Usually, documentaries about atrocities focus on the victims, featuring interviews with people who describe the horrors perpetrated on them. "The Act of Killing" takes an unusual approach: this Academy Award-nominated documentary focuses on the perpetrators. Specifically, it features interviews with people who carried out mass killings across Indonesia in the wake of Suharto's seizure of power. These goons were perfectly content to describe and even reenact how they slaughtered anyone who posed a threat to the New Order; they knew that Indonesia's government would protect them. What the viewer also notices is how casually these murderers talk about their crimes, but how casually they live their lives. We may hear a lot about those who do good for the world, but there are plenty who do evil and go about their lives.
Over the decades that followed, Suharto turned Indonesia into Nike's sweatshop, and invaded East Timor, where he slaughtered almost a third of the population, all with the support of the US (the Santa Cruz massacre in 1991 turned opinion against support for Indonesia, eventually leading to a cessation of aid in 1999, after which Indonesia withdrew its troops from East Timor; East Timor became a country in 2002). Suharto resigned in 1998 but never got brought to justice, nor have the people who carried out the killings.
The moral that one might interpret from the documentary is that even the most "normal" person can commit unspeakable deeds and then feel as if it was a perfectly ordinary thing.
Over the decades that followed, Suharto turned Indonesia into Nike's sweatshop, and invaded East Timor, where he slaughtered almost a third of the population, all with the support of the US (the Santa Cruz massacre in 1991 turned opinion against support for Indonesia, eventually leading to a cessation of aid in 1999, after which Indonesia withdrew its troops from East Timor; East Timor became a country in 2002). Suharto resigned in 1998 but never got brought to justice, nor have the people who carried out the killings.
The moral that one might interpret from the documentary is that even the most "normal" person can commit unspeakable deeds and then feel as if it was a perfectly ordinary thing.