The Act of Killing
The Act of Killing is a 2012 documentary film directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, with Christine Cynn and an anonymous Indonesian co-directing. The film follows individuals who participated in the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, wherein alleged communists and people opposed to the New Order regime were tortured and killed, with the killers, many becoming gangsters, still in power throughout the country. The film was mostly filmed in Medan, North Sumatra, following the executioner Anwar Congo and his acquaintances as they, upon Oppenheimer's request, re-enact their killings and talk about their actions openly, also following Congo's psychological journey facing the topic.
A co-production between Denmark, Indonesia, Norway and the United Kingdom, it is presented by Final Cut for Real in Denmark and produced by Signe Byrge Sørensen, with Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Joram ten Brink and Andre Singer in executive producer roles. The film was conceived following Oppenheimer and Cynn's Indonesian documentary film The Globalisation Tapes, which depicted survivors of the killings, who ideated The Act of Killing. They interviewed 40 people who were unexpectedly boastful about their actions, before taking an interest in Congo in 2005 due to his humanist quality. Filming occurred up to 2011 with an Indonesian team largely credited as anonymous. Oppenheimer described the process as taking a toll on their mental health. The film was edited by a team of four.
The Act of Killing premiered on 31 August 2012 at the Telluride Film Festival in the United States, which was followed by more festival and theatrical screenings up to 2014. The initial releases used a 120-minute cut, with the 2013 television airings trimming it further up to 95 minutes. Due to its positive reception, the 160-minute director's cut, previously only shown in Indonesia, was released for international audiences. The Indonesian release began on 1 November 2012 secretly, but public releases were later seen, and popularity spiked in the country too. It was later released for free online only for people in Indonesia. The film received widespread acclaim from critics for its method in tackling the subject, blending surrealism with realism. It has entered lists of the best films by various critics, and has earned various accolades including a British Academy Film Award.
The film has become subject to scholarly analysis regarding documentary filmmaking, and the mass killings itself. It has also helped catalyse a wide conversation regarding the events in Indonesia, with the reality of what happened more known, especially with the Western world's direct involvement. In China, the film sparked outrage due to the depiction of the gangsters extorting money from Chinese Indonesians. The Indonesian government has not given positive responses, claiming that it is a misleading portrayal of the country's history. A spiritual successor, The Look of Silence, was released in 2014; it depicts the family of a victim as they encounter the killers and understand further on what happened.
Summary
Following the 1965 30 September Movement, Indonesian president Sukarno was overthrown by General Suharto. A key event in the transition to the New Order was the killing of over a million alleged communists between 1965 and 1966, including Sukarno's supporters, members of the Communist Party of Indonesia, labor and farming unions, intellectuals, and Chinese Indonesians. Backed by Western governments, the paramilitary groups and preman gangsters responsible for the massacres, the biggest being the Pancasila Youth, gained power in Indonesia.The Act of Killing is directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, who with his crew in Medan, asks some of the gangsters to re-enact their killings. The film's first subjects, Anwar Congo and Herman Koto, used to sell black market tickets outside of a cinema. During the rise of communism, American films were restricted, and with no income they began working for a death squad as part of the genocide. Inspired by film noir films, killing methods include strangulation, stabbing, and throwing people into rivers. Congo estimates that he has killed as many as 1,000 people. The Pancasila Youth openly brag about their role in the massacres on television and express their intention to further curb the spread of "neocommunism" and far-leftism in Indonesia, and is backed by high-ranking government members, including then-vice president Jusuf Kalla. The ethnic Chinese who were not killed continue to have their money extorted by the gangsters.
Adi Zulkadry, a friend and past collaborator of Congo and participant in the genocide, discusses Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI, a propaganda film that pushes the notion the 30 September Movement was perpetrated by the communists, and glorifies the genocide. While Congo praises the film for validating his acts, Zulkadry is sceptical of its plot and deems the genocide cruel. In a discussion with Oppenheimer, he denies it being a war crime, as the same holds true for the Iraq War and the Native American genocide in the United States. Congo then details his nightmares following the genocide, where he would envision the spirits of his victims. Zulkadry, who felt no remorse, downplays it as nerve issues. Ibrahim Sinik and Soduaon Siregar, journalists of Medan Pos who covered the genocide, show support but deny direct participation.
Koto runs in the 2009 Indonesian legislative election as a candidate from the Workers and Employers Party intending to extort locals once in office, but is easily defeated. Many high-ranking government officials are also leaders of Pancasila Youth factions, allowing them to commit corruption, rig elections, and clear land for developers. The group earns income in the modern era through criminal activities like gambling and drug smuggling. The film also depicts their sexual objectification of women; members boast about raping teenage girls and Gerwani members during the massacres.
During the re-enactments, titled Arsan dan Aminah, some of the gangsters including Zulkadry express caution so as to not potentially destroy their reputation as heroes. While it initially centers on the killings, Congo then discusses his nightmares more. After filming the Pancasila Youth members chant their spirit in killing communists, they continue to a scene where the alleged communist families are tortured, with their houses burnt. Seeing the crying children, Congo expresses pity, which turns to terror as he portrays a victim in another scene, causing him to undergo a panic attack as he senses what his victims felt. Feeling remorse, he returns to a place where he frequently killed people, retching at his own reminiscing.
