Documentary & War: The Act of Killing (2012)
Online Response 1
One of the films that has stood out to me is The Act of Killing (2012) and the unconventional way of telling this horrific story. In one of the readings on war and documentary, Erik Barnouw explains how documentaries have been used for both propaganda and war crime documentation. This connects to The Act of Killing, which shows how film can shape history. It can spread false narratives or hold people accountable. The film raises ethical and political questions about how war crimes are recorded.
The film is unsettling because it follows the perpetrators instead of the victims, something we don't see often. Instead of showing remorse, the perpetrators reenact their crimes in the style of Hollywood movies. At first, they seem proud of what they did. This connects to Barnouw’s discussion of World War II propaganda films, which were designed to shape national narratives. In the same way, Anwar and his group try to write history in their favor. They see their reenactments as entertainment, but the film exposes the ways they justify their past actions.
One of the most disturbing moments in the film is the reenactment in the village, where soldiers and families recreate a massacre. During the scene, a little girl continues crying after the take is over. Herman Koto tells her that a good actor stops crying when the scene ends. This moment should have made him and the others realize that what they were reenacting was not just a story. It was something that truly happened, and its impact still lingers. The girl’s reaction was real. The criminals may have tried to frame their past as something theatrical, but the emotions could not be erased.
At first, I was frustrated that the film let war criminals speak so freely. It felt wrong to give them a platform while their victims and their families suffered. But the more I thought about it, I started to understand Oppenheimer’s approach. By letting Anwar Congo and his associates tell their own stories, the film reveals their contradictions. In one of the final scenes, Anwar watches the footage and starts to choke up, beginning to feel the weight of his actions. It's difficult to know if it's truly genuine, but it's still a big moment in that it shows how this way of storytelling is more powerful than any direct condemnation. It shows that documentary film can make people confront their own actions without telling them what to think.
The film also shows how war crimes are remembered. In the film, they were celebrating these criminals. This connects to Barnouw’s idea that documentaries do not just record history. They shape how people understand it. The Act of Killing exposes how power influences memory. It challenges the idea that history is fixed.
This film is important for understanding how documentaries shape public perception. It does not offer easy answers. Instead, it forces the audience to see how people justify their actions and how history is rewritten. It is an unsettling but necessary film that shows the power of storytelling.
I love that you had in this response to the film your emotional and frustrated reaction to watching it. I had the same visceral reaction and it was hard to watch something so devastating and evil, yet like you stated here they show their own faults and reveal their own guiltiness. By giving time and energy to showing the perpetrators which is unusual for documentaries focused on atrocities committed by people to others, it allows them to sink themselves into condensation, guilt and an inkling of remorse. The evidence of this was clearly seen to me in the reenactment of the interrogation scene where he stands in for the victim when he had been the one on the other side doing the killing years before. Its a chilling documentary to watch but the use of in your face, these are the people, not others accusing them behind desks or phd’s etc. is fitting for this event that occurred that killed so many innocent people and separated brothers and mothers from daughters.