The Act of killing

The Act of killing
« Reply #1 on: Yesterday at 02:58:06 pm »

« C’était comme si on tuait dans l’allégresse ». C’est l’histoire mais du point de vue des tueurs, des bourreaux, pas des victimes. Ils sont les « gangsters », les « hommes libres ». Ils jouent leur propre rôle et ils jouent le rôle de leurs victimes. Ils se disputent sur la signification des mots cruauté et sadisme. Ils disent qu’ils sont plus cruels que dans les films, beaucoup plus, et beaucoup plus cruels que les communistes. « Moi, je les regardais mourir. – Tous, tu les as tous regardé mourir. » Ils tournent des scènes avec des habitants d’un village qui jouent les victimes, dont ils sortent presque aussi choqués que les figurants. Ils rient, ils font des blagues atroces, dansent, mettent en scène leurs cauchemars, crient action ou coupez, apostrophent le metteur en scène, « Josh! », sont maquillés, ferment les yeux de la tête décapitée qu’ils n’avaient pas fermés et qui les hantent, se pavanent ou se convulsent de dégout à l’idée de ce qu’ils ont fait. Ils voulaient qu’on sache la vérité.

Re: The Act of killing
« Reply #3 on: Yesterday at 04:18:35 pm »

mmm, je me demande pourquoi tu as voulu le voir ;)
ça me fait penser au film de manoel de oliveira sur la procession religieuse dans le petit village des années 60… j’ai encore oublié son nom

Re: The Act of killing
« Reply #5 on: Yesterday at 05:49:44 pm »

non, tu sais, ça ne ressemble à rien de connu. ce sont des criminels, des hommes qui ont commis des actes de grande cruauté, de sadisme comme ils disent, qui ont torturé, tué, violé – « je les prévenais, je leur disais : tu vas connaître les pires moments de ta vie et moi je vais connaître le paradis », qui sont restés impunis et qui font un film, qui les bouleverse. j’ai plusieurs fois eu envie de sortir, tellement c’est insupportable, je suis restée, me disant que la suite peut-être apporterait un élément d’apaisement. je n’ai pas eu tort.

Re: The Act of killing
« Reply #6 on: Yesterday at 06:08:09 pm »

J’en avais déjà entendu parler ici :
http://www.critikat.com/The-Act-of-Killing.html

Ça m’avait plutôt convaincu de me tenir à distance.

Re: The Act of killing
« Reply #7 on: Yesterday at 07:43:17 pm »

je pense que cette critique est injuste. malheureusement, je me rends compte que je suis mal placée pour en parler, quand il s’agit d’écouter des criminels, ayant souffert d’avoir moi-même eu un oncle criminel, assassin. bien sûr, il me semble là que je tire une corde des plus suspectes, dramaticollantes, pour justifier d’avoir été touchée par ce film, mais tant pis. de mon point de vue, et c’est le seul qui compte à mes yeux, je ne suis pas très courageuse non plus.
ce film m’a bouleversée. et j’ai été heureuse d’apprendre, de la « bouche » d’oppenheimer, évidemment, ça aussi, c’est suspect, qu’il avait bouleversé l’indonésie. on voit dans ce film faire des gens qui ne savent pas ce qu’ils font, ce qu’ils cherchent, et cela nous laisse pantois. brandir le mot sacro-saint mot « spectaculaire » est compréhensible, on est souvent dans le grotesque, on hallucine face à ce qui paraît bêtise à l’état pur, mais on sait à chaque instant que ce spectaculaire, ce grotesque, cette bêtise répondent de choses dont nous ne savons rien, de crimes inhumains, qui n’ont jamais, jusque là, trouvé à être qualifié comme tels, dont les perpétreurs ne savent sur quel pied parler. je crois que ce qui leur a manqué, c’est d’un procès. ce sont tout de même des gens très particuliers, qui ont fait commis ces crimes et qui sont aujourd’hui toujours craints, toujours proches du pouvoir. pour moi, c’est peut-être un peu comme s’ils avaient pris en charge leur propre procès, et que, au moins pour certains d’entre eux, ils se soient reconnus coupables. la « représentation » est une grande chose, c’est une chose qui révèle et qui soigne, me dis-je. et qui soigne aussi ceux qui ont vu ce film, qu’aujourd’hui tout le monde a vu en indonésie. je dis ça, tout en regrettant les mots que je signe ici-même. tout en me disant words words words. et ce n’est toujours pas ça. de même que je ne devrais pas me laisser à la facilité d’ajouter que mon oncle, passé aux assises, a remercié ses juges, a remercié le ciel d’être passé en jugement : pour une fois, a-t-il dit, justice a été faite. ce film, il faut le voir, ou ne pas le voir. anyway, il y a peu de choses, à mon sens, qui feront jamais qu’on sera à la hauteur de la réalité. je me vois moi, condamnée à vivre en deçà de la grandeur humaine, et j’aurai, jusqu’au bout, l’impression que les mots me manquent tandis que quelque chose cloche en leur royaume. mais ce film, pour moi, c’est du beau boulot, une belle chose humaine. que d’autres le voient comme une saloperie. au fond, c’est possible aussi. ce qui m’a toujours fait peur c’est qu’on peut faire dire n’importe quoi aux mots, quand de ce film on sort pantois(e). et tant pis pour la critique cinématographique. et la critique tout court, d’ailleurs. c’est un art, qu’à mon sens, les français prisent beaucoup trop. :))

