"The Act of Killing" Documentary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Killing

One of this year's Oscar nominated documentaries is "The Act of Killing" which is available via Netflix streaming. Melanie and I watched it recently and it's one of the oddest, most horrifying documentaries I've ever seen. It's going to stay with me for a long time.

The movie is about the mass murders of Communists and Chinese in Indonesia in the mid 1960s. The "stars" of the documentary are the killers themselves, the mass murderers who committed the crimes. They're re-enacting the killings for a fictional movie, and the documentary shows you this movie being made. At the same time, the killers speak freely to us, to the documentary filmmaker, and proudly recount their atrocities. The killings wee apparently government sanctioned and funded, and you find out "gangsters," as these men refer to themselves, are almost revered in Indonesia. You even hear government officials at rallies praising them - and this is in modern day Indonesia. We see during a talk show appearance these serial killers being applauded for purging the country of Communists.

I've never seen anything like this. Imagine Hitler and Goebbels making a movie celebrating their atrocities.

That some of these men are charismatic and funny is upsetting, but that's what makes the movie so powerful; it shows you the men, not the caricatures or stereotypes. As much as we want them to look like aberrant, soulless monsters, we see them as people, and that's powerfully unsettling.

What's fascinating is how freely they talk abut their atrocities. They describe in detail the various ways to kill people, and the advantages and disadvantages to each method. They describe the most repulsive acts I can imagine in almost banal tones. One guy reminisces fondly about raping 14-year-old girls, and boasts how he'd say, "This is going to be Hell for you but Heaven for me." It's like being in some bizarro immoral universe. I was fascinated and repulsed by this movie in equal measure, and it's not easy to know what to make of it. That the main killer in the film grows more remorseful as the movie goes on is gratifying - good, you should suffer for what you did - but empty in its inadequacy.

The thing that horrified me the most was to see how even today the government and the culture applaud the genocide that happened, and holds these killers up heroically. Indonesia comes off as a very disturbing and unsettling country, one I don't think I'll visit anytime soon.

This is a powerful and unique documentary. Few leave an impression like this one does. I think the best documentary race this year is between "The Act of Killing" and another film available on Netflix streaming, "The Square." I highly recommend both.