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 http://tcr.sagepub.com/content/18/2/257The online version of this article can be found at:

 DOI: 10.1177/1362480613506645

 2014 18: 257Theoretical Criminology Nicole Rafter

Joshua Oppenheimer (dir.), The Act of Killing 

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Theoretical Criminology2014, Vol. 18(2) 257 –260

© The Author(s) 2014

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Film review

 Joshua Oppenheimer (dir.), The Act of Killing , Denmark: Final Cut for Real ApS, 2012;

159 & 115 min. versions, colour

Reviewed by: Nicole Rafter, Northeastern University, USA

The Act of Killing , Joshua Oppenheimer’s new film about the Indonesian genocide of

1965–1966, belongs to the genre of genocide films, a little known yet growing group of

morally probing movies about mass extermination. It is also a new kind of film, although

I do not quite know what to call it—an anti-documentary, perhaps, or a Dadaist docu-

mentary. The stars are the killers themselves, 50 years older but still delighted to be

recognized as perpetrators of a genocide, which they reenact with glee. Never punished

for their mass murders, these killers do not have the slightest fear of being punished thistime around, either, for they live in a society in which corruption is the rule, and in which

gangsters like themselves interpenetrate with the military and government. They killed

in the first place for fame, money, and power; and they reenact their most heinous crimes

for the same motives, fully confident that responsibility will never brush them with its

wing. ‘We were allowed to do it’, one killer points out, ‘and never punished.’ This film

shows the results.

If all genocides are by definition incomprehensible, this one is particularly so due to

the impunity and lack of acknowledgment that followed in its wake. At the time it

occurred, Indonesia was home to the world’s largest Communist party, outside of theSoviet Union and China. An aborted coup attempt in which six generals were killed and

stuffed down a well was quickly followed by a military takeover by General Suharto,

who pinned the attempted coup on Communists. (In fact, the coup attempt seems to have

 been led by a small group of junior officers to protect the country against just what it

got—a right-wing takeover.) Suharto called for a mass killing of Communists, a term

loosely defined to include anyone opposed to the military government, and in some

cases, the killings spilled over to include neighbors murdering neighbors over local dif-

ferences. At least one million Indonesians were killed and tens of thousands more impris-

oned and tortured on suspicion of Communist sympathies.1

Ruling with an iron hand for the next 30-odd years, Suharto forbade mention of the

genocide, which was thus kept out of history books and even family conversations (see

Dwyer, 2009). People began to record their memories after Suharto was forced out in

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258  Theoretical Criminology 18(2)

1998, but remembering the event remains a highly politicized and even dangerous activ-

ity, as this film’s credits demonstrate: the makeup artists, sound engineers, and band

members, among many others, are listed as ‘anonymous’.

Who were the killers? Participants included the army, the paramilitary gangs they

organized, and all who helped, including, on North Sumatra (where this film was shot),gangsters, politicians, and a newspaper publisher. (‘As a newspaper man,’ the latter

explains, ‘my job was to make them [Communists] look bad’ and to rat them out to the

army.) Right before the genocide began, the gangsters in this movie, then young hood-

lums, supported themselves in part by scalping movie tickets; they were especially

 pleased to take up the government’s invitation to join in the killings because Communists

had opposed the showing of American films.

The action consists almost entirely of the gangsters restaging their crimes. The two

main characters—Anwar Congo, tall and thin, nattily dressed in a yellow suit, with a

yellow print shirt and yellow tie; and fat Herman, dressed sometimes as a noir bad guyin a fedora, but more often in drag, with an outlandish tiara, midriff bared, pink satin

skirts over his hairy legs—block out the scenes, order props (including a horse),

design papier-mâché heads to illustrate beheadings, and smear their own and their

‘victims’’ faces with ersatz blood. From years of watching American movies, they

know every genre in film history, so they can appear as cowboys in one scene and noir

thugs in another; connoisseurs, they fit the manner of killing to the genre. Anwar

claims as his main influences Brando, Pacino, John Wayne, and the noir gangsters

who garroted their victims with wire. There are echoes of many films here, including

 Reservoir Dogs, in which the gangsters dress up and pose for one another; Pacino’sScarface; and director Michael Haneke’s sadistic  Funny Games.  Anwar claims to

have killed 1000 people: ‘We ran over them with cars’; ‘We shoved wood up their ass

til they died.’

