'The Act Of Killing' Depicts Actual Killers Re-Enacting A Genocide With Glitzy Hollywood Flare

Perhaps the darkest part of this whole documentary is the film within a film - the reenactments of these brutal crimes. Director Joshua Oppenheimer offers the killers a chance to star in their very own movie, one that depicts the true crimes that they committed in the 1960s. All of the "actors" are giddily excited by the chance to act in a film, especially one that glorifies their own past. The men are intimately involved in the filmmaking process as they describe the scenes they need to shoot and even take the camera crew to some of the locations where they committed murder. They are rarely remorseful.

Anwar Congo, the main focus of The Act Of Killing, is a complicated man. He doesn't look like a mass murderer and his family thinks of him as a hero and loving grandfather. Congo has a complicated relationship with his past, though, one that straddles the line between pride and guilt. His actions are monstrous and he boasts of killing at least 1,000 people by himself. The elderly man details all of his past, showing the viewer how he tied piano wire around the throats of his victims and pulled until they stopped struggling.

He goes on about how fun it all was and how much joy he took in his work. It's one of the most disturbing series of interviews.

Director Joshua Oppenheimer traveled back and forth from Indonesia for years in order to complete this film and he made a lot of enemies in the process. Oppenheimer himself admits that it would be wildly unsafe to return to Indonesia, as it is quite possible that the killers he exposed might want him dead. Many of the film's crew members, some of whom were Indonesian, chose to remain anonymous in the credits so that they wouldn't suffer the wrath of vengeful gangsters.

Not all of the killers are upset with Oppenheimer, however. The film's main subject, Anwar Congo, still has a decent relationship with the director. They even Skype occasionally, calling each other about once a month. 

The film follows only a few men who were a part of a much wider genocide that took place in Indonesia during the mid 1960s. Commonly referred to as the Indonesia massacres, the genocide was part of an effort to eradicate all communists from the country after the Indonesian communist party was accused of murdering seven high ranking generals. While it is quite possible that the communists had nothing to do with the deaths of the generals, the entire nation suffered the consequences.

The assassinations were used as an excuse to kill all undesirables, not just members of the communist party. Ethnic Chinese people, poor farmers, and educated liberals were also targeted indiscriminately. In the end, some 500,000 to 1,000,000 people were killed in the purge. 

Without this documentary, it is quite possible that few people in the western hemisphere would have ever heard about these brutal massacres. They had been largely overshadowed by events like the Vietnam war and the Civil Rights Movement. At the time, many Americans were happy to hear about the defeat of the "communists" in Indonesia. The crimes weren't really spoken of in Indonesia after the fact and a lot of people moved on like nothing ever happened.

While one might expect a murderer to show some regret in old age, that's not really the case in The Act Of Killing. While some of the killers may harbor some remorse, they don't tend to mention is. Many of the film's subjects boast about their actions, telling the murder stories with fondness. Most of these men had been treated like heroes for their actions, showered with praise and commendations from both the government and the public. Some people compare the situation to the holocaust if the Nazis had won the war.

The comparisons are far from inaccurate, as these men truly did get away with murder and live to be honored for it.