This is a documentary that establishes its premise quite simply in its opening shots. A film crew from a university in London went to Indonesia with the intention of talking to a group of men who were involved in the purges of the Suharto government's rise to power and subsequent communist coups of the mid 1960s. The men were members of groups of self-styled 'gangsters' who went around terrorising and murdering anyone they suspected of being a communist, communist sympathiser or Chinese. These gangsters (the word gangster is used in the film, translated from whatever the Indonesian language equivalent is. Clearly 'gangster' has a negative connotation in English, but given the men's claims to have modelled themselves on Mafiosos they saw in American movies I think the translation is reasonable) are now old men, and are asked by the film crew to firstly tell them about what happened, then to re-create some specific scenes.
What happens next is astonishing, as these men eagerly recount and recreate terrifying scenes of physical torture and murder. Things start out small, with one of the men convincing women and kids in the streets to stand as extras while he demonstrates how he would threaten people and burn their houses down. Another man demonstrates on a friend how he would murder suspects in as clean a manner as possible, by strangling them using metal wire. The recreations begin to escalate though, as the men begin to take the idea to heart. They clearly believe that they're making a documentary for the western world about what happened, and so are eager to go to extraordinary lengths to carry out the recreations. Sets are built, extras are brought in, costumes are designed and prosthetic make-up applied. As the recreations grow in size and elaborateness, eventually the documentary is able to pick up hints of truth, humanity and terror in the eyes and words of those who were on both sides of the conflict.
To what extent we are to believe any of this is up for debate. Clearly terrible murders were committed in Indonesia in 1965/66, but one wonders how much of what is being said to camera is being mixed and muddled through the goggles of history. How much of what we are told is true and how much is being created out of a sense of sick bavado is open for debate. Perhaps even the men are desperate to tell their story as a type of sick catharsis for what they've done. The film is very keen to depict the modern political forces in Indonesia that were born out of the gangster movement, a sort of proto-fascist gang with millions of members, strict dress-codes and adherence to a code of macho behaviour that traces its routes back to the Suharto days. When you see all this, it isn't hard to believe what the old men are saying.
The film's final scenes are nearly indescribable, as Anwar Congo (self-described as a sadistic killer) recreates one final act from his past, but with him playing the victim. It is here that we get a view into the ordinariness of evil, as the ageing Congo struggles to breathe through his smoke-induced coughing fits we see a brutal and sadistic murderer as an ordinary doddering old man finally understanding what he has done. Congo and hundreds of other gangsters like him are just ordinary people, but for some reason they were turned into murderers. They never had to pay for their crimes, never even had to admit that what they did was a crime at all. It's something that has clearly sent some of them mad, small punishment for the murder of thousands.
The Act of Killing is an extraordinary documentary. It's bleak but at the same time it's all about humanity. It's a warning to everyone that killers don't come has a sign over their head and an evil-looking scar on their face. These killers are ordinary people, people with families, people who have convinced themselves that the bad things the did were ok because they were for a righteous cause, people perhaps like you and me.
No comments:
Post a Comment