"Every killer I meet, none of them feels responsible. They don't even feel regret."
Joshua Oppenheimer's follow-up to The Act of Killing is devastating, but important. He bears witness to crimes against humanity that were never punished - in fact, those who committed them were deemed heroes, and are still in power. He follows an Indonesian man visiting people and families with connections to the 1965 Indonesian coup, one that resulted in 500,000 to 1,200,000 people, labeled "communists," brutally executed - including the man's older brother. Like the previous film, we see elderly members of death squads talking openly about the murders and barbarity committed, which is incredibly aggravating to watch. We see a teacher indoctrinating his students, telling them that the communists were "cruel" and gouged the eyes out of the generals in the coup, when it was actually the military who did this. Most importantly, however, we see this younger brother (anonymous for his own protection) confront numerous people who were directly involved in the massacres and his brother's death. His forthright, simple question elicit a variety of response, some squirming, some defiant, and some downright threatening. There are claims from some that they didn't know what was happening, or that they were just following orders (that from his own uncle!), the statements of which are right out of the German playbook post-WWII.
All of these people seem to want the past to remain in the past, out of what seemed to be various forms of fear - the fear of being held accountable on the part of the killers, and the fear for their safety in the families of the victims. It's symbolic that the man who visits these people gives some of them an eye exam as a pretense to talking to them (hence the movie poster); it's as if he's trying to get them to "see" what truly happened nearly 50 years later, and to understand it for what it was - butchery, not heroism. His disturbed look as he hears the killers describing and justifying their atrocities echoes the viewer's thoughts, something which made this a more satisfying watch compared to The Act of Killing.
Obviously, though, this is not for the faint of heart. We see a death squad leader, now 72, who drank the blood of his victims believing it would stop him from going insane, describe lopping off a woman's breast and hacking her up because she was a "bad person." We see others who dragged hundreds of people down to Snake River, gleefully recount beheading them, and how their headless bodies bobbed up and down in the river afterwards. We hear a man describe how he worked day and night for three months to "exterminate" communists, burying them alive. We see an adult daughter say she had grown up proud of her father for exterminating communists, and how he was famous and respected, that is, until she hears him tell her that he brought the head of a woman to a Chinese shop to intimidate the Chinese, and that he drank the blood of his victims. While absolutely brutal, it's incredibly important for Oppenheimer to have documented it.
One thing that isn't touched on, probably because it was beyond the scope of the film, was just how complicit and supportive the United States and Great Britain were in all of this. One thug mentions that the Americans "taught them to hate communists," but it went much further than that. (This was the guy who had the audacity to think he deserved a trip to America as a reward for his good deeds, hoo boy if this doesn't elevate your blood pressure or make you want to weep for humanity, I'm not sure what will). We do see footage of a man explaining life in Bali to an American news reporter in the 60's, saying with a straight face that the communists had asked to be killed, and the news report going to explain how communists were being starved in camps and occasionally taken out to be killed. We also see how the union for the plantation workers at the Goodyear Sumatran Rubber Company was branded as "communist run," had its leaders and many members killed, and the survivors forced to continue working at gunpoint, which is practically a capitalist's dream. Think about that the next time you buy a tire.
The mass murderers stole the property of their victims and took their wives, so it's another case of political ideology hypocritically being used for personal gain, from these death squad goons all the way up to the top of the power structure in Indonesia. You think of the worst massacres in the 20th century, and you see them coming from the left (Stalin and Mao) and the right (Hitler and Suharto), and there are plenty of other examples on down that list. The dreaded "other," whose invented evils are cast into "reality" via propaganda, become the easiest means to power. One guy who was still serving in the Indonesian legislature (and had been for decades following the coup) essentially says that the ends justified the means, shrugging off a million deaths as "politics," and that it was the "process of achieving one's ideals." Ideals, ha. The image of the anonymous man's face quietly staring as something outrageous or horrific is being said comes to mind, and it probably will for a very long time.
