A Cocktail Of Surrealism, Gore And Genocide, Damned By A Boring Narrative.

THE ACT OF KILLING
(2013)

[Documentary]

Directed by- Joshua Oppenheimer


There are times when a film which is universally acclaimed doesn't sit well with you. When despite knowing what it is trying to say and maybe even what others may have found praiseworthy in it, you yourself could never come to appreciate it for some reason.
And then you are overcome by this supreme feeling of desperate puzzlement as to what is it you missed. How was the film able to pull the wool over the eyes of every critic on earth and yet remained unable to touch your soul?
I had the same experience after sitting through the tiring two hours and forty minutes of The Act of Killing. 

Does it appall me? Yes. Horrify me? Indeed.

Does it work as a mindnumbing expose of the inhuman butchery of thousands of people? Definitely!
But does it manage to engage me with its barbaric revelations and surrealistic realisations? No. Rather, it's quite the contrary.

Joshua Oppenheimer's pseudo-documentary follows Indonesian gangbanger Anwar Congo on a confessional trip of six years, about his unrepentant killings of over a thousand communists during 1965-66.
The premise is jaw-dropping, as we get privy to the genocidal lifestyle of Indonesian war lords. Anwar's friends join him in reminiscing their glory days of when they wiped out over 500,000 human beings in a year.

Now I was deeply interested by the plot, I was. As horrifying as some of their proud admissions were, I was pulled in by their give-no-fucks-about-it attitude regarding the crimes against humanity that these guys committed, and all of it formed the perfect ground for a riveting documentary.

But it was the pseudo- half, the movie-half which bothered me.
Invited by Oppenheimer, the gang agrees to re-enact their killings, inspired by their favorite Hollywood film genres, to be shot as a film. What follows is a mindboggling, self-indulgent, artsy production that refuses to gel with the heavy subject it deals with.


Sequences of grave reflection are intercut with a fat, cross-dressing dancer in gaudy outfits, who also serves as Congo's buddy, frolicking against a picture perfect backdrop out of a Hollywood film set. Not in an Indonesian documentary about the genocide of communists.
It is this weird tangle of surreal, artistic BS with the stark atrocities of history that threw me off.


Not to mention the disruptive continuity and fractured chronology which despite adding to its surreal flavor, made the documentary all the more inaccessible, and worse, disinteresting for me.
In one scene Herman is a rotund henchman with long tresses, and in the next he is a family man/politician with short hair, and then again his hair grow out, as he chills in a samba dancer's outfit, often gorging over a severed head and pints of blood.

The film is strewn with the disgusting admissions of its principals in a matter-of-fact way without the slightest hint of acknowledgment towards the evil deeds that they did. I would have really liked if the film continued in that direction, inciting the gangsters to think on their sins. Instead we are diverted towards a badly made, low-production torture film shoot which adds nothing to the subject, except for the necessitated surreal chops and the creeping remorse for its protagonist.

Now this was the other thing which I didn't agree with.
Anwar's ultimate repentance which had been a long time coming, seemed a bit rehearsed. Over the course of shooting the film he barely mentioned his unease, rather basked in the flattery of being an executioner, but as the final moments approached he quickly switched to a path of self-pity and emotional implosion. The cleverly intercut scenes of his own torture adding to this sentiment.

And his final admission of guilt on the roof, as we looked intently into him while he regretted his actions, alone before the camera, seemed fake and absolutely underwhelming to me.
That whole scene was so unreal, that after he started belching and farting I wouldn't have been surprised if he turned into a slimy, defecating demonic creature from one of Miyazaki's movies.

Overall, The Act of Killing was disappointing, due to the high-praise it gathered from all corners and its failure to deliver on that. It's not bad, in fact it expertly narrates the stance of Indonesian gangsters and government, but it buries that under so much cosmetic pretense and deliberate convolution that it loses steam and fails to create an impact with its unprecedented subject.
It drags, deviates and disillusions to attain an effect which may appeal to some but remained depressingly boring for me.


Rating- 3.6/5