The Act of Killing

[Pergamos]

I kinda want to watch it now, knowing that a warlord wretched in the place that he killed people.

As someone who is a staunch pacifist (unless it is a kill or be killed situation, which, really is unnecessary to begin with), I want to see that horror, that realization, that disgust, that repentance.

I want to see this murderer puke in the place where he killed people. I want to see that disgust.

I don't know if I can watch it though. I don't want to feel pathos for people who probably don't deserve my pathos since, well, it's just flat out wrong to kill another human, unless it is to guarantee your survival or the survival of another human, and an irrelevant argument if we would just stop killing each other.

I dunno,  I think recognizing the humanity in monsters helps us to see why those sort of things happen, and that helps us keep them from happening.

It also sounds like this project brought home for these particular monsters some of what they did.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I kinda want to watch it now, knowing that a warlord wretched in the place that he killed people.

As someone who is a staunch pacifist (unless it is a kill or be killed situation, which, really is unnecessary to begin with), I want to see that horror, that realization, that disgust, that repentance.

I want to see this murderer puke in the place where he killed people. I want to see that disgust.

I don't know if I can watch it though. I don't want to feel pathos for people who probably don't deserve my pathos since, well, it's just flat out wrong to kill another human, unless it is to guarantee your survival or the survival of another human, and an irrelevant argument if we would just stop killing each other.

I dunno,  I think recognizing the humanity in monsters helps us to see why those sort of things happen, and that helps us keep them from happening.

It also sounds like this project brought home for these particular monsters some of what they did.

Not sure that's even worth mentioning.  I'm normally all about redemption.

Genocide/ethnic cleansing is an exception to that. 

[Junkenstein]

Holy shit.

I'll start with the fact the this film should really be subtitled "Indonesia is fucked up" for reasons which shall become shortly apparent. Disjointed, just finished watching ramblings to follow.

The film follows and focuses on Anwar Congo and erstwhile literal partner in crime on their mission to make a film commemorating the 1965/66 extermination of communists and reasons why this was necessary, though apparently regrettable. Many people who they meet on their journey and indeed, they themselves are murderers at best and key parts of horrific genocidal acts by their own claims. None involved have ever faced any kind of punishment. Needless to say, this film took BALLS to make.

Anwar's resulting film could most kindly be described as avant-what-the-fuck and more accurately as absolutely sock-fucking insane. It is clear by the casual conversations during the making of process that he's pretty far fucking gone. There's a slab of the banality of evil over much of the film. Parts with extreme (simulated) violence feature more heavily towards the end but are interspersed throughout. These tend to fall into two categories which I'll discuss in a moment, re enactments and "time tunnel" scenes. Anwar has watched a lot of Hollywood movies and understood about 3% of what was happening in each and they've all got shoved together here somewhere. Terminator? Pans Labyrinth? Sort of rip off of an African myth (I think. Not sure, but it seemed familiar somehow) all make a kind of appearance and it's odd. Very odd. Anyway, as the fucked up plot ploughs on, the documentary side kicks in and you meet life in indonesia and get a glimpse into the inner workings of the pancasila youth.

The pancasila youth are not exactly friendly fellows, and are essentially a right wing paramilitary organisation who quite proudly and openly refer to themselves as gangsters, thugs, politicians and robbers, often in the same sentence as equating these things with freedom. Apparently the word "Gangster" means "Freedom". In what language or why is never specified but it's pretty clear that this is a chant that 3 million members are pushing. Casual extortion, reminiscence of child rape and abuse and a general lust and acceptance for all kinds of violence feature heavily here. Needless to say, some of this is certainly not easy watching. Some are much more PR concious than others which makes for some interesting on the spot justifications for such acts. The filmaker is largely silent so I can only assume much of this was unprompted. Cain, I think you'd probably be interested in these sections, doubt there's anything new and shocking to you but the openness is startling. Trigger warnings out the ass, obviously.

A minor detour as Herman tries his hand at politics features once he realises how many neighbourhoods he would be able to control and thus extort feature. It's no shock when he fails miserably as he is unable to bribe anywhere near the required votes.

There's two final areas of interest, which are the interactions between the younger members and the older when the history of events is explained. The other is Anwar's actual film.

By the way, no big tears and show of regret, at best a couple of minutes retching. But the guy clearly has huge mental problems on top of being a genocidal fuckwit so all you really want for everyone involved is the noose. Seriously, I'm VERY anti-death penalty but a group who are able to live in relative luxury on the back of such acts sickens me beyond belief. It's genuinely heartbreaking and I hope they all hang together in short order. I need this to be very clear, there is NO doubt of massive, massively varied guilt.

There is some hope in the younger members of the Pancasila Youth and a few were clearly visibly disturbed by things seen and heard. A shot of the newsroom during a publicity broadcast was probably the best example of this. The robotic newsreader was clearly unprepared for Anwar, Maniac, Murderer and now filmstar and director of his own Ben Hur.

The film is less a film and more mash of random scenes Anwar and Herman wrote at 3AM while on massive quantities of crack and bleach fumes. There is a song and dance number, for some reason. Anwar undergoes torture at the hands of some kind of representations of the people he has killed and communists. But this happens in a time tunnel so don't worry about it guy, here's some torture, interrogation, murder and massacre scenes acted out in one case by the son of communist. This is a point when I had to genuinely worry for a moment about Anwar getting carried away in a scene. In general, Scenes Anwar features in, which is most, he acts exactly like the interrogator or victim would act. It's abundantly clear that he's been in these situation many times, as has have his co-stars and they all know exactly how the dance goes. The interjections and techniques taken straight from Hollywood and probably, at some point along the way, a 3 letter agency.