Re: The Act of killing
« Reply #8 on: Today at 11:34:06 am »

un autre article, qui va dans le sens de http://www.critikat.com/The-Act-of-Killing.html mais de façon plus nuancée :
http://www.insideindonesia.org/feature-editions/review-an-act-of-manipulation

Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is a bold, disturbing and ultimately unsatisfactory exploration of the place of violence in modern Indonesia

Whatever might be criticised in the rest of the film, anyone interested in modern Indonesia will want to watch the scenes in which Safit Pardede prowls through the Medan market collecting cash from his small-trader victims. Manipulative and misleading The Act of Killing may be; it is nonetheless an extraordinarily powerful film which we should not ignore.
– Robert Cribb

Re: The Act of killing
« Reply #9 on: Today at 12:00:22 pm »

tandis qu’au plus je lis, au plus je me dis que c’est un film tout à fait défendable. ici, le témoignage d’un une indonésien trouvé là http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2012/12/2012121874846805636.html%29

‘The Act of Killing’

By Syarina Hasibuan, producer

When a friend told me of a documentary about an executioner involved in the killing of alleged communists in 1965, I did not believe her. I had never heard of anyone confessing to this – let alone a documentary about it screening at international film festivals. I was dying to see it and, luckily enough, I was one of the first Indonesians, along with a small group of journalists, to attend a secret screening of The Act of Killing in Jakarta. We were told not to reveal the location of the screening for security reasons, which reveals just how sensitive this bloody period in Indonesian history remains today.

After I watched it I felt shocked, confused and betrayed. Shocked to find out how horrible the situation was at that time – with people living in fear and killings taking place everywhere, every day. Confused because I did not know what to think of Anwar Congo, the executioner in the film. Somehow I did not hate him because I saw him as an uneducated man, brainwashed by the government into believing that he was doing the right thing by killing all those people. It was clear that his actions haunted him for life. I felt betrayed because the government never told us the real story when I was growing up. They lied to us. And now I wanted to know more.

As an Indonesian who grew up during President Suharto’s ‘New Order’ regime, I was taught that the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), which was one of the biggest political parties in 1965, was violent and that its members did not believe in God. When I was a child, if we hated someone we used to call him or her a communist – meaning that we thought the person was evil. That is how brainwashed I was.

In elementary school every year on September 30, teachers would ask us to watch a three-and-a-half hour long government sponsored film about how the Communist Party had planned to topple the government. The film showed how, on one day in 1965, the PKI had kidnapped seven top military men in the middle of the night, killed one of them in front of his wife and children, and brought the others to a rubber plantation, where they tortured and mutilated them. Throughout it all, they were singing, dancing and shouting « Kill! Kill! Kill! ». Then they threw the dead bodies into a well.

Many of the scenes in that film were too violent for elementary school students to watch. But I guess the aim was to brainwash the younger generation, to imprint the most gruesome parts of that film onto our brains so that whenever we heard of the PKI we thought of evil. And, for a long time, it worked.

I grew up not understanding what actually happened in 1965; I did not know that maybe up to three million people had been killed because they were accused of being involved in the PKI. If my parents or grandparents knew about it, they never spoke of it.

After watching The Act of Killing I felt we should make our own story about the killings. I talked to victims, executioners, witnesses and investigators to find out more about what actually happened. And the more I talked to people, the more gruesome the picture that formed in my head.

After the military accused the PKI of being behind the murder of the seven military men, PKI members all over Indonesia were hunted down, put in prison without trial, tortured or killed. Civilians and students from religious boarding schools were used as executioners. And the military released some of the most violent criminals from prisons and ordered them to carry out executions. Hundreds of dead bodies were found floating in rivers every day.

The situation was so chaotic that a person could easily be accused of being a PKI member simply because someone did not like them. Killings even happened between family members.

Ndoren is an old man who does not know his real age. He has only two teeth left, but smiles a lot. He told us he was an executioner. We went with him to Luweng Tikus, or the Rat hole as local people call it – the location where soldiers forced him to kill more than 40 people, some of whom he knew personally.

In front of the 42 metre deep hole he told us his story, continuously warning us not to go any closer. The alleged communists were brought in by the military after walking in the dark for hours, with their hands tied. They were lined up in front of the hole. Then, one by one, Ndoren hit each of them on the back of the head with a crowbar and threw them into the hole. He said they hardly struggled, as if they had already accepted that they were going to die.

The stench from the hole was so bad that villagers far away could not bear it. The hole was covered until 2002 when human rights activists opened it up and found human bones and skulls inside.

After Suharto’s downfall 14 years ago, people cautiously started to speak out. Victims and human rights organisations asked the government to at least apologise for what happened. Nearly 50 years after the events of those years, the National Commission for Human Rights conducted a four-year long investigation into the case and concluded that crimes against humanity were committed and that the military was responsible.

Still nothing much changed. I am happy that elementary school students no longer have to watch the same propaganda film we were forced to endure. But Indonesia’s ‘killing fields’ remain absent from the history books. The communists are still considered devil-like in the eyes of many Indonesians and grandchildren of Communist Party members still do not want to admit to this in public. There are still those who prefer not to talk about what happened in 1965. Why open up old wounds, they say. Let us keep it buried.

But there are also many Indonesians, like myself, who want to know what really happened. What is it that has divided our country for so long? Did the PKI really plan a coup and kill those army generals, even though their position was so strong at the time? What was it that made my fellow Indonesians so willing to kill one another that they would even execute family members?

I am happy that they have partially excavated Luweng Tikus and found the skeletons. But many others remain scattered across Indonesia. And we have a long way to go before we have all the answers we deserve. I believe that if we want to learn from the past we must know the truth about our history.