The Act of Killing (2012) Reviews

• Hard to watch for someone who knows too much of the truth

  ediliuanto2016-02-01

  I cannot help the urge not to write something that I could say I truly know and familiar with. I was born in the exact city where this youth organization stronghold (Pemuda Pancasila) is based now and where all the killing had taken place in the past. I am no stranger to all the crimes they did back then or do now. Back to where it all started on the 30th of September 1965, which marked the rebellion by the Communist Party. Seven of the highly ranked military generals were kidnapped, tortured and murdered then piled in an old well by what the history said to be the communist starting coup d état. (No evidences of torturing as accused, only military style execution resulted from the autopsies of the remains and also no evidence it was done by the communist party member till now). The name Pemuda Pancasila (Youth of Pancasila) was then known since youth started to march on the street yelling Pancasila (our nation's philosophy) resisting and seeking for revenge by annihilating communism to its root. Both government and military gave full support resulted in uncontrolled anarchy mob led to man slaughter and in present day, an organized crime. My Mother was 13 and witnessed their brutalities would tell me the horror with fears still could be seen in her eyes. Her brothers would run and hide for their lives in a rice field when Pemuda Pancasila arrived with machetes in military trucks yelling "Pancasila" as their slogan to find and execute anyone who was involved in communist. But all the communist excuses were biased and used only to do what they wanted and to kill whoever they think was communist mostly with no evidence at all. She witnessed her neighbour accused as one of the member of "Gerwani", woman communist organization, being raped, then dragged to the street and beaten to death as an example for others who resist. They looted, ate, drank, and destroyed what they could not take in my mom's store. One word or eye contact showing disrespect would find her ended up beaten to death. Dead bodies and body parts scattered everywhere on the street was a normal view. Not one day went by without anyone getting killed at night. Many were victims of the unproven accusation, poor farmers who received fertilizer or farming tools from the communist party would be considered communist while they did not even know anything about what communism is. I felt really sick watching this movie yet at the same time I was very thankful finally the whole truth about how this crime organization started and is hiding behind a youth organization now be told. It disgusted me how they could live with such unbelievable crimes and told the story so proudly with no regrets and believed in their lies and excuses they made up only to justify their brutality in the past (except Anwar Congo). Some even considered themselves as heroes. Yet I pitied them for being very uneducated and shallow. Imitating what they saw in the western cowboy and Mafia's movies thinking they could be meaner and more brutal like it was just some scene in a movie. Are they qualified as human beings? Ps. If you are interested in finding more about their brutalities and violence, you can find videos in youtube recently, they are involved in a riot with other organization and Police.

• You must see this movie, you simply must

  RolyRoly2013-07-19

  It seems almost trivial to "rate" a movie that is this important but like some of the tothers i have given it a 10 because people need to see it. I have never been as completely chilled by a film in my life, and I have seen plenty of brutal documentaries. The atrocities committed by the Indonesian death squads, and so vividly re-enacted, are not easy to watch and I expect that many people would rather just turn away and ignore them, but you owe it to yourselves to sit through them. I have just finished reading Steven Pinker's excellent book The Better Angels of Our Nature in which he argues that humanity is far less violent now than we have ever been. That may be so, but if you are looking for a compelling counter-argument you can start with this film. I can assure that that you will never forget it.

• Absolutely astounding

  zelena332013-05-25

  Watching this film should be mandatory for every man, woman, and child in the world. I would leave it at that but IMDb has a minimum of 10 lines of text to prove you "mean business" with your review. This film was utterly astounding in every sense, most importantly in the way it just lets a strange, inexplicable, simple truth emerge on its own. It is not a film that makes you feel better about the world or yourself, but rather one that makes you remember, oh yes, all this is real, and it really matters. Without providing a spoiler, the final scene also underscores why documentaries are made, and the very real, very important things that utterly cannot be faked with all the acting, special effects, and make up in the world. That life is real. -- I wanted to make one other note to my initial impression, since this film remains my favorite film of the year and possible of a several- year. It is worth highlighting the fact that Mr Oppenheimer spent a good eight or ten years of his life making this film, spending his life in Indonesia with a camcorder and progressively greater levels of logistical and technical help (from what has been made public about the film). Films like this don't get made in a year. Not at all. It is worth reflecting on the connection between the time you invest in something, and what you get out of it. You get the same impression when you read, for example, one of the major novels of a couple centuries ago, but it is rare to see artistic works this big made anymore. War and Peace wasn't made in a year either. I somewhat feel for Mr Oppenheimer and the expectations that will precede his next work, whatever it is. Nothing like this will get made in the next two or three years, and that makes me the more grateful for this work.