These scenes, while violent, I would suggest are relatively comparable to a gore-heavy horror movie. Like early Peter Jackson shit. Anwar hasn't got a big budget or a lot of good ways/reason/help to tell him why exactly all the communists had to die so the end production is unknown to me, various "finished" scenes are shown throughout but I doubt it's worth the electricity involved to make it. It won't be an Oscar nominee, I'll promise you that.

Two final points, The film is 2:40 and subtitled throughout. Odd parts are in English but that's fair warning so you know what you're getting into. Finally, Cognitive dissonance? All over the show, everyone and in pretty much everything. Various degrees of awareness and such so it's probably an excellent film to try and get people to sit through. Unfortunately it's nearly 3 hours long and subtitled so I doubt it'll really get the audience I can say it deserves. A cut without Anwar's film scenes might do fairly well, but I still doubt it. Little here is easy watching and any attempted comic relief is quickly interrupted with something loathsome.

[The Johnny]

Blah, i watched the trailer and that's quite enough, conclusions:

Murder-porn mixed with morbid kitsch mixed with an undetermined ammount of serious documentary.

I mean, it seems like it has some good content, but going thru the rest is creepy.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

For the people using the term "murder porn", what exactly do you mean by that?

Also, it would seem that you would also call any movie that depicts murder as "murder porn" as well, is this correct? If not, why is say, Schindler's List not "murder porn" if this film is?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

For the people using the term "murder porn", what exactly do you mean by that?

Also, it would seem that you would also call any movie that depicts murder as "murder porn" as well, is this correct? If not, why is say, Schindler's List not "murder porn" if this film is?

I'm interested by that too.

I don't entirely understand the rather knee-jerky-seeming dismissiveness that this film is receiving. It's almost like it's  making people uncomfortable, and rather than examine the discomfort, they are responding with NO IT IS NOTHING GO AWAY STOP LOOKING.

[Salty]

I will admit that was my reaction.

Sorry about that, yo.

[Faust]

For the people using the term "murder porn", what exactly do you mean by that?

Also, it would seem that you would also call any movie that depicts murder as "murder porn" as well, is this correct? If not, why is say, Schindler's List not "murder porn" if this film is?

It's not murder porn. It's reality TV of a documentary where the people making it, actors playing victims, warlords playing directors are the assets to be leveraged.

Murder porn isn't anywhere near as exploitative as what I'm seeing.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

For the people using the term "murder porn", what exactly do you mean by that?

Also, it would seem that you would also call any movie that depicts murder as "murder porn" as well, is this correct? If not, why is say, Schindler's List not "murder porn" if this film is?

It's not murder porn. It's reality TV of a documentary where the people making it, actors playing victims, warlords playing directors are the assets to be leveraged.

Murder porn isn't anywhere near as exploitative as what I'm seeing.

I still don't know what you mean by "murder porn".

[Telarus]

"Saw", "The Hills Have Eyes", etc

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

"Saw", "The Hills Have Eyes", etc

So, films that are full of graphic murder for the sake of entertainment—in that capacity, I could see "murder porn" as a fitting descriptor.

I haven't watched the film in the OP, but from what I've gathered, it seems to have a point to educate, not entertain.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This was certainly interesting: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-act-of-killing-oscar-nomination-for-what-must-be-the-bravest-film-crew-of-the-year--but-no-one-knows-their-names-9073035.html

[Junkenstein]

"Saw", "The Hills Have Eyes", etc

So, films that are full of graphic murder for the sake of entertainment—in that capacity, I could see "murder porn" as a fitting descriptor.

I haven't watched the film in the OP, but from what I've gathered, it seems to have a point to educate, not entertain.

There is no reasonable way to class this as murder porn. While there are graphic scenes, these are not the core of the film for me, they serve more as a way to highlight the various ways Anwar and co are FUCKED UP.

[Cain]

My objection is not to "murder porn".

My objection is twofold:

1) most murderers, especially politically motivated ones, are very boring people, with impoverished imaginations and even worse understanding of why they did what they did.  They'll weasle around it and try to justify it with reference to some kind of ideology or moral code, which they usually have a poor grasp on in the first place, but given a platform to discuss their activities in any way, they will endlessly self-propagandize to a degree that would make Kim Jong-Il blush.  I do not require a film to know this.

2) the OP is a fuckwit.

[Junkenstein]

This was certainly interesting: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-act-of-killing-oscar-nomination-for-what-must-be-the-bravest-film-crew-of-the-year--but-no-one-knows-their-names-9073035.html

Unfortunately, the bombshell it drops on Indonesia has prevented it from reaching a much bigger audience in neighbouring countries as Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) members tend to give politically sensitive issues a wide berth.

"Distributors in South-east Asia did not think the film would pass censors... Asean countries with close ties to Indonesia do not want to anger their counterpart or encourage their own citizens to dig deeper into their own histories," says Lorna Tee, a Hong Kong-based film producer.

There's something rather disturbing about distributors acting as a de facto censorship office. It's even worse when these neighbouring countries probably have better reason than many to dig a little deeper into their histories.

Cain, I'd suggest the main area of interest for you here are the interaction between the Panacasila Youth and various people. Footage of this nature is about 1/3 of the overall film and goes into the machine behind the killings. Newspapermen are met as well as PC youth leaders.

Anwar never really tries to justify his acts through a moral code or even ideology. He did it because he was a gangster and that's what gangsters do.