You all need to watch The Act of Killing (available for streaming on Netflix)

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Thought I recognized Drafthouse films. They put out The Ambassador which rocked my world in all kinds of surreal ways.

I'm definitely up for this.
 
eagledare said:
Watching Anwar Congo go from a headstrong communist exterminator to a depressed wreck of a man that was genuinely remorseful for and haunted by his crimes was a pretty powerful transformation. Especially when he spent five minutes
dry heaving
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That was so twisted, it made me feel.....
sympathetic.
 
Just watched this myself. So surreal and horrifying, but absolutely fascinating.

The scenes where they are just casually talking about the murders are chilling.

I never want to see this film again.
 
It's so difficult to believe that the main murderer and his large accomplice are real people. They just seem so over-the-top and flamboyant. If they were in one of the films they adore, critics would call them unrealistic characters.
 
Also pay attention to the credits and just how many people are credited as "Anonymous." Says a LOT about the current situation over there as well.

Horrifying documentary but one of the best I've ever seen.
 
A really fascinating documentary.

Letting the killers re-enact their own actions is a pretty unique way to tell their story.

Spoilers ahead.

That bit where the guy goes into shock as he's being mock tortured, then visits the rooftop and begins retching uncontrollably when he understands what he's done was one of the most powerful things I've seen
 
Rubenov said:
While watching the movie, I kept thinking this seemed to be a CIA project gone terribly wrong.
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There's a bit of truth in that thought actually.

However, Mark Aarons argues that declassified intelligence reports indicate that "the CIA actually compiled detailed lists of those it deemed dangerous and supplied them to Suharto's forces who ensured those so named were eliminated in the mass killing operations."
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I lived in indonesia for a few years when I was younger and one of our school drivers had been a young man during the communist purges. He had a huge scar on his arm and when I asked him about it, he said he had been targeted for extermination inadvertently because a communist sympathizer had murdered a police officer and the only identifying mark the authorities knew of was the killer had a tattoo. They went around rounding up and killing every single male with a tattoo so to save himself he took a knife and cut the tattoo off his arm.

That was the only mention of the communist purges I ever heard about while living there. The topic was just not something acknowledged or referenced.
On a less horrifying but still fucked up level, I was there during the riots when they overthrew Suharto and the terrible violence aimed at the Chinese community there was shocking. That's another event that deserves more honest acknowledgement. The few local reports about Chinese businesses being burnt to the ground, families being attacked and killed, women being harassed and raped, all seemed to get shrugged off by the country in general despite some outrage from journalists.
 
siddx said:
d about while living there. The topic was just not something acknowledged or referenced.
On a less horrifying but still fucked up level, I was there during the riots when they overthrew Suharto and the terrible violence aimed at the Chinese community there was shocking. That's another event that deserves more honest acknowledgement. The few local reports about Chinese businesses being burnt to the ground, families being attacked and killed, women being harassed and raped, all seemed to get shrugged off by the country in general despite some outrage from journalists.
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Lots of reports that a lot of those riots and rapes of Chinese women were instigated by the army. One of the people who is considered (at least partially) responsible was the then commander of Kopassus (special forces) Prabowo... who will be running for president this year.
So yeah.... it will be a loooooooong time before stuff like 65-66, East-Timor and the 98 riots will be truly recognized. And I don't think those responsible will ever be held accountable.
 
It's the type of docu where you watch for fifteen minutes..... Pause.... And look over at the person next to you in disbelief. Surreal is an understatement.
 
I sat speechless staring at the screen for the entirety of the credits. Incredibly moving.
 
Read thru the "horrifying" thread last night after comin across the cover on Netflix. Watched the trailer and thought it looked insane and really disturbing. Will definitely watch later tonight.
 
I've read several articles about the film, so I have a sense of where things are going, but ten minutes in and I'm already shocked at the banality of the delivery when they describe the murders. Like, I'd heard about it but actually listening to him describe it...there's this sense of unreality. It almost feels fake, and I have to keep reminding myself that its not
 
Fascinating documentary. I didn't actually find it all that horrifying on the surface level, and I think thats what I've found the most disturbing about it. Even the simulated killings, for the most part, were kept just unreal enough by the very clear framing of the documentary going on around them. Completely unsurprising that the one that got to me most on the visceral level was the village being burned, which was filmed as though it was "happening" for the most part. But the theme of the piece really does seem to be the insidious banality of evil: that these mass murders don't seem like how we would think: they don't come off as psychopaths, or evil, or whatever. What they did is unquestionably evil, and if you met them on the street they wouldn't seem like evil men, and that's the most insidious thing.
 
I watched it yesterday and thought it was a great documentary. Fully recommend everyone watch it.
 
Note that the version available on the Apple iTunes store is the full 2.5 hour director's cut; the version on Netflix is the shorter theatrical version.

While I"m very curious to see the DC, I feel like watching the theatrical version was enough for now. When I saw it in the theater, the entire theater was dead silent afterwards. Like, no talking in the theater, no talking out near the concessions stand afterwards, just silent.

I want to recommend it to everyone, but at the same time, I feel like it's hard to convey just what you're getting into by watching it. It's disturbing in ways I've never imagined -
that scene where they "interrogate" the man whose relative was murdered by the killers who starts completely breaking down in hysterics during filming is seriously one of the most horrible things I've seen on film;
, and then like ten minutes later
I'm laughing at Herman's antics
. So bizarre and surreal.

And yeah, the ending's gonna stay with me for a while.
 
Lemming_JRS said:
I want to recommend it to everyone, but at the same time, I feel like it's hard to convey just what you're getting into by watching it. It's disturbing in ways I've never imagined -
that scene where they "interrogate" the man whose relative was murdered by the killers who starts completely breaking down in hysterics during filming is seriously one of the most horrible things I've seen on film;
, and then like ten minutes later
I'm laughing at Herman's antics
. So bizarre and surreal.

And yeah, the ending's gonna stay with me for a while.
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The scene you mention is all the weirder in that no one notices but the camera man
 
I always found it ironic that Indonesians committed genocide of 1,000,000 people because they feared a Communist revolt would lead to the genocide of 1,000,000 people...

Really makes you think if Vietnam's fate would be much different if the South were the victors.
 
Just got done watching it.

It was amusing seeing how there were so many parts where so many of the former paramilitary said "We weren't THAT bad..........were we?"
 
My local repertory theater is playing this, but I don't know if I would be able to handle it. I could hardly handle the first Evil Dead.
 
Deft Beck said:
My local repertory theater is playing this, but I don't know if I would be able to handle it. I could hardly handle the first Evil Dead.
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Honestly, I don't think your inability to handle the first Evil Dead is relevant (that's not to say it in an insulting way by the way). This movie absolutely contains shocking, horrifying scenes, but it is not related to the gore, of which there is very little (and it's always contextualised in a way that subtracts from it being gorey). It's a very difficult film to summarise, or explain, to somebody who has not seen it, without demystifying it and subtracted from their first viewing. Regardless of your hesitation, I would very much implore you to watch this; I feel it is required viewing.
 
Do you know what people? We have to live under the regime where genocide view as an act of heroism. Every year, during 30th of September our government show a "special" movie on our own only television made by them depicting the generals kidnapping that lead to further events of mass genocide. It's crazy, and the result of 20 years of that propaganda can be still seen from our older generation or related parties to the genocide. As such, this documentary only shown among academic members for screening and never for public, not even DVD.
 
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