THE ACT OF KILLING (noon chronicle aus berlinale)

Joshua Oppenheimer’s shattering documentary “The Act of Killing,” which screened here in Berlin, is truly one of the most intensely frightening, riveting films I've seen, maybe ever...

In Indonesia in 1965 a military coup occurred, after which a wide purge of “Communists” (real or imagined) was put into action.

The men who carried out the slaughter, sometimes one-on-one, sometimes by burning entire villages, have never been brought to justice for their crimes.

They number today among the more powerful elite, closely allied with Indonesia’s Pancasila Youth, a paramilitary organization with 3 million members, that controls everything from racketeering to smuggling to gambling .

They are also hired as security guards in supermarkets: these guys are everywhere...

Oppenheimer’s film focuses on a group of older men, death squad leaders during the exterminations of 1965-1966.  Soon one of them, Anwar Congo, emerges as the film’s main character.

Anwar, you see, estimated at one point by an observer to have killed maybe 1,000 people, wants to make a movie.

This movie will tell the "truth" of the communist purge, but will also have fancy elements of humor and romance, because otherwise, they all know, people won’t see it.

And they want people to see it.

Not because of the job it will do in excusing them of their crimes, or justifying their actions.

No, they want people to see just how sadistic they were; that their cruelty was far, far greater than that of the "Communists" they summarily executed.

 

They are proud of what they did, proud of their corruption.

 

It was at this early point in the film that my jaw dropped, and it remained on the floor throughout the entire rest of the 2-hours runtime.

At times the mythologizing and reminding becomes practically psychologically unwatchable!

 Paramilitaries sit around recounting tales of raping “delicious” 14 year olds, to the laughter and nostalgic of their peers.

The pretty interviewer on a Indonesian talk show, practiced and telegenic, interviews Anwar and co., and concludes to the camera with a bright smile “Yes, God really does hate Communists,” to daytime-TV applause.

What we get here is banal, of course, but it’s the joviality of evil that really kicks you in the face.

So we can call Oppenheimer a genius.

He inserts himself rarely into the film, maybe speaking only three or four times, though his subjects often talk to him directly, Joshua-this, Joshua-that.

But when Oppenheimer does talk, it’s with great effect (and in Indonesian).

The film ends with Anwar back on the concrete rooftop/execution site where earlier he cha-cha-chaed.

Now that it’s a little later, my heart rate has returned to normal. But the profound impression this film has made remains.

If only the word “mindblowing” wasn’t so regularly used, I’d use it here... my mind was blown, into a thousand tiny pieces.

"The Act Of Killing" presents a hidden holocaust and a moral apocalypse where the basic humanities have become twisted beyond recognition.

 “The Act of Killing” is a without a doubt a huge achievement in filmmaking, documentary, or anything else...

 

Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Act of Killing" won an Ecumenical Award and an Audience Award at the Berlin film festival.

 

gd

Cast: Anwar Congo, Adi Zulkadry, Herman Koto, Jusuf Kalla

Director: Joshua Oppenheimer

 
Production company: Final Cut for Real, Denmark
Producers: Joram ten Brink, Anne Köhncke, Michael Uwemedimo, Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous
Executive producers: Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, André Singer, Torstein Grude, Bjarte Mørner Tveit, Joram ten Brink
Cast: Anwar Congo, Adi Zulkadry, Herman Koto, Jusuf Kalla
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Co-directors: Christine Cynn, Anonymous
Cinematographers: Carlos Arango de Montis, Lars Skree
Editors: Niels Pagh Andersen, Janus Billeskov Jansen, Mariko Montpetit, Charlotte Munch Bengtsen, Ariadna Fatjó-Vilas Mestre
Music: Elin Øyen Vister, Karsten Fundal
Sales company: Cinephil, Tel Aviv
Rating TBC, 120 minutes