Production
Filming
The Act of Killing came to be when Oppenheimer and co-director Christine Cynn went to a Belgian-owned palm plantation nearby Medan, where the female workers were asked to spray herbicide without adequate protective equipment; the film that came out of it, The Globalisation Tapes, documents their worries on making a union against the system because their grandparents were alleged pro-communists killed during the genocide. As focus on the genocide was apparent, people in the military often confiscated their equipment and detained the duo. Before they could leave Indonesia, the workers suggested that they film the genocide's perpetrators. Despite their initial caution, the people they met were blatantly proud of their actions. Starting in late 2004 with the help of death squad leader Amir Hasan, they were able to contact many of his kind, moving up the ranks of those involved, including retired military officers in capital city Jakarta and two retired officers of the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States, and met Congo in Medan in 2005 as his 41st interviewee. The film's Indonesian co-director began working in 2004 with a one-month goal, but eventually stuck throughout the entire process.The film was shot mostly between 2005 and 2011. In several interviews, Oppenheimer described his feeling listening to the perpetrators as if "I'd wandered into Germany 40 years after the Holocaust only to find the Nazis still in power". It took filming around five or ten subjects that Oppenheimer could openly discuss the genocide, and when he ideated that he would let them re-enact their acts while filming their thoughts on it "to create perhaps a new form of documentary, a kind of documentary of the imagination". The subjects understood that the re-enactments will not be a separate film, and have signed forms indicating such. Congo was a particular point of interest to Oppenheimer because he "could see his pain", believing that Congo's openness to his acts were in response to self-soothing his trauma, trying to deny any wrongdoing. Because different death squads within Pancasila Youth dislike each other, the film only depicts Congo's squad to avoid conflicts. Henceforth, he met Koto, Zulkadry, and Sinik; as a filmmaker and Anwar's killing advisor, Sinik gave input on the re-enactments.
Oppenheimer handled half of the cinematography, with Lars Skree, Carlos Arango de Montis, and the Indonesian co-director doing the rest. He let the killers use the cameras to document the behind-the-scenes process of their re-enactments. Long takes were preferred to depict entire events, and the crew would not speak much as it records. The entire behind-the-scenes process of the re-enactments were thus filmed to further accommodate the film's investigative comprehensiveness. Dailies of the re-enactments were shown to the subjects as soon as possible, hence the reaction scenes in the film. The gangster re-enactment's set was based upon the actual office where the murders occurred, and was entirely improvised. The goldfish sculpture seen prominently throughout the film was a former restaurant that closed in 1997; it was filmed last and represents Congo's ambiguous fever dream.
Filmed in 2009, the re-enactments were funded by the filmmakers, but some scenes were made by Congo's squad, with production values Oppenheimer called "awful". Because Oppenheimer's crew had no experience with fiction, they consulted Congo for authenticity. The "high production values" allowed for the re-enactments to level the non-fiction scenes, so that by the final act of The Act of Killing, the re-enactments can dominate: "it stops really being a documentary at all, and becomes a kind of fever dream" from Anwar's mind. The sound was edited at the soap opera studio of TVRI, Indonesia's state television network also dominated by gangsters. The reason Koto was given feminine costume was because his theater "group was like the Globe Theatre , all the roles were played by men, and Herman always played the women's roles." The scene where Congo's neighbor admitted that his stepfather was killed was not on Oppenheimer and his Indonesian co-director's attention as they were changing tapes; Oppenheimer expressed regret for missing out on it and allowing the neighbors’ portrayal as a tortured victim. The guilt caused the neighbor to have a breakdown. The unnamed neighbor died two years after filming.
Amid filming, Oppenheimer traveled to Jakarta to show the videos filmed thus far to genocide survivors and human rights advocates, who deemed his findings important and crucial to continue on. They also frequently delivered dailies and transcripts of it to National Human Rights Commissioner Stanley Prasetyo, who helped with interview ideas. Zulkadry's came midway through filming, with the Indonesian production manager having met him previously in Jakarta. Oppenheimer's vision for the film changed with his arrival, who openly condemned the killings but also expressed caution on the re-enactment's potential in reshaping Indonesian history. During one of the scenes, Zulkadry asked for the film to be discontinued, alleging that Oppenheimer is a communist. With the Indonesian crew in fear, Oppenheimer refuted Adi's claims. He felt traumatized by the overall filming and at one point collapsed in exhaustion; he would often return to London healing from nightmares and insomnia. It stemmed from a re-enactment where Congo mutilates a teddy bear symbolizing a girl, then telling Koto, "you tried to bribe me with your daughter. See? You're the barbaric one, not me."
The Indonesian crew also faced similar emotions which they faced by bonding with each other, though some stepped down midway through filming. As the filming progresses, Oppenheimer could be more open on his perspectives with Zulkadry, who he deems hypocritical, and Congo. He and Congo had bonded during filming; during the mutilation re-enactment, Congo noticed him crying and asking if they must stop. Thus, when Congo retched in the penultimate scene, Oppenheimer chose not to reassure him so as to not be "dishonest"; instead he told him the film he envisioned to release, to which Congo responded, "Okay, if that's what it is, I understand, I'm not angry, I want to see it." Oppenheimer gave him a DVD "when it's safe to do so". Richard Whittaker of The Austin Chronicle concluded that in creating the film, he "paid a psychic toll".