The Act of Killing

In 1965 the left-wing government of Indonesia was destroyed by a military coup. With the enthusiastic support of Western powers (especially the USA, UK and Australia) the army set about killing the grass-roots support of socialism: party members, intellectuals, the disaffected unlanded, unionists and their sympathizers - really anyone not clearly on board with the new project -  were all branded 'communists' and exterminated by death squads. To help them in their task, the army enlisted the support of small-time gangsters, accustomed to selling black market tickets for Hollywood films: these men became effective mass murderers, interrogating, torturing and executing 'communists' in a mass slaughter greeted by the Western press with headlines such as 'A Gleam of Light in Asia'. About 2.5 million Indonesians were killed by fellow Indonesians. Those responsible for this atrocity shared power with the dictator Suharto and are still ruling the country today. The paramilitary gangsters are feted as heroes and founding fathers of the new order. Weirdly, they insist that the etymology of 'gangster' is 'free men', and they are certainly free of the reach of justice today.

Joshua Oppenheimer started making a film with survivors of the mass killings, but this soon attracted the attentions of the police and army. He then had the idea of approaching some of the original gangsters and working with them. Anwar Congo, a man who killed some 1,000 people with his own hands, and his fellow veterans, join the director in recreating the murders of 1965, acting out scenes of interrogation in the styles of the American crime movies they love There are gangster scenes, and a bizarre musical sequence to the music of 'Born Free'. To begin with, Anwar is full of swagger, cheerfully explaining how he throttled his victims and pausing to dance the cha-cha-cha. He clearly loves the attention of his fan base and the idea of being a film star, and enjoys a kind of mythical status among the paramilitary organisations who continue to help the country's rulers govern by terror. In a bizarre TV show the young woman presenter almost swoons with the excitement of having these celebrity assassins on her show.
Towards the end of the film (which apparently took eight years to make) Anwar starts to view his actions in another light. After recreating a massacre in the jungle, which leaves  children in the 'cast' weeping and traumatised, he starts to feel some compassion for the young people whose lives he destroyed. When he himself re-enacts the part of an interrogated prisoner, he wonders 'did they feel what I did?'. 'Far, far worse,' is the obvious answer, 'as they knew they were going to die'. The final scene, in which he visits the balcony over the original paramilitary 'office' again, is indescribably powerful. Anwar, perhaps only spasmodically, does seem to be experiencing some degree of remorse. Yet with a narcissistic, apparently psychopathic individual so immersed in fictions and lies there is always the suspicion that what we see is an extended exercise in manipulative role-playing; Anwar and his cronies may be altogether beyond our normative narrative of crime and punishment. As in Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, others seem untouched by regrets; yet they come over as shells of human beings, inarticulate thugs entirely corrupted by their brush with power. One pretends he didn't know. One, only 10 at the time, joins in with idol-worshipping keenness and gradually seems to perceive something of the reality of what happened.


The Act of Killing is one of the most astonishing documentaries I have ever seen, using novel and brilliantly effective techniques  to take us through a dark period of history and examine the ways in which individuals and a country examine it. By the ingenious means of showing it at a human rights event in Djakarta, Oppenheimer was able to sidestep Indonesia's censors and have it shown in public places. The West's own compliance with the regimes's brutality (the CIA officers who helpfully provided logistical and intelligence support are living in comfortable retirement) should stop us from watching it with any complacency. Paul Preston's recent research makes it clear something similar happened in Franco's Spain. Though it seems unbearably precious to talk about theatre in such a context, the recreations did seem to touch on some root of the place of 'acting' in human culture - as an instrument for engaging with and exploring in a ritualistic way areas of fundamental importance to society and the individual. Something the ancient Greeks knew but which in the days of theatre as expensive entertainment is usually forgotten.  Many of the Indonesian participants in the film are listed as anonymous for fear of violent reprisals by the paramilitary terrorist who enforce the government's will today.