The Act Of Killing

The Act Of Killing (2013) by Joshua Oppenheimer

The night my grandfather died, I spent the evening alone watching Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru. A week later, when my dog of 13 years died, I watched Vittorio deSica's Umberto D. While I had seen both films dozens of times before, it was these viewings that had produced the most profound reaction in me: I wept.Having experienced what the characters in these films had experienced, and felt a semblance of what they felt, I was able to really express myself and let out what I had kept inside. And that is one of the fundamental powers of film.

I do not usually watch documentaries, unless the subject matter really speaks to me, and that is my own mistake (especially having worked for 2 years in the news field). I first heard of Joshua Oppenheimer's feature début over at Badassdigest.com, and was absolutely riveted by the subject.

In the late 1960's, Indonesia had experienced a political upheaval, with its government replaced by its military and a dictatorship eventually being established. President Haji Suharto, having taken control of Indonesia, had recruited several low-level gangsters into running death squads, among them Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry. It is these two gangsters who are the focus of the film.

Unlike the "talking heads" style of documentary, Mr. Oppenheimer (after initially interviewing surviving, and relatives of, victims of the political purges) allows unusual method of having Anwar and Adi devise and direct their own interpretations of the killings. Using any method they wish, Mr. Oppenheimer had them recreate their atrocities. This unique method does something that so few documentaries of this sort accurately do: truly get into the mind of perpetrators of crimes against humanity, at once humanizing and dehumanizing them; not for empathy or sympathy, but to understand how it is that these people can not only get away with they did, but sleep at night.

The film crosses many surreal thresholds, opening on a dreamlike image of dancers emerging from a lakeside building shaped like a giant fish, all the while we hear the directions of Congo Anwar over a megaphone. From this, we are introduced to Anwar properly, as he recalls---with a hint of pride---his time spent in the Pemuda Pancasila, the formal name of the death squads that continue to run and attract the youths of Indonesia today. These are the "good old days", with Anwar and his compatriots excitedly recalling and recreating the various methods of murder. "I would never wear white pants," Anwar says at one point, pointing to a picture of himself. The reason, he reveals, is that they stain too easily from the blood. Blue jeans work better.

Atop what is today a second-hand thrift store, Anwar demonstrates the most efficient way of garrotting a victim, with a willing demonstrator. How does he live with himself? How did he face the horrors of his actions, Mr. Oppenheimer asks? Good food. Good drink. Marijuana. Dancing the cha cha; and with that, Anwar breaks into an impromptu dance to demonstrate his coping method. This is the surreality of the documentary: one moment we are witnessing a horrifying re-enactment, the next we are witnessing a dance. As the re-enactments continue, they grow in complexity, requiring the cooperation of other former death squad members, and the current members of Pancasila, who eagerly and excitedly don costumes and make-up.

The method in which Anwar and Adi tell their stories brings to the forefront a larger dialogue, not just about the nature of memory, but also about the impact of film on that very notion of memory. Anwar says that his demeanour and attitude during his tenure in the death squad was influenced by films starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, and John Wayne (in fact, Anwar's first duties as a gangster was to sell bootleg tickets to the local cinema). Anwar's actions predate the proliferation of mob films like The Godfather, and Scarface, of which he is surely thinking. However, when recreating his atrocities, he riotously costumes his extras in clearly cinematic and outlandish clothing, saying that this is how he would have dressed. In his unconscious, of course this is how a gangster dresses. To think otherwise is ridiculous.

Despite all these surreal moments, eventually Anwar and Adi begin to question their own actions during this period. At first, it dawns on them just how prolific their "secret" actions were: while interviewing a newspaper editor who worked during the regime, an assistant editor says "You guys were having interrogations right in that room, and no one knew! It was amazing!" "What do you mean 'you did not know'? Everyone knew. Your boss knew. There is no way you could not have known what we were doing" Anwar counters, to a dumbfounded and silenced response. Later, while filming the re-enactment of an interrogation, Adi points out that, if they recreate their crimes as they remember them, then people will know that those they deemed "Communists" were innocent, and that they, the perpetrators, were in fact guilty. At no point prior (and this is about an hour into the film) had this thought crossed their minds. To the gangsters, these old monsters, what they are doing is reliving their glory days, their fond memories. They were bragging and showing off to the younger generation. But at this, they start to realize exactly what it is they have done.

Anwar's realization begins when he plays one of his own victims. He sits in a chair, made up, "bloodied", and intimidated by his colleagues, who hold a knife to his face. "No, you have to be rougher. Louder." they say, shoving his head around. And in his face, you can see Anwar losing his composure. He was always the man in control, the one with the knife and the threats and the power. And here, for the first time probably in his entire life, he knows what it is to be powerless. When he re-watches the scene later on, at home, with his grandchildren, he shuts it off halfway, visibly shaken. And when speaking to Mr. Oppenheimer, this exchange occurs:

Anwar: Did the people I tortured feel the way I do here? I can feel what the people I tortured felt. Because here my dignity has been destroyed, and then fear come, right there and then. All the terror suddenly possessed my body. It surrounded me, and possessed me. 
Joshua Oppenheimer: Actually, the people you tortured felt far worse, because you knew it's only a film. They knew they were being killed.
Anwar: But I can feel it, Josh. Really, I feel it. Or have I sinned. I did this to so many people, Josh. Is it all coming back to me? I really hope it won't. I don't want it to, Josh.

He has just felt, for the first time, the last emotions his victims all felt. But for us, the viewers, the realization hits in much more visceral way. It comes through with a sound.

Anwar, in the last scene of the film, is recounting the story of how he would execute his victims. He sits in the same building, the same renovated thrift store we'd visited earlier in the film. And he begins to tell a story, the same story he'd told earlier. Only at this point, he begins to gag. It's an odd sound, a dry heave of a grunt, sounding a bit like a cough and a fart, but coming very deep from the gut. He stops, apologizes, spits, and begins again. He stops again, gagging. And stumbles out of the building. The enormity of his actions, of everything he had done, the pain and death and crimes and atrocities, has finally hit him after nearly fifty years. And his body is rejecting it. The truth comes vomiting up out of him, ugly, painful, and very visceral.

When this moment occurred, I wept.

Anwar had faced his past, not when he spoke about it. Not when he re-enacted it. Not when he acted as his own victims. No, he faced it when he watched himself playing the victim. And this is the power of cinema. Knowing where he came from, the power he had and the gravitas he carried, Anwar's realization came in watching all of that ripped from him. Even made up, even pretending and acting in a scene, the very act of seeing something as profound and disturbing as the truth can bring someone as sociopathically inhuman to tears. Cinema shaped his life (how he conducted himself as a gangster), his memories (retrofitting his own chronology to believe that certain films were a "guideline", despite the impossibility of that), and finally his own understanding of himself. He has seen the truth, as well every person who watches this film and goes through this horrendous journey.

When the death of my grandfather, and dog, occurred, and I watched those films and empathized, it was because they had the power and ability to help me cope with my pain. For Anwar, that confrontation with himself, self-initiated by the very mthod of storytelling he employed, uncovered the demons he'd hoped to bury. And the ghosts of his victims are burned in his memory as readily as his image is captured in celluloid. It is not just his crime that is revealed, but that of an entire nation, one that is still run by self-proclaimed gangsters.

But if one criminal can come to face his own reality, perhaps there is still some hope.
All it takes is to sit alone in the dark, watch images on a screen, and realize the truth about yourself.

Please, everyone, watch this film.