The Act Of Killing.docx

Grecu Bianca-Georgeana Grupa H212

The Act of killing The movie starts by telling us how Indonesia was oppressed by Japan through World War II, under the dictatorship of President Sukarno. In October, 1965, an organization assassinated six army generals and took over some communication outlets, but ultimately failed in their attempt to put a revolutionary council in power. The Indonesian authorities blamed the attempted on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). In the following months, the Indonesian army proceeded systematically to eliminate known or suspected members of the PKI. The victims were mostly farmers and villagers. The two main protagonists are Anwar Congo, an executioner, and Herman Koto, a gangster and paramilitary leader. The killers, as the documentary introduces them, recruit children, men, and women, who are instructed to cry and scream, as the killers reenact the attack on the villages. Between takes, these “actors,” some of whom witnessed the original carnage or lost relatives during the slaughter, laugh. Still, the focus remains on the killers and those who play the killers, not on those who play the victims. Herman Koto, seen sometimes in drag, talks of raping girls, saying how it must have been hell for them, but that it was heaven for him. Anwar Congo proudly shows his skills by recreating his strangling technique. He is gracious to Hollywood movies from which he learned useful interrogation tricks and the best torture techniques. The documentary includes a scene that references psychiatrists. Anwar Congo says that his sleep is disturbed by the memories and nightmares of those he killed. His unempathic confidant tells him, “You feel haunted because your mind is weak.” He tells Congo that these ghosts are weaker than they, “but if we feel guilty, it can destroy our insanity defense.” Confronted with these men, the director invites Congo and several of his fellowexecutioners to make their own movie about the purge, telling the story through dramatic reenactments of their doings, in which they would portray not only themselves but also people they interrogated, tortured, and killed. Robert Lemelson, a cultural anthropologist interviewed an “older man who had a complex relationship with a variety of spirit beings.” He disclosed “in hushed and fearful tones” that in 1965 he witnessed his family and other villagers being killed by paramilitary forces. This man, 1

Grecu Bianca-Georgeana Grupa H212

like other surviving victims and witnesses, were silenced by gag orders enforced by “surveillance, arrest, imprisonment and execution.” The film follows members of four families, documenting their ongoing processing of the atrocities. In one sequence, a psychiatrist interviews a Javanese boy who had been bullied and called “the commies' kid. In my opinion, the saddest part of this movie is that these men appear to have few to almost no regrets and a lot of the people still believe that the people that they killed and tortured deserved that fate. Also, it is shows that the army and the politicians that started this massacres are still in charge and they have huge influence over Indonesia. It really surprised me too see that even in the front of the camera the criminals had no shame or regrets, they seemed to take pride in what they did. The movie shows that the population still lives in fear, and these people are respected among the authorities. It also made me realise that this tragedy wasn’t very exposed to the international media.

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