The Act of Killing

Where to begin? Let’s first attempt to untan­gle that title. The ​“killing” ele­ment is lit­er­al, being as this is a doc­u­men­tary (of a sort) exam­in­ing the mass, state-sanc­tioned exter­mi­na­tion of com­mu­nist sym­pa­this­ers in Indone­sia cir­ca 1965 fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful mil­i­tary coup let by Suharto.

Joshua Oppenheimer’s extra­or­di­nary, at times improb­a­ble film glances at a his­to­ry that’s been refract­ed in a con­vex mir­ror, look­ing hard at the fine details of the present in order to tease out the gross infe­lic­i­ties of the past. It’s a film which rejects tra­di­tion­al con­text and direct dis­course in order to re-frame and recon­tex­tu­alise hor­ren­dous acts of vio­lence, look­ing less at the cru­el sweep of his­to­ry than the psy­cho­log­i­cal impuls­es per­tain­ing to the uni­ver­sal human action of inflict­ing pain on another.

The title offers a sly dou­ble enten­dre: it is about a finite act of killing, one that occurred on a mas­sive scale and in days where dan­ger­ous polit­i­cal volatil­i­ty deemed it nec­es­sary for the con­tin­u­a­tion of soci­ety. In this case it was an act that was con­cealed through bru­tal­i­ty and para­noia. The fear­ful denizens of Indone­sia were unable to pub­licly air their griev­ances, nor were they able to seek their ret­ri­bu­tion. It’s a text­book cov­er-up, a case of deep-set nation­al shame which direc­tor Oppen­heimer would’ve been unable (or, con­sid­er­ing some of the vio­lent char­ac­ters he meets, ill-advised) to explore as a piece of straight inves­tiga­tive journalism.

His mas­ter­stroke is – in the most empa­thet­ic and open way imag­in­able – to hand his sub­jects enough rope with which to hang them­selves. And that they do, in spec­tac­u­lar­ly strange fash­ion. At the cen­tre of the film is a suave sil­ver fox, an ex-mili­tia man and exe­cu­tion­er named Anwar Con­go who glad­ly accepts Oppenheimer’s invi­ta­tion to cre­ate a close per­son­al doc­u­ment of the process of his killings.

Ini­tial­ly he mere­ly out­lines the DIY par­tic­u­lars of decap­i­tat­ing some­one quick­ly and clean­ly with a length of wire attached to a wall. But lat­er, the artic­u­la­tion of his ​“crimes” (scare quotes not sug­gest­ing that what Con­go did was dis­put­ed, more that it was and remains entire­ly legal) takes on a dif­fer­ent form.

This is where the ​“act” bit of the title comes in, as we are see­ing in the most lit­er­al sense an act­ed out ver­sion of past killings, restaged and roman­ti­cised with the cheery col­lu­sion of Con­go and his cronies in order to get to the heart of how these men were able to car­ry out the things they did.

There’s clear­ly a divide between what Oppen­heimer and Con­go think they are mak­ing. The direc­tor per­haps sees it as a meta-cin­e­mat­ic trea­tise that’s been for­tu­itous­ly flood­ed with grim irony, while the sub­ject per­haps sees it as a rhine­stone-stud­ded high­way to vin­di­ca­tion, believ­ing that to speak freely of his for­ma­tive years would be to wrest the bur­den of guilt from himself.

This ide­o­log­i­cal push and pull at the film’s core sup­plies it with a sense of high dra­ma. How far can Oppen­heimer indulge the whims of his sub­ject to fur­ther cal­ci­fy his demon­ic inner-nature? How far can Con­go indulge the whims of his direc­tor in order to appear more humane and mis­guid­ed in the eyes of the audi­ence? Such is its bril­liant­ly slip­pery nature, you’d even be for­giv­en for think­ing that the entire film is a huge sit­u­a­tion­ist prank and that Con­go and Oppen­heimer are mere­ly fic­tion­al characters.

Yet as much as The Act Of Killing is a film with seri­ous and earnest doc­u­men­tary intent, it also works on a star­tling and pro­found duel lev­el. Con­go reveals that pri­or to his killing spree he had been quite the cinephile, hoover­ing up the Amer­i­can films screened at his local fleapit. His recre­ations are coloured by his love and knowl­edge of cin­e­ma, as in one scene he’s dressed as a suave, wise-crack­ing gang­ster in a cream suit while he car­ries out a bout of torture.

The scene recalls ear­ly gang­ster pic­tures like The Roar­ing Twen­ties or Howard Hawks’ Scar­face, inti­mat­ing that Congo’s mem­o­ry has some­where down the line been irrev­o­ca­bly fused with that of the glam­ourised ide­al pre­sent­ed in cin­e­ma. Some say that cin­e­ma offers a lit­er­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of dreams and mem­o­ries, and this film, in its own utter­ly bizarre and sin­gu­lar way, backs up that claim.

The Act Of Killing sug­gests that cin­e­ma can offer noth­ing but lies, whether that’s due to the unchecked egos of its mak­ers, or the logis­ti­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty of recre­at­ing a moment that only exists as a sub­jec­tive mem­o­ry. It’s on those terms that this film should be con­sumed, and it’s Oppenheimer’s con­sum­mate bal­ance of tone that makes these ​“lies” appear so hor­ri­bly beguiling.