• The horror! The horror!

  birthdaynoodle2013-10-05

  I'd be hard-pressed to name any film I've watched that is as strange and disturbing as 'The Act of Killing' (brought to you by executive producers Werner Herzog and Errol Morris). When Indonesian president Sukarno allied himself with communists in 1965, he was toppled by a military coup and a bloody, anti-communist purge followed. Ethnic Chinese, deemed disproportionately wealthy and corrupt by other Indonesians, were targeted as well – or at least this is how some pretended to justify the genocide of so many innocents. A million people were killed. The same paramilitary death squads that carried out the assassinations are politically strong today and count with government ministers among their members. They proclaim themselves national heroes and boast loudly about their "achievements". Director Joshua Oppenheimer interviews some of these gangsters and invites them to reenact the murder scenes by adapting them to their favorite movie genres (Westerns, musicals, etc.) I initially wondered whether such a bizarre concept wasn't disrespectful to the victims of the massacre, but I realized that it was precisely this format that enabled the director to revisit history and unearth its truth. Oppenheimer had to stroke the gangsters' egos or he would have never been allowed to film. Some of them, including the main character, Anway, started their criminal careers by scalping tickets at a local cinema and were big fans of Hollywood films. In an article from The Australian newspaper, Oppenheimer explains the documentary's theatrical approach this way: "Killing always involves some kind of distancing from what you are doing. Maybe that always means a kind of performance and acting, some kind of storytelling. Maybe it can just mean drinking first. But for Anwar, in part, it comes from the stories that he would imbibe in the cinema, the images and roles, the process of cinematic identification. The act of killing, for Anwar, was always some kind of act." The result is both chilling and surreal. It is shocking to see these men proudly celebrating their monstrous crimes, including rape. Have they no empathy? How ignorant, demented and evil can humans be? This reminds me of the BBC documentary mini-series 'The Nazis: A Warning Story', in which former Nazi members speak coldly about their ideology, indifferent to the suffering they have caused. These Indonesian gangsters, however, are still in power and are applauded on national TV, their insanity still shared decades later by a significant portion of the population. There seems to be a disconnect between these people and their feelings, as if all the violence had somehow rendered them numb. This is most evident in Anwar. While a few of the thugs express some awareness of the harm they have done, Anwar is in a state of denial. He blocks his emotions and appears to bury any remorse for his acts under a fabricated storyline that absolves him. Yet, toxic memories stubbornly surface every night in the form of nightmares. As the film goes on, he slowly wakes up from the cloud of illusion that he has created around him and realizes the horror that he's participated in. This is one of the film's big successes. It's frightening to picture this kind of cruelty emerge from a marginal, uneducated, third-world environment. But we have to ask ourselves how different we are from them. Don't we turn a blind eye on the killing of civilians carried out by drones in other countries, for example? Don't we also glorify national heroes who wiped out entire populations? As a Venezuelan, I think of the revered Independence leader Bolivar, who ordered the systematic murder of all Spanish civilians with his decree of 'War to the Death'. Every country has its stories. We seem to rationalize these inconvenient facts by telling ourselves that the war was merciless on both sides or that the end somehow justifies the means. Like gangster Adi suggests, history is written by the victors and war crimes are defined by the winners. At two and a half hours long, the film could use a little more editing, in my opinion. I feel like it would be even more effective if it were stripped down further, removing any hints of sensationalism. I'm confused, for example, as to why Herman, the obese gangster, is dressed in drag during each reenactment. Did he find it comical? Was he aiming for the grotesque? Did he do it out of his own initiative or did the filmmakers encourage this? It gives the impression that someone was trying hard to make things look even weirder, which is completely unnecessary. Maybe there's a good explanation for this. And then again, everything in this film is so bizarre that it often resembles a work of pitch-black satire. Its terrifying strangeness, however, is no joke.

• A powerful documentary with a brilliant approach

  contact-346-9642842012-12-01

  Act of Killing (Jagal) is awesome: a documentary film showing real algojos (assassins) who killed many PKI (communist party members/supporters), in their own words. It's unique story telling has successfully made important people, including current parliament members, admitting brutality, killing and on-going premanism (thuggery) that's clearly supported by the government, also in their own words, to the camera. Director Joshua Oppenheimer approached the ex-algojo, Anwar Congo and his buddies, to play in a silly movie, even in woman's dress, without knowing that the real movie is actually the everyday conversation where he was proudly telling n showing what he has done in 65. The government assigned military and preman to support the coup-de-tat, raping and killing many innocents in the name of anti-PKI. The movie's honest, satire and unprovocative documentation has ironically made us laugh and cry at the same time. Reality does bite: people do what they think is right, and make it right for them, no matter how wrong it is. Why? Because history is written by the winners. All Indonesian production team remain anonymous and the movie is not publicly distributed in Indonesia.