In 1965, the elected government of Indonesia was overthrown and replaced with a military dictatorship. What ensued was a bloodbath, as paramilitary groups and simple criminals were used by the state to murder anyone seen as an opponent: communists, intellectuals, ethnic Chinese, felled by a genocide that eventually took more than a million lives.
That is the history behind Joshua Oppenheimer’s extraordinary documentary “The Act of Killing,” but as Faulkner might have put it, this past is far from past. The killers still live in Indonesia with no fear of prosecution, and they are happy to re-enact torture and executions for the camera. They cast other Indonesians as their victims, don horror-movie makeup and stage musical numbers celebrating their exploits.
“Lower your head,” one man instructs another who’s miming being strangled. Anwar Congo, the documentary’s central figure, walks around a rooftop where he once killed so many people that the stench of blood became oppressive. Congo’s friend, Herman Koto, is often in drag, at one point posing as a pregnant woman about to be raped.
The victims’ voices are mostly absent — though not entirely, as becomes clear in one chilling moment on the set. Yet by the end the victims are inescapable, seeming to take possession of the re-enactors.
The cumulative impact is devastating, and very far from a simple Western condemnation of another country’s brutality. In forcing viewers to hear the boasts of genocide’s perpetrators, “The Act of Killing” puts a harsh spotlight on all celebrations of bloodshed, from Hollywood to the op-ed pages.