The Act of Killing (2012)

After the successful 1965 military coup of the socialist government of Indonesia, paramilitary and gangster groups slaughtered somewhere close to million teachers, union members, intellectuals, landless farmers, ethnic Chinese and communists. Anyone branded an enemy was assumed to be guilty. The accused received no trial, were afforded no human rights, and were immediately and unceremoniously murdered. It was one of the largest genocides in recent history.

Decades later, director Joshua Oppenheimer asks several former death-squad members to re-create their crimes for his camera. Most of the men were low-level criminals, used by the government to eliminate opposition. Extraordinarily, the killers openly dramatize how they murdered countless numbers of their countrymen. The men, now well into their 70s, go into horrifying specifics about the crimes and atrocities they’ve committed. Without shame or remorse, they matter-of-factly boast about the various different ways prisoners were tortured and murdered. We see them describe how they used members of the media to locate their victims, and then brag about raping women, chopping off opponents’ heads. What emerges is the documentary “The Act of Killing,” a harrowing examination of fascism, guilt, crime, and lack of punishment.

The film’s main character is Anwar Congo. He plainly states that he’s killed 1,000 people. He shows us his favorite method: piano wire. He says he was inspired by American gangster films starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino (apparently “The Godfather” played big in Indonesia criminal circles). When asked about his actions, he says he feels no contrition, but admits self medicating with music, alcohol and marijuana, and other drugs, anyway. Despite what he says, as he begins to open up, we learn he’s haunted by nightmares of his crimes. Try as he might, he can’t escape his guilt.

We’re also introduced to the Pancasila Youth, a three-million strong pro-government group, whose members wear garishly bright neon-camouflage uniforms. Their leaders proclaim the group “defenders of the country,” when in reality we learn they were largely responsible for mass killings of anyone suspected of government opposition. It’s kind of a south-Asian Hitler Youth. We’re shown an enormous Pancasila Youth rally, where leaders speak in impassioned tones, invoking jingoistic language that recalls Adolf Hitler. In fact, many of the film’s scenes recall the Nazis, and Khmer Rouge. Indeed, Indonesia’s then-vice president is shown speaking to the group, hailing their violence as sometimes “necessary.”

Frighteningly, we see current political leaders extoling the virtues of the death squads. And worse. At a dinner, the head of Pancasila is caught bragging about the gang rape of a young girl in a car. Cameras follow another official as he visits various small Chinese-owned business, openly extorting money from the owners. Later, he talks about raping Chinese women. Recounting the sexual assault of 14-year old girls, he says it will be “hell for them, but heaven on earth” for him. Another gang member runs for political office, saying hopes to use his future position as a government regulator to extort money. “Imagine, $10,000 per building,” he says cheerfully. In rehearsal for one of the narrative film’s scenes, the current Indonesian head of Youth and Sport whips a lynch mob into a frenzy, gleefully calling for a village to be destroyed, its inhabitants burned, beheaded, and raped. His rapt audience becomes hysterical.

“The Act of Killing’s” most-powerful scenes revolve around two scenes where paramilitary members act out their crimes: the first is a massacre of a small village, the second an simple interrogation scene in an office. In the former, village men, women and children are tortured, murdered, and their houses burned to the ground. The violence is so realistic that child actors in the scene are left crying. Congo himself is even taken aback, saying “I didn’t expect it to look so real.” So the man who committed the original crime can’t bear to witness its recreation, decades later. In the interrogation scene, Congo plays the victim. What starts out as acting quickly goes very, very wrong for him. Placed in the position of those he brutalized years ago, Congo begins to internalize their fear and suffering, and breaks down. He interrupts filming to try and regain composure. When he admits that he can relate to the torment his victims must have felt, the director corrects him, reminding him that, unlike him, his victims didn’t have the luxury of knowing they were merely acting.

Another heart-rending scene involves a man, whose step-father was dragged from their house in the middle of the night, and killed. He re-enacts the scene, all these years later, along with the actual executioners. During filming, his trauma bubbles to the surface. He suddenly becomes overwhelmed with grief. His torment, expressed among the men who actually committed these horrors long ago, is astonishing.

We’re introduced to several other killers, each with his own twisted justification for the crimes. As the director says in the supplemental DVD materials, the men “seem hollow,” unable to enjoy their lives. Staggeringly, what seems to be entirely lost on them is even the vaguest sense that what they did was wrong. Remarkably, the men don’t suggest even a hint of remorse. Inexplicably, their murders are celebrated as a great contribution to the Indonesian state. The climactic final scene unbelievably shows the ghosts of the murdered, grateful to the death-squad members for killing them, thanking their murders for sending them to heaven. In their tortured regret, the gangsters have concocted this improbable scenario as a means to assuage their souls. Not one of them even so much as describes why it is that the communists were bad for the country. To the contrary, in hindsight militia members now freely admit that they, not the communists, were the real blood-thirsty savages.

“The Act of Killing” is a unique and startling glimpse into a barbarous period of Indonesian history. Think of what ever adjective you like—harrowing, shocking, unsettling—it’s beyond all of them. But it’s also an accomplished and thorough piece of filmmaking (no surprise, since Werner Herzog and Errol Morris receive producer credits). It feels like a “Frontline” documentary, except it lacks any layer of distance from its subject. Usually criminal documentaries show accusers outlining the crime, while the guilty deny responsibility. That the film talks directly to the criminals who carried out untold unspeakable acts—men who willingly and openly discuss (even celebrate) murder the way one might talk about a baseball game or the weather—is unbelievably. It left me incredulous. In the aftermath of the genocide, there have never been any truth-and-reconciliation commissions, no justice for the relatives of the victims, and no one has ever been punished. The fact that the government that spawned these men is still in power, is unimaginable and outrageous.

PS-Even the film’s credits are disturbing. In something I’ve never seen before, countless major jobs are listed as having been performed by “Anonymous,” for fear of reprisal from those in still in power in Indonesia.