* Cross-posted from Humanitarian Left.
I've just seen the most surreal and affecting film I think I have ever seen. It's called
The Act of Killing.
THE ACT OF KILLING is about killers who have won, and the sort of society they have built. Unlike ageing Nazis or Rwandan genocidaires, Anwar and his friends have not been forced by history to admit they participated in crimes against humanity. Instead, they have written their own triumphant history, becoming role models for millions of young paramilitaries. THE ACT OF KILLING is a journey into the memories and imaginations of the perpetrators, offering insight into the minds of mass killers. And THE ACT OF KILLING is a nightmarish vision of a frighteningly banal culture of impunity in which killers can joke about crimes against humanity on television chat shows, and celebrate moral disaster with the ease and grace of a soft shoe dance number.
One paragraph from the director, Joshua Oppenheimer's plot synopsis
The film is available at Netflix (or so I'm told), among other places. The trailer doesn't do it justice, but gives a fair glimpse into a truly bizarre and fascinating documentary.
At the end you almost feel sorry for the brutal killer. Almost. He is a tormented old man. Heartless still, it seems in many ways, but the guilt and pathos breaks the surface here and there throughout the film belying his casual admission of hundreds upon hundreds of murders, spoiling the effect of a perfectly cold-blooded killer – which not even he denies that he is.
After sifting through the ocean of emotion this film aroused in me, I am left with the thought that these men, these ruthless killers, felt they had to do what they did because their victims, the 'communists,' preferred a competing economic idea – I mean that's all communism is, a competing idea. All these people (those who were actually communists, anyway) and many others around the world beside, tortured and/or murdered because of an idea, a different take on what would be best for human society. To make matters worse, the 'communists' were often motivated by an overarching concern for the welfare and best interests of their fellow human beings. Does thinking that sharing and mutual well-being is preferable to ruthless, cut-throat competition make one deserving of slaughter? Apparently, in the minds of many, it does – including many of my own countrymen and members of my own family. I cannot express how sad that makes me.
I mean I know that's what they teach you in boot camp and a lot of people hold such beliefs, but doesn't it seem crazy when you pull it out and look at it? Because a certain idea lodged in a certain brain makes it permissible to torture and kill the owner thereof? You have to be really afraid of an idea to promote such thinking. Why does the U.S. Army hate communists? Their's is about as communal a society as you can get. What do they have against the dirty commies? Well, they're not the ones frightened by the idea known as communism, it's their bosses' bosses. They're the ones who are afraid. They're afraid that should the competing idea get loose and, you know, what if people liked it and what if there were no room nor need for billionaires anymore? Wouldn't that be horrible?
Well, wouldn't it just?
Author's note: I am not advocating for communism, though I do believe it has much to teach us if we could ever be open-minded enough to learn from outside of our prescribed ideology. I'm an eclectic pragmatist. Ideologies tend to be problematic in one way or another but there is nothing wrong with sharing, mutual well-being and the common good. Our capitalist dream-turned-nightmare could surely benefit from such notions.
The following gems were plucked, however clumsily, from the interview that follows:
“The true function of art [is] to get people to look at reality and see and recognize what they know to be true. And thereby be able to talk in a more insightful way about who we are.”
“Everything we buy is produced in places like this. Everything I'm wearing is haunted by the suffering of the people who made them and they're kept afraid by people like Anwar.”
“We depend on the men in The Act of Killing to keep what we buy cheap – and we know this.”
“This damages us. We have only one chance to live on earth and it's a pity and a shame if the one chance we have is at the expense of others.”
Joshua Oppenheimer
I think this interview (referenced above) with the director, Joshua Oppenheimer, is as interesting as the documentary itself. It's quite extraordinary.
This too is interesting:
Werner Herzog and Errol Morris talk about "The Act of Killing"
I don't think we can now walk away from this subject without looking at our part in it and acknowledging that while any ideologies could theoretically be involved here, it was in fact capitalism for which these crimes were committed – as they were elsewhere in the world – Asia and Latin America in particular. I think we as Americans need to face up to these difficult facts.
Because of our preferred ideas on economics, millions upon millions of people around the world have died horrific deaths. Because of the paranoia of our ruling class, and their utter ruthlessness, we leave in our wake obscene millions of murdered children, assassinated union organizers, priests and nuns slaughtered without mercy, widows, orphans, wounded warriors, crippled civilians - a vast ocean of living grief.
Because we didn't like how they think. Because we cannot, must not, shall not tolerate ideas deemed incompatible with our own – however rotten, dysfunctional and shameful our own ideas may be.
We are taught this unreasoning hatred because of the selfishness of extremely rich and powerful men who would rather murder humanity than share their dinner.
They have made many of us believe that it is sometimes okay to murder our fellow human beings in droves.
”Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Voltaire