‘When the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his friends were promoted from small-time gangsters, who sold movie theatre tickets on the black market, to death squad leaders. they helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic chinese, and intellectuals in less than a year. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Anwar himself killed hundreds of people with his own hands. Today, Anwar is revered as a founding father of a right-wing paramilitary organization that grew out of the death squads. The organization is so powerful that its leaders include government ministers and they are happy to boast about everything from corruption and election rigging to acts of genocide. the act of killing is a journey into the memories and imagination of the perpetrators, offering an insight into the minds of mass killers.’
An unsettling and frightening eye opener, the act of killing reveals brutally honest stories of Indonesian gangsters who had tortured, killed and slaughtered millions of suspected communists during the 1960s. These gangsters walk free today; they are simultaneously feared and celebrated for their misdoings. The film re-enacts the many killings, bringing to life the slaughter that had once befallen Indonesia by these very same mass murderers. More than emphasizing the events of the past, the film underlines the traumatic effects of the past on the present.
Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer took on this very challenging and daunting task; he began developing the story in 2005 and since then has been passionately involved. Not only has the documentary been praised world over, but it has also been awarded extensively and was a very strong contender for the Best Documentary feature at the Academy Awards 2014. It even bagged the Best Documentary award at the Baftas this year. In an exclusive interview, Platform connected with Joshua to learn more about this chilling documentary that has touched the viewers on many levels.
What inspired you to make The Act of Killing?
I began making this film in collaboration with a community of survivors of the 1965-66 killings. They had asked me to make this film with them to highlight why they were afraid and what it’s like for them to live with the perpetrators still in positions of power around them. When the army found out that we were interested in what happened in 1965, they did not let the survivors speak to us or participate in the film. The survivors then suggested that before we quit and give up, we should try and film the perpetrators because they may tell us how people were killed. It was then that I approached these men, not knowing if it was safe to ask questions about what happened in 1965, but to my astonishment and horror, every one of them answered, giving boastful details and grizzly accounts of mass killings. They would share the experience in front of their wives and their children and grandchildren, and they would often have a smile on their faces when they did so. What really led me to make this film was a feeling of profound recognition that I was confronting a community that was both intolerable and utterly normal. As in, the contrast between the survivors who were forced into silence and perpetrators who were boasting. It was then that I had this realization, this queasy feeling that I had wandered into Germany 40 years after the holocaust, only to find the Nazis still in power.
How did you go about locating your subjects and where did you find your protagonist, Anwar Congo?
After I filmed the perpetrators in a small village, I showed the video to the survivors who wanted to see it as did the broader human rights Indonesian community in Jakarta. Everyone who saw the material said, ‘Joshua, you are onto something terribly important. Keep filming the perpetrators because any Indonesian who sees this will be forced to acknowledge the heart of this regime. Film the perpetrators and with this material you will expose the whole system of corruption and fear that has been built on the genocide.’ So I felt entrusted by the survivors and by the human rights committee to do something that clearly they could not safely do themselves; that is to expose the contemporary regime by filming what the perpetrators were bragging about.
I spent two years filming every perpetrator who I could find and I went from plantation to plantation. Each of them had their own death squad. I asked every perpetrator I met to introduce me to their accomplices and I gradually worked my way up the chain of command until I reached the city of Medan. Anwar Congo, in fact, was the 41st perpetrator who I filmed and the very first day I met him, he took me to a rooftop where he had killed hundreds of people. He demonstrated how he did it, and then he slipped into a cha cha cha. That was a typical first encounter with perpetrators. Almost immediately, they would take us to the killing site to show us how they did it and that’s what Anwar is doing in the first scene of the documentary.
As I watched the film, I realized Anwar and his friends seemed to be disconnected emotionally from the acts of murder. For someone who interacted with them, do you feel it’s a pretense or have they actually buried any feelings of remorse that they might have had?
Absolutely the latter. As viewers when we see that scene we are outraged to see him dance on the very spot where he has killed hundreds of people. Then we hear Anwar say, ‘Look I am a good dancer. I drink, take drugs, go out dancing to forget what I do.’ His pain is right there on the surface and that was what differentiated him from the other 40 perpetrators that I filmed before I met him. I think the film set in motion a process for Anwar where paradoxically, finally for the first time in his life, we saw how these murders affected him— his nightmares, his fears, and his guilt. He is therefore clinging to this process of somehow running away from his pain by glorifying it and lying about his meaning and also ironically, dealing with it. So the filmmaking process sets in motion a journey for him where finally he comes to recognize the true horror of what he did and he understands that he has left an indelible stain that he will never be free of.
And how did it affect you mentally and physically?
On one hand, I would say it was a very painful journey which gave me nightmares and at times I couldn’t sleep which resulted in insomnia. On the other hand, it was an experience that I am tremendously grateful for, as it made me more reluctant to condemn an entire human being because it has taught me how our humanity is involved with the practice of evil. You cannot cut out the bad parts of a human being from the rotten parts of an apple. Our morality and our humanity is one. The bad and evil actions that we do can be just as much a response to and a reaction to running away from guilt because we are moral and feel guilty. So it has taught me that it’s so important to face our most bitter and painful truths. I empathize with Anwar and I care greatly for him, but I condemn with greater force and clarity the monstrous actions that he and his fellows perpetrated than I ever did before. The film has taught me that although I refuse to make the leap from saying that, ‘Look, this man has done evil to this man who is evil’, I nevertheless have had the tolerance for denial. And I think that’s what’s been most gratifying for me—releasing the film outside of Indonesia as viewers worldwide have said that if this man is a monster then all of us depend on monsters like this for our everyday living.
We buy skin cream or margarine or anything that’s made with shampoo or palm oil. We buy it for a few cents, dollars or rupees. The real cost is incalculable. We pay a tiny fragment of that cost because there are men like Anwar and his friend who are hired by companies to keep people in fear and the little markup that we pay goes to gangsters like Anwar and his friends. So what has deeply moved me is that the viewers have understood and recognized that this is a film about all of us; it’s not just a mirror being held up to Anwar or Indonesian society, but it’s a mirror being held up to all of us.
Lastly, what does all the praise and critical acclaim mean to you?
I did not think the film would resonate so deeply with people from all over the world. I think the film is fundamentally a story of how we human beings lie to ourselves in order to justify our actions and escape the bitter and painful truths. The film in that sense documents the effects of those lies and how maintaining those lies leads to a total moral vacuum and that’s what we can all relate to in all of our societies. Above all, the most gratifying response to the film was in Indonesia itself where the survivors and activists have used this film to radically change the way Indonesia talks of her past and the mainstream media has broken a decade long silence on the genocide and produced voluminous accounts of the genocide. The film has been screened umpteen times and is available on YouTube in Indonesia. We have triggered a national conversation that was so long overdue.
Text Shruti Kapur Malhotra