Never Forget

Anwar Congo shows how it's done in The Act of Killing.

«««« The Act of Killing.  Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, Anonymous, & Christine Cynn. Available on Netflix.

This time of year, around the Oscars, it's typical to hear the phrase "triumph of the human spirit". That's usually taken to mean some peoples' capacity to overcome suffering. But as Joshua Oppenheimer's fascinating documentary The Act of Killing shows, the human spirit can be irrepressible in another, darker way: in the power to rationalize, transform, or otherwise cope with suffering inflicted on others.

          Mid-1960's Indonesia was the scene of one of the biggest genocides of the 20^th century. After an abortive coup against the Indonesian military, nationalist elements in the country took revenge on the left-leaning government of President Sukarno, launching a nationwide purge. In the space of less than a year, one million people were murdered by right-wing death squads. The victims were supposed to be Communists, but the freelancers weren't scrupulous about whom they swept up. Urban intellectuals were targeted, and Christian missionaries, and rural people who benefited from agricultural subsidies, and anybody else on the receiving end of petty score-settling. Untold thousands of ethnic Chinese—presumably because of alleged kinship with the regime in Beijing—were exterminated.

          Disturbingly, the military-backed government has not covered up these crimes. Instead, the massacre is widely celebrated in Indonesia. None of the former paramilitaries who personally engaged in killings have been prosecuted. Some still throw their weight around in their local districts, enjoying the fruits of small-time racketeering. Others have ascended to seats in Parliament. In a real sense, it's as if thousands of former Nazis were still free in Germany, boasting of their acts in the beer-halls, gathering for reunions in their old uniforms as current political leaders fete them with toasts and keynote speeches.

          Oppenheimer cleverly exploits this pride to craft a memorable piece of self-incrimination: he asks several of the erstwhile killers to "educate" the rest of us by reenacting their exploits for the camera. Unabashed, these old guys really take up the challenge. Anwar Congo gets a dye job so he can look more like his younger self; Erman Koto, for some reason, spends most of the film in elaborate drag. Some of their enthusiasm stems from the influence of American movies on their misspent youths. They call themselves the "movie theater gangsters", dressing up in fedoras and pimp suits, like a fun-house version of a Bogart movie. In one reenacted scene, they torture a "communist" who dared propose banning American movies from the country.

          Watching The Act of Killing is to enter a Twilight Zone where basic norms of morality are roughed up, strangled, and dumped in a river. Congo cheerfully demonstrates the preferred method of dispatching victims without making too much of a mess (garroting with metal wire). "Always wear dark-colored pants for killing," he advises. In their make-up chairs, the killers muse over the semantic distinction between cruelty and sadism. They note that they proved that Communists weren't the only cruel ones—which is supposed to be a good thing. Instead of disowning their acts of sadism, they fret that the younger generation will never know of their exploits. "Never forget", they warn us.

          The legacy of the purges has varying effects on the "players". After personally strangling, bludgeoning, and beheading about a thousand people, the affable Congo integrated smoothly back into ordinary life. Adi Zulkadry claims he never had a single nightmare, never suffered a shred of guilt. If this were where Oppenheimer left it, the film would have been merely a clever, albeit appalling, exercise.

          The film's genius emerges when cracks appear in Congo's happy-go-lucky façade. As the reenactments go on, he grants there were bad dreams. Curious how his victims must have felt, he asks Oppenheimer to film him pretending to be garroted by Koto. The experience leaves him disturbed. "I could feel my dignity being stripped away," he complains. Duping these men into incriminating themselves is clever, but it's how it changes the outlooks of real killers that makes this film truly remarkable.

          The release of The Act of Killing is not the last act in this drama. The film is still largely unseen in Indonesia, and has barely been discussed in the press there. With many of the criminals and their enablers in positions of power, some of Oppenheimer's brave native collaborators had to credit themselves as "Anonymous". Though it was nominated for the Oscar for the Best Documentary Feature—and might have earned some attention in Indonesia if it had won, it didn't (losing—preposterously to my mind—to a piece of relative fluff, 20 Feet From Stardom).

          As Martin Luther King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." In this case, the bend is still too shallow to make out.

© 2014 Nicholas Nicastro