Good start, but then it gets ruined

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It's been years now since I saw this documentary and it's still sticks with me. Not just the astounding scope of the horrors that it depicts, but also the sheer mastery of the filmmaking itself. I hate to proclaim any piece of art as being "the best" in its medium, but this film is simply in a league of its own. There's nothing like it. A masterpiece.

I watched this doco in a small theater room that was full of people. Usually, when you are in such places every tiny movement or just breathing are magnified sounds. What happened in this screening is something I have never experienced before of after. There was a thick silence, total, like there was no air in the room, like nobody was breathing, nobody was moving, because nobody was.The Act of Killing is a documentary that re-enacts the atrocities committed by some of the death squads against people accused of being Communists in Indonesia in 1965-6 as told by two people directly involved in the killings.This doco creates a hollow in your heart that is difficult to refill. This is so because one loses hope in humanity when watching the story. First, is the realization of the massacres (of which I have no idea), then the extent of those killings, the details of what was done to those people and their babies, the sort of torture applied to them. Secondly, all of this is not told by the victims is told by the direct torturers.This documentary will not leave you indifferent. It doesn't want to provoke just for the sake of getting you talking, it will provoke you because what it tells is sadly true; because it digs into human nature to see if we are, after all, good in essence, and because those telling about the massacres aren't the victims but apparently normal people who are proud of what they did. The documentary is good because is able to show different faces of the torturers, dig into their daily life, their family relationships and into their psyche to find out if there is some sort of regret and remorse or not.The director does a great job in the one-to-one interviews with the torturers, as they are treated with courtesy, humanly, even affection, with some sort of emotional detachment. He asks calmly and let them speak. This is not to say that the director has no judgment, but the interviews do explicitly avoid confrontation or direct judgment.Some of the images of the film are haunting and beautiful, like the one that made it to the poster. Most of them, however, are grim, grayish and reflect the horrors that the documentary narrates.Part of the Indonesian crew did not include their name in the final credits for obvious reasons, as the massacres are still justified and the dead of so many "Communist" laugh about on public TV.Unforgettable, sadly for the wrong reasons.

Like many viewers of the documentary I had zero knowledge of the events that are remembered here, and on a fundamental level it has already succeeded by bringing its topic into the public sphere. It is of course political; on a secondary level Oppenheimer seeks to reveal it to the American public and their deeply hidden involvement in the mass killings. But I am struck by how little this agenda exists on a surface level; Oppenheimer seems to be not immediately concerned with the objective of unearthing deep-seated remorse from these subjects, if there is any. Filming took reportedly 8 years - there is patience behind the camera, as if the filming is guided by the killers themselves. This is our chance to show ourselves for who we are, they say. And yet they are so freely depicted discussing what to omit from the film, and their greed and corruption, and how they are revered in the public sphere. Such a confidence and reputation is baffling to the western viewer. So Oppenheimer follows them and their pursuit; from their journey as low tier ticket scalpers all the way to death squad leaders. Their history has influenced them, and they re-enact their past in the vein of their adored movie stars. One scene has them dressed in traditional gangster outfit, torturing a victim while an eerie green light bathes the background. Another has the killings symbolically via a grotesque tribal sacrifice/meal. In the most vivid of their stories, victims, perpetrators and dancers alike are dressed in the most lurid costumes, the sunlight is deliberately overexposed to give the scene a heavenly aura, and Anwar Congo himself wears a glimmering gold medal and is praised for his past actions. Oppenheimer freely props these glorified dramatisations up; or rather he allows the killers to rewrite their own history. More disturbing is the freedom with which they boast and tell their stories with pride. There is still a deep running sentiment of anti-communism and political corruption everywhere they go. They casually talk of their killings while playing golf and drinking, recreate their brutal methods with pride, and even gain the approval of political party members. One story Oppenheimer relays is the reality in which Herman would shake up the Chinese shopkeepers without fear and keep the film rolling, and then secretly he would go back and compensate the owners for their money lost. There is a powerful sense of complicity and responsibility that is owed to Oppenheimer for capturing this act. Does it veer into artifice? Perhaps once, as he captures the fiery re-enactment of a takeover of a village where the camera hovers nervously and close-in and the sound is cut to heighten the brutality of the images. And then they shout Cut! and it cuts back to a wide shot and everyone is all smiles. Well not everyone - the children don't quite understand, and even the director admits it is not a good look. The most talked about scene is the last one - a revisit to the rooftop by Anwar where he carried out so many of his reported 1000 kills. It has been paradoxically deemed both horrific and upsetting as well as artificial. But the beauty of documentary is that both interpretations are equally valid. We see throughout that Anwar is increasingly struck by his past actions. He attempts to shield himself from this realisation: he imagines his victims thanking him for killing them, he props up his young grandchildren and is happy to see them denounce the video as 'boring', and offers up a cheap confession as if he has now fully learned exactly how his victims felt before the death blow. And he tears up, and retches repeatedly, uncontrollably - whether genuine, or played fake to appear remorseful, it is ultimately shallow. Oppenheimer feels no need to comfort him because the full experience can never be recreated - not with talking heads, not with dramatic re-enactment, not with feigned acceptance. Those blindly grabbing for catharsis or redemption need to realise this.

