The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer & Christine Cynn & Anonymous) [182 points / 17 votes]
"I don't think I've ever had a documentary as my favorite movie of the year. I'd rather say it was something with some fun in it (The Grandmaster, The Wolf of Wall Street, Her) than a movie documenting the perpetrators of mass killings. But I can't deny that when I was done with The Act of Killing I felt like it might've been one of the best movies I'd ever seen.
It's a story about a group of low level gangsters who were known for scalping movie tickets and, for a few years in the mid '60s, executing thousands of alleged communists in response to an attempted coup. Since the death squads grew into a paramilitary organization that is still powerful today those murderers have never been held accountable as war criminals, and in fact have been lauded as heroes. As one of these gangsters says, history is written by the victors. Since their society doesn't shame them for it they are willing to accept an offer from director Joshua Oppenheimer (and anonymous Indonesian co-director) to help them make a movie re-enacting one of their infamous massacres.
While they make their film they're also happy to reminisce and even joke on camera about the horrible things they did and how they did them. It's shocking to watch their casualness and somehow inspiring to notice the little cracks in the facade, the signs that deep down they know what they did was wrong, whether or not it was government sanctioned.
In a profound way this is a story about the power of movies. The allure of being in one causes these war criminals to open up about what they did, to call attention to it. The act of filming one forces them to face the horror of their actions, to admit the lies that they'd been telling all these years, to unmask themselves as savages in front of their own families (who they are clueless enough to have playing victims in many scenes). While their movie clumsily tries to glorify their activities (there's even a musical dream sequence where a victim pins a medal on his killer, Anwar Congo, as thanks for sending him to Heaven), Oppenheimer's documentary reveals these monsters as merely, pathetically, human.
To me, parts of The Act of Killing are grimly, uncomfortably funny, and I recently read a finger-shaking essay scolding those with the gall to find any laughter connected to such a tragic subject. This fails to acknowledge the basic human fact that some things are so sad, so awful that the best way to deal with them is with a bitter laugh. To an outsider some of this plays like blunt Paul Verhoeven satire. We see a propaganda talking point about the meaning of the word "gangster" spread from political speeches to television to daily life. In one scene Anwar appears on a daytime talk show to talk about filming the movie, and a smiley Indonesian Leeza Gibbons equivalent has no problem reading a cue card praising the "more efficient and humane" killing methods he developed (taking people out onto a roof and strangling them with wire).
A layer of reality is peeled back when we hear the crew members in the control room talking in disbelief about what Anwar is saying. It's a reminder that regular people don't agree with the killings, but also that they've been able to ignore them. That's what happens to nightmarish horror that happened to somebody else, or that was perpetrated by your side. For a long time it sickens you, eventually it's easier to become hardened to it, or to stop thinking about it.
I know some people were outraged when certain other awards passed over The Act of Killing in favor of more normal and upbeat documentaries. There were angry implications that such a choice was an insult to all the people who died in the events this movie is promoting awareness of. But I don't think that's why we voted for it, and I know it's not why you should see it. Documentary filmmaking is not just a contest to see who can find the most important issue to raise or the most gruesome crime to address.
I didn't vote for The Act of Killing to say that it's Important (although I believe it is). I voted for it to say that it's a great and powerful use of the medium. It takes us to places we've never been, shows us people we've never met, gets them to talk about things they've never talked about. It's nightmarish and thought provoking, surreal and visually stunning. You will be angered and you will laugh and you will feel bad for laughing and you'll be amazed at what can be accomplished with a lot of tenacity and guts and some cameras." -- Vern
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