The Act of Killing Review
By David Kempler
Killing Hero?
When two of my favorite directors (Werner Herzog and Errol Morris) get together to serve as co-Executive Producers on a film, "The Act of Killing", you can bet that I will carve out some time to give it a look. The final result does not disappoint. What it does do is make you watch with fascination something that just can't possibly be real, but it is clearly labeled a documentary, so real it is. It might be more accurately defined as super-surreal, because even though it is fact, it makes you wonder how the people in it can be so detached from themselves. You will never see anyone with less self-awareness, anywhere.
The setting is Indonesia (note to self: if I ever win an all-expenses paid vacation to Indonesia, politely decline it) and the topic is the mass murder of communists that began in 1965 and concluded approximately a year later. The leader of the slaughter was a man by the name of Anwar Congo. Before becoming the leader of the most notorious death squad, Anwar sold black market movie tickets. I don't see a logical career path there but Anwar was certainly good at his job as a human butcher.
In addition to killing anyone deemed a communist, he extorted money from Chinese people living in the area. If they refused to pay, he killed them, too. According to Anwar, he personally killed over 1,000 people by strangling them with a wire. He learned this technique in American gangster films and he remains a huge fan of the genre. He loves Al Pacino, among others.
Incredibly, many years after the atrocities, with the nation seemingly being a more rational place, Anwar is a national hero, appearing on talk shows, relating stories of his exploits. The hostess of one show gushes over him and the audience wildly applauds his tales of yesteryear. Honestly.
Anwar is considered the father of the
Pemuda Pancasila, a right-wing paramilitary organization that is very powerful today in Indonesia. Their membership consists of government ministers who openly boast about corruption, genocide and election rigging.
Now I'll tell you the weird part of all of this. Joshua Oppenheimer, the director of "Act of Killing", meets up with Anwar and his buddies and together they arrive at the logical conclusion that what is missing is a re-enactment of the butchery so that it can be commemorated on film. Anwar is openly gleeful to serve as an actor playing himself and as an advisor on the production. What we see is Oppenheimer's filming of the re-enactments along with a making of "Act of Killing". Bizarre does not come close to describing what you see here.
I guarantee that you have never seen anything that you can compare to "Act of Killing". Some who attend the screening will no doubt walk out in disgust. Others will sit there in shock. Yet others will laugh at the absurdity of it all. I made it through to the end and sometimes found myself laughing while at other times found myself recoiling in horror. I cannot give this a universal endorsement but I can tell you that it is difficult for me to envision not picking this as my favorite documentary of 2013. The Academy may not feel the same way, but who cares. You already know if you want to see this.