There is also an echo of  Enemies of the People, the 2009 documentary about the

Cambodian genocide in which filmmaker Thet Sambath persuades remorseful former

Khmer Rouge cadres to demonstrate how they killed. In The Act of Killing , however, the

killers show little remorse; rather, they swagger around bragging about their crimes and

reject democracy because, they explain, they would rather be ‘free men’—English words

that sound like the Indonesian for ‘gangster’.Impunity is taken for granted in this never-never land of corruption. Anwar Congo is

courted and publicly praised by the governor of North Sumatra. Members of the North

Sumatra Parliament openly discuss their illegal activities. The Vice President of Indonesia

says the government needs the Pancasila Youth militia, the gangster-organized paramili-

tary organization that, during the genocide, formed death squads. The Deputy Minister

of Sport, visiting a paramilitary group, sings out, ‘Crush Communists. Kill! Kill the

Communists! Slaughter them! Take no prisoners! Chop them up!’ Is this a reenactment

or is it not? It is hard to tell. One killer remarks, ‘We’ve all become like soap opera

actors.’ But in exposing the fruits of impunity and corruption, the film achieves the goal,

articulated by an anonymous co-director, of bringing viewers ‘to understand the impor-

tance of questioning what we see’ (see www.theactofkilling.com).

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Film review 259

The climactic, Cecil B DeMille-like scene of The Act of Killing  is an extended reen-

actment of an attack on a village, the Kampung Kolam massacre. Villagers seem to be

tortured and murdered. Houses, trees, a bike, people—all go up in flames. But this reen-

actment was to some degree authentic as we gather in after-the-event footage of the vil-

lagers, who were evidently dragooned into participation. Children are traumatized; awoman passes out. ‘Like all great documentary,’ Errol Morris writes in his commentary

on the film, ‘it is like a hall of mirrors—the so-called mise-en-abyme—where real people

 become characters in a movie and then jump back into reality again. And it asks the cen-

tral question: what is real?’ When the scene was screened for the cast, ‘the images were

met with terrifying peals of laughter’.2

On several occasions, the gangsters do appear to repent—slightly—of the crimes they

committed during the genocide. Anwar has nightmares about a man whose eyes remained

open even after decapitation. Adi wants to apologize to relatives of all who died. Another

observes that, although we said the Communists were cruel, in reality, we were the cruelones. But one member of this gangster confraternity points out that war crimes are

defined by the winners. ‘Did the Americans not kill the Indians?’ one asks. They trade

tips on how not to feel guilty, and they stage a scene—with who can imagine what

motives?—in which garroted prisoners, lifting the wire from their necks, give Anwar a

medal ‘for executing me and sending me to Heaven’. In another scene Anwar wonders if

his victims felt as much fear and terror as he did when playing the victim. (Offscreen,

Oppenheimer assures him that they felt more.)

The killers watch the scenes they have created, some of them extremely violent, with

grandchildren at their feet. They are proud of their films. In one scene, when Anwar iswatching the scene where he is strangled, he insists that his grandsons be awakened to

watch it with him. Anwar seems—to use an unintentionally garbled phrase uttered else-

where in the film—like ‘a human dropout’.

The Act of Killing  ends with a disconcerting tableau of women in traditional dress

 prancing joyously before a waterfall, along with Herman dressed as one of the dancers

and Anwar as The Man in a black suit. This scene repeats a false accusation close to the

heart of the genocide, according to which, before the generals were dumped in the well,

Communist women danced lewdly before them and mutilated their genitals. Incredibly,

this motif fueled repression of women for the next 33 years, providing Suharto with anexcuse for restricting women to traditional roles and torturing or killing those who had

 been politically active (Pohlman, forthcoming 2014). This vast oppression explains the

restriction of women’s roles in this film: golf caddie, cheerleaders for Pancasila Youth,

or decorative objects, like the dancers grotesquely imitated by Herman.

In a recent article, Michelle Brown and I argue that genocide movies lead to forma-

tion of collective memories of genocides and constitute a form of public criminology

through addressing monstrous crimes in ways that push us toward ethical action

(Brown and Rafter, 2013).  An Act of Killing   performs both functions. Breaking

through decades of silence, the film will help Indonesians form the collective

memories necessary to push their way past the three-headed Cerberus of impunity– 

corruption–repression.3 It should also help them move toward ethical action against

those who, for so long, have reveled in impunity, and all of us who hope to forestall

such atrocities.

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260  Theoretical Criminology 18(2)

Notes

1. One million dead is the figure used on the film’s website, and these are figures that turn up

in most of the literature on the Indonesian genocide. However, in a personal communication

of 6 August 2013, Annie Pohlman of University of Queensland, Australia, and a specialist in

this genocide, informs me that the figure of the death toll is being revised downward, to about500,000, while the figure for those detained is being revised upward, to between 500,000 and

one million or more between 1965 and the early 1970s.

2. See Joshua Oppenheimer’s Production Notes, available at: www.theactofkilling.com.

References

Brown M and Rafter N (2013) Genocide films, public criminology, collective memory.  British

 Journal of Criminology. Epub ahead of print 6 August 2013. DOI: 10.1093/bjc/azt043.

Dwyer L (2009) A politics of silences: Violence, memory, and treacherous speech in post-1965

Bali. In: Hinton AL and O’Neill KL (eds) Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation.Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 113–146.

Pohlman A (forthcoming, 2014) Women, Sexual Violence and the Indonesian Killings of 1965– 

1966 . London: Routledge.

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