Joshua Oppenheimer: There was this weird opportunity to do something unprecedented in the history
of nonfiction film. To confront a perpetrator while the perpetrator still holds a monopoly
on power.
Joe Posner (Vox): This is Joshua Oppenheimer
His two films are the most frightening, and moving I have ever seen. They're essentially
a series of confrontations with the perpetrators of a horrifying chapter in Indonesia’s history:
Oppenheimer: In 1965 there was a right wing military coup. The military took over Indonesia
with the help of the united states and other western countries. And within 6 months to
a year, somewhere between half a million and two and a half million people were killed.
Anyone who was seen as unlikely to just embrace the new dictatorship was accused of being
a communist and killed.
Posner: First, In The Act of Killing, he confronts people who carried out these killings with,
essentially, a mirror.Never held to account, they boast. So Oppenheimer asks them to dramatize
their actions.
Oppenheimer: I said. You’ve participated in one of the biggest killings in human history.
I want to know what it means to you and to your society. You want to show me what you’ve
done. So show me what you’ve done in whatever way you wish, I will film your dramatizations
– and they’re not re-enactments, they’re dramatizations. Because re-enactments are
about what happened in the past, dramatizations are actually acting out how they want to be
seen in the present.
Posner: The perpetrators involved start to realize that they will not be seen as heroes.
Oppenheimer knew releasing the film would mean likely never going back to Indonesia,
but it created an opportunity.
Oppenheimer: I was perceived to be close to the highest ranking perpetrators in the country.
Posner: Before release, he orchestrated a second set of even more direct confrontations.
Oppenheimer: Adi the youngest son, in a family of survivors, his oldest brother was killed,
he feels trapped in this kind of prison of fear as a survivor that comes from living
surrounded by the still powerful perpetrators.
He feels the need to go to them, in the hope that he will be able to make peace with his
neighbors.
We had to take many safety precautions. While shooting including bringing a second car,
having Adi’s at the airport ready to evacuate. Adi would come with no id, no telephone, so
they wouldn’t be able to figure out who he was until we were able to get help.
The Indonesian government perhaps in response to the changes these two films have helped
to catalyze, has introduced a truth and reconciliation bill in the parliament. It’ll be a struggle,
though, to make sure that bill has teeth and is credible.
The oligarchs in Indonesia,the wealthiest, the most powerful, will not want their power
and wealth exposed as the fruits of plunder and atrocity.
Posner: But there’s another perpetrator confronted in these films, too.
Oppenheimer: There’s a moment in the Look of Silence where a perpetrator looks straight
at me because he knows i’m an American and says “we killed because we know the Americans
told us to kill the communists. The Americans taught us to hate the communists.” And then
there’s a long pause while he looks at the camera – and of course he’s looking at me.
But because, just as in this interview i’m looking at the camera and at the audience,
he’s also looking at the audience. And for an American audience, it’s a direct implication.
The details that have come to the surface are damning. To have an embassy official who’s
compiling a list of thousands of names asking that they be killed.
It’s directly implicating all of us. The film is a mirror in which we hopefully see ourselves.