Review of The Act of Killing (2012) by Zack B — 01 Feb 2014
An essential film that magnifies on a particularly staggering example of impunity for murderers. Director Joshua Oppenheimer, with express humanity and valiant loyalty to honesty, digs further and further at the truth of the modern day experience of surviving perpetrators who helped commit the killings of the anti-Communist purge of 1965-66 in Indonesia.
The film, for this reason, is not about the events in 1965 so much as it is about the people who kept the events locked away inside their psyches for fear of being consumed not only by the reality of said events, but also by another reality: the reality that they justified their evil every step of the way.
Oppenheimer never falters in his vision, even when he has found himself the target of sycophantic desperation and hypocrisy, the war criminals eager to paint a different, glory-trumpeting truth. The result is a baffling, heart-wrenching, and painful documentary that never seeks to condemn, never stops questioning, and never stops exposing the reality of atrocity denial.
This review of The Act of Killing (2012) was written by Zack B on 01 Feb 2014.
The Act of Killing has generally received very positive reviews.
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