"The Act of Killing" (2013)

In Indonesia in 1965, a genocide occurred, taking the lives of at least half a million. Globally most people have forgotten that this happened, but not those who orchestrated the deaths of communists and communist sympathizers. The state used paramilitary forces and gangsters to kill citizens, and now many of the people who participated in the genocide are some of the governments top ranking officials. Director Joshua Oppenheimer does a number of remarkable things in the The Act of Killing but the most remarkable thing may be the film's premise itself: getting the former killers to re-stage their murders. Oppenheimer gives them a budget and lets them roam free filming it however they see fit. These men are all too pleased to show the world what they see as a necessary, righteous thing, and they go about re-enacting the killings in the style of various genres of films. The gangsters are fond of Hollywood films, especially gangster films -- who they self-stylize after -- and they stage their memories as if they were scenes in some popular film. It leads to some simultaneously surreal and disturbing moments. Oppenheimer tries to understand how anyone could commit such terrible acts. Though the gangsters claim to be unrepentant, re-enacting the murders proves how they have more complicated and buried feelings about the genocide than they may have cared to initially admit. The best moments of the film find the gangsters playing the parts of their victims and coming to identify with their victims' experiences and how awful that must have been. The look in their eyes in these moments is stunning: mortified, frightened, deeply regretful, confused, sickened. Why does genocide keep happening? Sometimes those who willingly participate in them can't explain it either -- and that may be the scariest truth of all.

Grade: ★★★★