This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Matisse van Rossum’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
Wow, what an incredibly effective film. It's very rare to get the kind of perspective that The Act of Killing provides. It tells the story of the murder of millions of supposed "communists" in Sumatra after the military overthrow of the government in the 1960's. However, instead of telling this story from the neutral perspective of simple hindsight, it is told from the perspective of several of the most prevalent killers, most notably Anwar Congo, an executioner who murdered more than 1,000 "communists." Watching him is completely surreal. He just looks like a charismatic old man, but he retells the ways he murdered people as if he were describing a pleasant day with friends in the good old days. This film presents genocide so matter-of-factly that it almost doesn't seem real. At the beginning it's hard to find a way to connect yourself to it. But as the film continues, you find yourself accepting the horror of the subject matter and every little detail starts to hit you like a punch in the gut.
One thing that I noticed very particularly about The Act of Killing is that, better than almost any other film I've seen, it shows the power and influence of cinema. The obvious example is The Act of Killing itself, showing the horrors of an event that many people don't even know happened, but I found the subtle examples to be much more powerful. Anwar and his friend Herman are put in charge of recreating scenes of torture and murder of "communists" in order to show the history that is still celebrated by Sumatra in the form of a film. But as they create this film, they begin to consider the effects it will have. One of Anwar's fellow executioners even states that their film will show that the communists were not the cruel ones, but that they themselves were the cruel ones. However, by far the most powerful scene in The Act of Killing is the one where Anwar plays a communist in a scene who is tortured and murdered in the exact way he tortured and murdered hundreds of people, and he begins to feel the same way that he made all of those other people feel before killing them. He begins to experience remorse for the first time in his life, and Oppenheimer's treatment of this is masterful.
There is a surprising amount of comedy in this film, but it's presented in such a way that you almost feel uncomfortable laughing. For most of Anwar's film, Herman dresses as a woman, and while this is hilarious, when you look at him, you still know that he was responsible for so many deaths. The Act of Killing speaks volumes, and there's so much detail that I feel like I'm rambling. The long and short of the matter is that this is a must see film. It's incredibly moving and powerful, but also a very important examination of a relatively unknown history that should not be forgotten. In short, The Act of Killing is a masterpiece.