Review of The Act of Killing (2012) by Joshua R — 19 Jul 2013

Slow, deliberate, banal. "Act of Killing" is more devastating because it treats the grotesque with a sense of normalcy. This is not a straight-forward documentary in the sense that it attempts to establish a historical narrative or perspective in detail, but a quiet retrospective of massacre told by the murderers in their own words at their own pace, matter-of-factly, making all the more unsettling. The pace and surreality of it may be too much for most viewers, especially as the murderers set out to make a movie chronicling their exploits.

The gravest fault with the effort is that director Oppenheimer substantially shortchanges his audience and indeed his subjects in failing to give the full historical context behind the massacres. At the time of the military coup d'etat Oppenheimer does mention at the beginning of his film, Indonesia was a "democracy" in name only. Even a casual research of modern Indonesian history will reveal the troubled and blood-soaked history stretching back through most of the 20th century. Indeed, one could argue that either side "winning" the political battle at the time would have resulted in the other being slaughtered. Had the communists won, perhaps another film maker would have strolled around detailing the massacre of "rightists and imperialists" with equal relish.

The most important lesson from this effort seems thus lost on most reviewers... it's not the pathology of the killers. Quite the opposite... it's that given the wrong circumstances, and the fertile grounds of a rotted-through social and political system, acts of extreme barbarism become the norm. This should be a far more unsettling realization than simply dismissing these men as thoughtless psychopaths. And finally, not to wax politically... but let's not pretend for one second our very own military and intelligence apparatus were not completely and totally aware of what they were fueling with their support of this regime. Any blood on the hands of these men traces straight back to our own political institutions. And THAT's far more unsettling than Anwar Congo's selection of pants for massacres.