Joshua Oppenheimer's follow-up to The Act of Killing is devastating, but important. He bears witness to crimes against humanity that were never punished - in fact, those who committed them were deemed heroes, and are still in power. He follows an Indonesian man visiting people and families with connections to the 1965 Indonesian coup, one that resulted in 500,000 to 1,200,000 people, labeled "communists," brutally executed - including the man's older brother. Like the previous film, we see elderly members of death squads talking openly about the murders and barbarity committed, which is incredibly aggravating to watch. We see a teacher indoctrinating his students, telling them that the communists were "cruel" and gouged the eyes out of the generals in the coup, when it was actually the military who did this. Most importantly, however, we see this younger brother (anonymous for his own protection) confront numerous people who were directly involved in the massacres and his brother's death. His forthright, simple question elicit a variety of response, some squirming, some defiant, and some downright threatening. There are claims from some that they didn't know what was happening, or that they were just following orders (that from his own uncle!), the statements of which are right out of the German playbook post-WWII.
All of these people seem to want the past to remain in the past, out of what seemed to be various forms of fear - the fear of being held accountable on the part of the killers, and the fear for their safety in the families of the victims. It's symbolic that the man who visits these people gives some of them an eye exam as a pretense to talking to them (hence the movie poster); it's as if he's trying to get them to "see" what truly happened nearly 50 years later, and to understand it for what it was - butchery, not heroism. His disturbed look as he hears the killers describing and justifying their atrocities echoes the viewer's thoughts, something which made this a more satisfying watch compared to The Act of Killing.
Obviously, though, this is not for the faint of heart. We see a death squad leader, now 72, who drank the blood of his victims believing it would stop him from going insane, describe lopping off a woman's breast and hacking her up because she was a "bad person." We see others who dragged hundreds of people down to Snake River, gleefully recount beheading them, and how their headless bodies bobbed up and down in the river afterwards. We hear a man describe how he worked day and night for three months to "exterminate" communists, burying them alive. We see an adult daughter say she had grown up proud of her father for exterminating communists, and how he was famous and respected, that is, until she hears him tell her that he brought the head of a woman to a Chinese shop to intimidate the Chinese, and that he drank the blood of his victims. While absolutely brutal, it's incredibly important for Oppenheimer to have documented it.
One thing that isn't touched on, probably because it was beyond the scope of the film, was just how complicit and supportive the United States and Great Britain were in all of this. One thug mentions that the Americans "taught them to hate communists," but it went much further than that. (This was the guy who had the audacity to think he deserved a trip to America as a reward for his good deeds, hoo boy if this doesn't elevate your blood pressure or make you want to weep for humanity, I'm not sure what will). We do see footage of a man explaining life in Bali to an American news reporter in the 60's, saying with a straight face that the communists had asked to be killed, and the news report going to explain how communists were being starved in camps and occasionally taken out to be killed. We also see how the union for the plantation workers at the Goodyear Sumatran Rubber Company was branded as "communist run," had its leaders and many members killed, and the survivors forced to continue working at gunpoint, which is practically a capitalist's dream. Think about that the next time you buy a tire.
The mass murderers stole the property of their victims and took their wives, so it's another case of political ideology hypocritically being used for personal gain, from these death squad goons all the way up to the top of the power structure in Indonesia. You think of the worst massacres in the 20th century, and you see them coming from the left (Stalin and Mao) and the right (Hitler and Suharto), and there are plenty of other examples on down that list. The dreaded "other," whose invented evils are cast into "reality" via propaganda, become the easiest means to power. One guy who was still serving in the Indonesian legislature (and had been for decades following the coup) essentially says that the ends justified the means, shrugging off a million deaths as "politics," and that it was the "process of achieving one's ideals." Ideals, ha. The image of the anonymous man's face quietly staring as something outrageous or horrific is being said comes to mind, and it probably will for a very long time.