It’s astonishing how we have managed, on many occasions, to disregard the plain fact that eternal oblivion is all that awaits both an individual and a species. This is, to me, best exemplified by Joshua Oppenheimer’s “An Act of Killing”.
Oppenheimer follows various individuals who were responsible for some of the horrific acts of mass killing against communism in the name of an alternative ideology in Indonesia in the 1960s. Indeed it is a true confirmation of the quote we see at the beginning of the film by Voltaire which reads as follows: All murders are punished, unless they kill in large numbers, and to the sound of trumpets.
Ironically, the documentary follows these men as they aim to make their own film about their participation in the vast and numerous “Act of killing” that they performed in the 1960s. They maintain a chilling lack of remorse and lack of awareness of how many occasions they contradicted laws of freedom and universal laws of human discourse.
Their justifications for their acts? In the wake of a failed coup in Indonesia, these men were enabled to carry out the mass anti-communist cull. They were, on some occasions, to disassociate themselves from the government and therefore act as “gangsters” who are now seen as local heroes rather than criminals.
I often wondered, when viewing this, whether or not these “gangsters” deserved a similar fate to those of whom they persecuted, only for the sake of the dominance of an ideology, whether political or social. Indeed I thought this no more strongly than when watching one of the gangsters give a demonstration of the ease in which he killed suspected communists- by strangling people with wire and pieces of wood.
The film that these men are making is very low budget and the equivalent of the a university budget project that one might come across in this country. Nonetheless they did not struggle to make the re-enactions of decapitations to be equally as uncomfortable to watch as the most accurate representations of the same barbarous acts in other cinematic attempts.
Perhaps more shocking than the clumsy re-enactments of beheadings was the portrayal of the of a burning of a village in Indonesia. At times when watching their portrayal of this disgraceful crime against humanity I actually wondered whether or not what I was actually watching was an actual array of genuine emotion rather than a representation of a historical crime. However I was relieved to find, after a filmed conversation between gangsters (off set) revealed the humour that they find in child rape, that indeed it could be both.
Having watched this film or read this review I’d ask you: How would you feel if you realised that these gangsters might actually feel guilt and shame about their crimes? Would you think, it’s a shame (because it makes it easier to hate these men if they maintained their lack of remorse, and it would be a justified hatred) or would you humanise these men? I personally find the idea of humanising these individuals to be an uncomfortable one but one shouldn’t fall to the almost legal idea that if someone has committed a tremendous crime or rape of the nature order, then this person must not be in possession of their wit. Perhaps what is the most uncomfortable narrative to be drawn from “An act of Killing” is one that states that, given the proper motivation, we are all capable of such crimes and the inevitable guilt that follows.
beyond the Edge of reason 