Sometimes my friends
see movies too. Below, you’ll find Michael Smith reviewing/coping with The Act
of Killing.
So there’s a documentary film making its round through the
small, art house movie world—The Act of Killing—and it is the most beautiful,
gut wrenching, and confounding film I’ve seen this year. I won’t go so far as to call it
important. Only tools and pretentious
dicks think things are important for other people, but I will say this movie is
downright powerful. For a little
context, the film is set in Indonesia, which, after a military coup in 1964,
initiated a government sanctioned purge of all opposition under the guise of
eradicating “Communists”; which was supported by everyone’s favorite
misanthropic superpower—that’s right US (er, the U.S.).
The story is largely centered on a man named Anwar Congo who
was a “gangster”—read death squad member during the purges—and his
cohorts/co-conspirators. Anwar is
personally responsible for the death of over 1,000 Communists from 1964-66. He
wasn’t a bystander or a boss. He was an
actor, an active participant in the government sponsored murder of over 2.5
million people. And despite all of this,
he is an incredibly charming, likeable character. That’s right.
Anwar Congo is downright adorable and incredibly human in large swaths
of this film, a fact which makes the viewer incredibly uncomfortable.
This documentary does so many things right it is hard to
know where to begin. So let’s start with
the premise. Rather than simply trekking
around Indonesia, seeking government documents, procuring historical clips, and
overlaying obnoxious social commentary; director Joshua Oppenheimer engages
Anwar in a play. He traces the work of
Anwar to produce a movie recounting in graphic, often surreal, detail the acts
he committed in the name of eradicating Communism. This tactic effectively
breaks down any barriers Anwar and his friends might have to participating. Under the guise of recording history, Anwar
and his cohort open wide and allow the viewer into their lives and their
actions, often engaging Oppenheimer directly and openly.
What’s more is this tactic creates an enormous amount of
trust between the subjects and the film maker.
Joshua Oppenheimer is going into a world where the perpetrators of one
of the greatest crimes in history were never brought to justice, and, for all
intents and purposes, asking them to admit to their crimes. To draw a fair parallel, this would be
analogous to the Nazi’s winning World War II, and then having a documentary
film maker come in and asking grandpa Heinrich about his participation in the
Holocaust and having Gramps willingly and unabashedly participate. The amount of trust Oppenheimer gets from his
subjects is a thing of sheer genius.
For his part, Oppenheimer is impartial. Before the film, he introduces himself and
the overall goal of the work: he’s not
simply seeking to bring the dirty laundry of the world to light, but rather to
lift the veil of evil and explore humanity, in all of its ugliness, beauty, and
contradiction. That’s not to say he doesn’t think what happened wasn’t wrong,
but his judgment is completely removed from the film. This is a story about humanity, in all its
complexities. What Oppenheimer brings to
light is that evil often looks so very like us.
At the beginning of the film Anwar takes the crew to a
rooftop where he killed hundreds of people with a garrote wire. While up there, he mentions his inability to
sleep and his quest to kill the pain with alcohol, marijuana, ecstasy, and,
wait for it, the cha-cha. He then
proceeds to dance on that same rooftop where hundreds of people lost their
lives by his own hand. What’s worse is
that he’s so damn cute doing it you fucking chuckle, while immediately feeling
like you want to vomit for what you’ve just done. Never in my life has a movie made me so
disgusted with my fellow man and myself in the exact same moment.
And that, perhaps, is where the movie shines most--in its
juxtaposition. Oppenheimer is engaging
in incredibly dark material. But at the
same time he is engaging in a very human material. Anwar is dealing with an incredibly haunting
past, and is interacting with that past through memory and reenactment. This leads to incredibly surreal moments in
which horrifying truths are back dropped by comic relief, buffoonish friends,
and strait gorgeous scenery. Moreover,
Anwar doesn’t face his haunting in the same way one might expect, which is to
say, brooding, alcoholic, and solitary.
Rather, Anwar seeks out companionship; he copes with his own tragedy,
his own crime in a way that I think many of us would: by commiserating with
others and engaging with others. Anwar’s
monstrosity is only surpassed by his complete humanity.
This film is a host of contradictions. It is a horrifically violent film in which
the violence is at once limited and entirely simulated. It is horrendous and beautiful. It is heartrending and endearing. It is incredibly realistic, but at the same
time surreal beyond belief. This film is
fucking good. Not enjoyable, not
uplifting, but terribly good. This is
not the film you take your girlfriend to before going back home to make nice in
a darkened room. This is the kind of
film you go see, and then drown yourself in whiskey, sadness, and confusion for
a couple of days while you try to cope with the fact that we, as a species, are
terrible.
Directed By: Joshua Oppenheimer
Starring: Anwar Congo, Anonymous (seriously half the credits
are listed as anonymous and I have not the foggiest what that means in real
world terms. I’m assuming dead or
political prisoner.)