I got to know of this movie when reading about the follow up documentary dealing with the victims of the mass murder in Indonesia. As other review already summarized the background for the movie i will try to focus more on its importance and meaning. I sometimes wonder why i watch these movies like "Waltz with bashir", "Incendies", "Shooting Dogs" or "Shindlers List". All these movies deeply dive into the human soul and show how easy any human can commit the worst atrocities. It doesn't matter what color your skin is, how civilized your society is or what religion you belong to, nearly every spot on this god ridden planet is drenched in blood and has its own share of violence. This movie has a different drive though as its not about the victims or staged by actors. These are the real killers talking and japing life on camera and reenact their deeds. They get kind of tricked into thinking this movie will somewhat redeem them or they are met with same understanding as most of their countrymen show towards them. Sometimes they are worried that the movie show them in a bad light but after a short moment of doubt they return to smiles. The hardest to stomach is sometimes how these people seem to be kind people feeding little ducklings or one guy trying to calm his weeping daughter and next moment you see them telling you how to crush people skulls or behead someone. I put one point of the rating as i didn't understand the dancing scenes and why the fat gangster always was in woman clothes even when they reenacted some killing scenes. Also i feel sometimes you could have tightened the narrative a bit more to make it a bit shorter. I got a huge problem with the fact that countries don't try to work through their bloody history, Germany sure could have done better but at least they did for the most parts. But countries like Spain (Franco), Russia (Stalin),China (Mao) Japan (WWII Genocides), Indonesia here and many more can be found who silence anyone who will speak up or which history books tell straight out lies or play down the numbers. In Indonesia its a hard case, the history not only gets twisted, the killers from back then live a good life, benefiting from their deeds. They get invited to big paramilitary rallies, TV shows and people laugh with them when they retell their stories and how they crushed all communists. And this goes on till today as you can see how they collect money from Chinese merchants and threaten them in front of the camera. Some victim of the follow up movie had to move cause he got death threats for taking part in it. This movie should be a big warning sign how you have to approach countries who deal that way with their history, of course you cant condemn everybody in this country but you should keep it in the back of your head. Also it shows how easy people are deceived, they maybe know in the back of their minds that its wrong what they are doing but if they are given an easy way out by the society and government (anti communist propaganda, Chinese prejudices) they will happily continue killing people. So if your countries trys to gather hate on certain groups, be the one to stand in its way, the people are strong united, if everyone turns away in fear nobody will find the courage to stand in the way of control. You don't even have to like or know that group that is targeted just think about what if it was you? Sooner or later hateful words wont be the only thing and some sadists will take it into their hand to end the "problem". Remember movies like that and don't remain silent cause me personally would rather be beaten to a pulp instead of living with the shame of watching the other way when innocent people get tortured or murdered in my neighborhood.