Review of The Act of Killing (2012) by Donovan M — 11 Feb 2014

Excruciating, deeply distressing, and absolutely mesmerizing. The Act of Killing would make a fascinating double bill with Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell. As both films make clear, storytelling kills, and only more stories can prevent our crimes from in turn killing us.

The protagonists of both films assure us that truth and falsehood, good and evil are just a matter of perspective, so be sure to find the one that eases your conscience. Initially the death squad leaders' desire to reenact their crimes appears to be a question of fact, of correcting the record and ensuring their place in history.

As the plan progresses, however, we realize that history has nothing to do with it. They're interested in storytelling, and they always were. As two-bit movie theatre scalpers in 1965, they saw their reflections in John Wayne and Al Pacino.

They sang Elvis tunes while dancing to the interrogation offices, where torture and execution were the logical extension of their roles. The original crimes were already a murderous form of story telling, and the most original kind of human storytelling: lies they told themselves.

This leads to a repugnant absurdity: these mass murderers are insecure in their sadism, worried that they weren't cruel enough; they hope the reenactments will portray them as even more terrifying and brutal than they really were.

An even more abhorrent absurdity: where real human suffering could not move them, fictional suffering does. They look on with genuine horror at the aftermath of a staged village burning. One group member begins to express moral regret while watching himself on television, performing the role of a tortured and murdered prisoner.

Some original sin moralists and Hobbesian cynics like to use crimes like these as grist for the pessimist's mill: demonstrations of the deep-seated beastliness that subverts humanity and civilization.

But it is precisely the animal in these men that occasionally protests against their crimes: the doting grandfather broken by a young actor in tears, the tough gangster terrified of ghostly victims who haunt his dreams, the rebellious stomach that interrupts his calm explanation of his execution techniques with violent, unbearable dry retching.

Animals may kill, but only story-tellers murder.