The Act of Killing (2012)

Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing takes the documentary into territory that used to be the exclusive province of fiction: a place where fantasy and reality collide, motivations are uncertain, actions are rife with subtext and characters keep revealing hidden layers. The key difference is that many of the events being depicted on the screen really happened, and real people suffered the consequences. The result, says Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris (The Fog of War), one of the film's executive producers, "is truly unlike any other documentary film." Esteemed German filmmaker Werner Herzog, also an executive producer, echoes the sentiment: "I immediately knew I had never seen anything like [this film]. I'd never seen anything as powerful, as frightening and as surreal . . . ."

An American now living in Denmark, Oppenheimer spent five years in Indonesia filming The Act of Killing (after three years investigating the subject). One of the film's side effects is to portray a society entirely based on graft and corruption, which is no small affair when you're dealing with the fourth most populous country on earth (after China, India and the U.S.). Political office is openly bought and sold, businesses are extorted, and the well-connected can call on a huge paramilitary organization, the Pancasila, to intimidate whatever they want from whomever has it. Oppenheimer likens this world to Nazi Germany if the Nazis were still in power today and retired S.S. officers were lionized for their role in the Holocaust, but an equally apt analogy might be American life if all bans on organized crime were repealed and the likes of Tony Soprano were hired as government contractors to eliminate dissidents and maintain "domestic tranquility".

Oppenheimer's portrait of contemporary Indonesian society emerges through a focused inquiry into one of its founding events, the systematic extermination of an estimated one million government opponents (indiscriminately labeled "communists") in 1965-1966 after a military coup. To accomplish these mass killings, the government turned to paramilitary units, later formally organized as the Pancasila, and street thugs who called themselves "gangsters", which, in Indonesian, is derived from the Dutch words for "free man". Forty years later, many of these killers walk openly among the descendants of their victims and are hailed as heroes. After interviewing some of these individuals, Oppenheimer encountered Anwar Congo, a character so extraordinary that, if a writer imagined him, everyone would say he couldn't exist. The Act of Killing might just as accurately be entitled Being Anwar Congo, because Oppenheimer's film undertakes the challenge of leading the viewer into the mind of someone who actually killed an estimated 1000 people, is quite happy to tell you all about it and may or may not have regrets, depending on whether the camera is running.

Drafthouse Films is releasing The Act of Killing in two versions on Blu-ray. The 122-minute theatrical cut played at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2012 and premiered in U.S. theaters in July 2013. The 167-minute director's cut is the only version to be shown in Indonesia, where the film was released publicly but without formal government approval and has resurrected topics that the general populace were previously afraid to discuss openly.

If The Act of Killing doesn't hook you with its surreal teaser, then the film is not for you. The first screenshot provides a hint of this opening, which is Anwar Congo's vision for a Hollywood-style musical number in the movie he wants to make about his exploits. The full version isn't unveiled until near the end of the film. It's worth the wait.

After the teaser, Oppenheimer provides a short historical introduction that concludes as follows:

When we met the killers, they proudly told us stories about what they did. To understand why, we asked them to create scenes about the killings in whatever ways they wished. This film follows that process, and documents its consequences.

Anwar Congo loves the movies. Before he became a hired killer, he was a petty crook who scalped tickets at the cinema in Medan, the capital city of North Sumatra. When he was recruited as an assassin—the details are vague, but the head man was apparently a local newspaper publisher, Ibrahim Sinik, who is also interviewed—Anwar adapted killing techniques he'd seen in Hollywood films. His preferred method, strangulation by wire, which he proudly demonstrates, came from gangster movies.

Over a period of several years, Anwar and his associates develop, cast and shoot what they think will be a movie re-creating and reenacting his exploits, with Oppenheimer's crew dutifully shooting whatever they are asked to record. They stage the musical sequence glimpsed at the opening; a surreal Western-style assault; an interrogation scene in American gangster regalia lit in the style of film noir; various fantasy and dream sequences; and a scarily realistic massacre at a replica of a country village, using numerous hired extras and members of the Pancasila brigade. The last is attended by a government minister, who is initially concerned about how this may look to outsiders, but on reflection decides that it's a good thing to show the world just how fiercely Indonesia's "free men" will defend her.

Throughout this process, Oppenheimer continues to interview Anwar, who speaks more and more openly about his actions, his thoughts, even his nightmares. He also records Anwar watching segments of his "movie" and offering observations and comments. Anwar is a beguiling performer, and he is clearly addicted to his own celebrity. Oppenheimer and his editors construct their sequences skillfully so that Anwar's practiced charm at winning over people always sets up the viewer for a sucker punch with some ghastly revelation or shocking edit that reminds you of who he is and what he's done.

(Note: Anwar Congo's hair was gray when Oppenheimer met him; he died it black for his appearances in the "movie"; and it had grown out by the end of Oppenheimer's shoot. Because The Act of Killing is constructed thematically, not chronologically, Anwar's hair color switches back and forth between shots. If nothing else, it's one more reminder that Oppenheimer's film is an artistic construct, not a transcript. Werner Herzog is eloquent in his interview on the difference and why it matters.)

What passes for comic relief in The Act of Killing is frequently provided by Anwar's circle of friends and contacts, through whom we get a wider view of the society he helped create and that worships him as a hero. His closest associate, Herman Koto, who co-stars in their movie, is asked to run for Parliament but is given no money to bribe voters; visions of wealth dance before him as he totals for Oppenheimer the payoffs that a member of Parliament can expect. A group of Anwar's Pancasila friends storm through a local Chinese market extorting protection money to finance a reception for a "special" friend, who turns out to be Indonesia's vice president, Jusuf Kalla; he congratulates the enthusiastic Pancasila crowd for their role in keeping Indonesia strong. (In his commentary, Oppenheimer reveals that the film crew reimbursed all the Chinese merchants.) A top Pancasila official, Haji Anif, proudly shows the valuable land he strong-armed from its owners with the threat of paramilitary force; he's transformed it into a bird sanctuary.