Movies

The doc ‘The Act of Killing’ has to be seen to be believed

While interviewing subjects for his harrowing documentary “The Act of Killing,” director Josh Oppenheimer spoke with Anwar Congo, a death-squad leader during the 1965 Indonesian genocide in which more than a million people were tortured and killed.

Anwar Congo, who killed more than a thousand victims is the one murderer in the film who shows a real emotional breakthrough.

Oppenheimer had already interviewed more than 40 similarly cold-blooded perpetrators, but this was the interview that broke him. Congo, who personally killed a thousand people or more, re-created for Oppenheimer exactly how he had once murdered an infant with a knife through the eye in front of the child’s father — and used a teddy bear to demonstrate.

“I started to cry,” Oppenheimer says of the scene from the film’s director’s cut, which is available on DVD, out Tuesday. “Anwar noticed I was crying. He said, ‘Josh, you’re crying.’ I said, ‘Yes. I guess so.’ He said, ‘What should we do?’ I said, ‘We should continue.’ ”

Today, the leaders of this grizzly genocide — purportedly carried out to extinguish Communists — rule Indonesia and are hailed as heroes. To outside eyes, it’s like watching an elderly Adolf Hitler, having won World War II, regale his grandkids with tales of his wonderful ovens.

“The Act of Killing” features Oppenheimer not only interviewing these men about their despicable acts, but having them re-create the murders in a variety of Hollywood-influenced genres, including song and dance. The result is a searing glance into the heart of violence, a funhouse mirror of sadism with costumes and makeup.

The reception for the film has been off the charts: It scored a 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes; landed on many year-end Top 10 lists; and is a likely candidate for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nod.

“The Act of Killing” came about after Oppenheimer, who had been working with human rights groups, made a film about efforts to unionize Indonesian workers. Many of those workers had relatives who were killed in the ’65 purge for being in unions.

“I didn’t know if it was safe to approach [the killers],” says Oppenheimer. “But when I did, to my horror and astonishment, every one of them eagerly recounted the grisly details of the killings, often with a smile on their face, and in front of their wives, their children and even their grandchildren.”

The country’s human-rights community asked him to continue, and the director began interviewing death-squad members in 2003.

“All of them were boastful,” he says. “They would . . . launch into spontaneous demonstrations of how they killed. Then, they would complain that they hadn’t thought to bring along a friend to play a victim, or a machete as a prop.”

At a certain point, Oppenheimer realized that these re-enactments should be part of the film.

“I said, ‘You’ve participated in one of the biggest killings in human history, your whole society is built on it. Show me what you’ve done in whatever way you wish.’ ”

Two years in, he met Congo, the first who showed potential for an emotional breakthrough.

During one re-creation, Congo had an actor who was playing the victim place a medal around Congo’s neck and say, “Thank you for sending me to heaven.”

Many of Congo’s early reminiscences are joyful, as he says, “It was like we were happy killing,” and doles out advice such as, “When you kill people, you should wear long pants.”

But as the film progresses, we see the re-creations take a toll on Congo, who admits that the killings have given him nightmares.

At one point, he responds to a re-enactment with, “I never expected it would look this awful.” And after a scene where he plays the victim, he asks, “Did the people I tortured feel the way I do here?” He is surprised when told that they felt so much worse.

During another re-enactment, one of the country’s deputy ministers, a former death-squad leader, begins to express concern about the project.

“Afterward, he said, ‘Cut, cut, cut. This is going to make us look bad,’ ” says Oppenheimer. “He had the army standing by, and I was very afraid we would be arrested.”

In the end, Oppenheimer developed an odd closeness with Congo, who he says no longer boasts of his accomplishments, and whom the director still communicates with every three or four weeks.

Ultimately, Oppenheimer believes that some of the killers opened up to him out of subconscious guilt, and a need to relieve themselves of the burden of carrying the weight of their history.

“They have never been forced to admit what they did wrong,” he says. “As [one death-squad leader] says in the film, ‘Killing is the worst thing you can do, but if you can get away with it and you’re paid well enough, do it.

But then, you must make up an excuse, and cling to that excuse for the rest of your life.’ Boasting, I think, is their way of clinging to that excuse.”