The 159-minute director's cut version, which combines the boring documentary with real characters and surrealism, guides the viewer to experience the process from anger, discomfort, numbness to reflection. It is really not the innovation that traditional documentaries can bring. The search for historical truth is also a journey to expose humanity.
In the film, the protagonist of the story "Thousands of People" executioner Anwar Congo tells how he embarked on the road of "execution man". In addition to inviting the participants to recall the past together, he also filmed a self-written and self-acted film with his friends. The memoir feature film with magical colors reveals the absurdity of reality in the absurd reality.
At the beginning of the film, the little-known director Joshua Oppenheimer (Joshua Oppenheimer) put out a long subtitle to introduce the background of the time. In 1965, after the Indonesian military coup led by Suharto, he faced intellectuals, communists, and lost ground. An anti-communist purge of farmers and Chinese, more than a million people were beaten to death by social gangsters instigated by the army at will. It is called "execution", and these bad boys from the bottom of society also have a high-sounding title." Executioner" .
What impressed me the most was not the executioner’s bragging about the homage, nor the Madam Post’s disdain for the massacre, nor the passionate incitement speech of the chief of the Pancasila Youth (Wu Rong Youth League), nor the camera crew. The trembling hands that followed the gang members to the vegetable market to blackmail the Chinese shopkeeper to pay, but the heinous arrogance of Anwar's head Adi when he left. When the director asked him what to do if the Hague International Tribunal found him guilty, Adi firmly said that I will be there. I am not guilty. Please let me be here to wait for the trial. The so-called guilty is the criterion set by the winner, and I win. I have the final say.
We often wishful thinking to add tears of remorse to the wicked. When we learn that the perpetrator has no intention of confession, we are indignant, but we don’t know the powerlessness to investigate cause and effect. This world is full of evil, and those who have done evil are still doing evil. The only thing they can do is to warn themselves not to do evil, and then survive with dignity in this evil world.
After watching the film, I linger on the corrupt, primitive, savage and dirty prejudice in Indonesia, which is a society in which the villains are the villains from top to bottom. Perhaps it’s just that the director’s editing materials show social ugliness, which deepens my opinion. The collusion of government and business speeches to instigate election shows and whitewash evil acts, which is only owned by Indonesia, but we have learned numbness and numbness in the society we are familiar with. silence.
At the end of Anwar's self-acting feature film, he was dressed in black and stood in front of the Rainbow Falls. Next to him were two martyrs with wire necks. One of them untied the wire and took out a medal for Anwar to wear and said thank you for killing us. . This surreal and magical ending makes people laugh at the absurdity of the world. A grandpa who taught his grandson to apologize to the injured duckling, recalled the revelation of killing people, and filmed the film hoping to declare the true history to future generations, thinking that he did a great cause that was incomparably correct in the eyes of others. Finally lived amidst irresistible retching and endless terrible nightmares.
Perhaps tens of thousands of Anwars are also victims, a tool used by those in power and vested interests, even if they have committed the greatest crime in the world. The moment when we learn the truth about sin is not terrible. What's even more terrifying is that we have been indulging in sin and powerless, and then we continue to live in the lie that the world is a beautiful lie.
I always hope that there will be a documentary that uses the current situation of Hong Weibing as the starting point. It is not feasible to interview both parties. No one wants to say, what they want to say is not allowed, and what is said is useless, just like a small stone throwing a river into the river. So the great thing about this film is that the time and place are right and people are right. It is difficult to find a country where the wicked are still at large for nearly 50 years after the incident. It's like asking Hitler to introduce to the audience how to kill Jews, looking to the human body laboratory of Unit 731 as a tour guide, and looking to Jin Sanpang to brag about how to execute citizens. It's incredible.
Reminiscent of the HK hostage incident, the Indonesian government still did not apologize for its mishandling. It is not difficult to come to the unexpected conclusion that the living environment of the Chinese in India is still bad, the shadow of the 930 incident is still entangled, and millions of lives have been seen. It's like a grass, and there is no apology to the families of the victims. It is conceivable that this country is civilized, and it still believes in the tribal principle of the weak and the jungle, but the attributes of animals in human skin.
At the end of the film, the director ends with a colorful song and dance scene, like a small piece of ginger after a fishy fish is raw, leaving space for each viewer to go back and reflect. Through the method of how the photographer wants others to view themselves, the audience is given a new perspective, and the position and attitude of the photographer are excluded as much as possible, so that everyone can make their own explanations more objectively and truthfully.
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