"Killing Action" is the best work I have ever seen at the Hong Kong International Film Festival this year. Learned Indonesian. While watching the movie, I kept hearing disdainful anger and ridicule from the audience. This was the first time I encountered: "gangster, its original meaning in English is a free man. So the gangsters are just. They are defending the freedom of this country and not being corroded by communism." These arrogant servants who have been stained with innocent blood for more than 40 years are even embarrassed to put this ridiculous lie on their hands. , Preaching everywhere, in front of the camera, in the conference, on the TV show, brazenly flaunted his slaughter in the past, "In the eyes of us civilized people who abide by the law, it is simply ridiculous"! During the "anti-communist" purges of the Indonesian military government from 1965 to 66, more than one million Indonesian Communists, leftists, intellectuals and Chinese were massacred. In order to evade responsibility, the Indonesian military assigned the massacre task to local gangsters. In the past forty years or so, the gangsters and their families who participated in the massacre have become the local high-ranking dignitaries, dominating one side, gaining both power and benefits; while the survivors and the victims’ families are still concerned about that period of time. Suspense like a chill, even if the murderer who killed his father or grandfather lives on the opposite door, there is only silence. When director Joshua Oppenheimer first started filming this documentary, interviewing the survivors of the massacre and the families of the victims, he found that most interviewers were afraid to talk about the past, and the filming was constantly blocked by the government and the police. In the end, the interviewees said, you might as well go to the murderers, they are very happy to brag about those things to you. Then Joshua began to search for the notorious butchers in Sumatra one by one. He interviewed forty butchers, listened to them showing off the past, and took him to revisit the place where the massacre was carried out. The 41st is a documentary. Protagonist, loves Hollywood gangster movies, admires Al Anwar Gango, the rogue of Pachino. In fact, I think most people have already thought that the director has two paths to go, and he can definitely make a historical documentary that will cleanse the hearts of the people. One continues to follow the victims for thrilling filming. With the pursuit and oppression of the government and the military, the blood and tears of the past are slowly revealed. Standing on the position of this absolutely disadvantaged group, we appeal to them and let them be suppressed by the power. For the first time, Shuthou’s voice is righteous and touching. Or he followed the advice and interviewed Anwar Gango and other murderers, showing that their daily life is no different from those of the victims. As the shooting progressed, they gradually revealed their nightmares and the torture of their consciences. Under the murderous appearance, they also have a fleshy human heart, in order to win the sympathy of the audience and the understanding of history. Both of these narrative methods are not uncommon. Imagine that no matter which angle is used on this black and white subject, the effect will not be bad. However, these thoughts were completed before the director took the shot. He saw the scarred hearts and fears of the victims, and learned from the forty slaughters that they were not imaginary demons, just like ordinary people. With a job, a family, even with children and grandchildren around the knees, living a normal life, even if it is a gangster, not every gangster who goes to the streets to collect protection fees can kill more than a thousand people. The head is still at ease. Therefore, when he met Anwar Gango, he had more questions and made some different attempts. He gave them the stage and the camera, these slaughters, let them use their own methods to reproduce this period of history, express their understanding of this period of history, and their own imagination in history. At the beginning, I think Anwar and his colleagues didn’t think too much. They were accustomed to the set they preached. The justice they understood was just like the anti-communist propaganda films broadcast year after year in Indonesia. The Communist Party is the devil. At that time, the massacre protected the country and was the enforcer of justice, so even though sometimes I couldn’t sleep at night and would have nightmares about the heads he had cut off, Anwar didn’t think it was a big deal. After all, he was a good man. The ghosts under his sword are wicked people. When filming started, Anwar and his subordinate Herman almost seemed to be frolicking, jokingly and exaggeratingly performing the villagers he hunted down, holding their mother's crying child. However, as they let their imaginations continue to enrich and unfold, the high-sounding reasons seemed to be ripped apart, and the hesitation and fear continued to flow out, and they couldn't laugh. When shooting scenes of burning villages and raping women and children, the flames Between the screams and screams, Anwar dangled in front of the camera blankly. Those were only extras, but they responded realistically to the chase and atrocities of the "Five Commandments Youth Group" who played the perpetrators, but they were shocked enough. After the filming was completed, Hermann coaxed the child actors who were scared to cry, wiped away their tears, and told them that they were just filming. Perhaps at that moment Anwar thought that even acting can scare people, not to mention those who experience real history. Where's the party? And it is so difficult to wipe away the tears of a child actor, let alone stop the mouths of millions of victims who have lost their families? They must be cursing us, they have been cursing us. In the past, Anwar would say the same, because these Communists are evil people, so they would curse the enemy, but now he panics because the curse is out of real hurt and pain. In the end, he chose to play the role of a victim who was killed by his own interrogation, experiencing the feeling of being interrogated and beaten at his desk, being strangled by a wire with his extremely clever invention, and he couldn't continue filming at all. At that moment, I felt that I lost all my dignity and was full of fear. He said, I think I felt the feelings of the people I killed. Our feelings are the same. Anwar finally said so. The director said, no, those victims will not feel the same as you, because you are just rehearsing and waiting for the cut to end, and those victims know that they are really going to die. From the beginning of living in the imagination of a good and innocent man until he imagined that he and the victim are almost the same, Anwar has been forced to retreat step by step by the interpretation of his own imagination, but the director has given the final blow, no matter how you imagine it. , There is still a huge gap between your imagination and the reality created by your own hands. In the imagination, you are good people, and they are evil people, so your thousands of lives are still worthy of praise; but reality is not the case. This reality is not the reality created by the director, but the reality that lives in the hearts of these people. They know that maybe they are the villains. Perhaps because they can't accept this reality, they create one lie after another, replacing reality with imagination. It is not imagination that constructs reality, but imagination exists because of reality, because it does not want to face reality, but because it is repeated repeatedly, it seems that reality is still real. Whether Anwar accepts reality in the end, what reality he accepts, and how he faces it, is ignorant. Perhaps we will simply imagine that his reality has changed from "I am a good person and they are evil" to "I am a bad person and they are a good person", or "No one is a good person or a bad person, everyone is people". However, this is only our imagination after all, whether it is sensational or cold Quiet, it is always easy to promote a sense of justice or compassion, but this documentary makes me panic. "Woe to you! Because you built the prophet's tomb, and that prophet was killed by your ancestors. You can see what your ancestors did, and you proved and liked it; because they killed the prophet, you built the tomb of the prophet. Therefore, God used wisdom to say: I will send prophets and apostles to them, some of them will kill, some of them will persecute, so that all the sins of the blood of the prophets since the creation of the world will be brought to the people of this generation. From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who was slain in the middle of the altar and the temple. I tell you the truth, all this will depend on the people of this generation.” (Luke 11:47- 51) Today we made a dismissive tut in the audience, because compared with these murderous demons, we are just awe-inspiring. When looking back at history, we mourn for the victims. But I am afraid that one day we will discover that we are not necessarily good people forever. We are just like the evil people we thought, but they are all human beings. I am afraid that one day we realize that there is such a big difference between our imagination and reality. A chasm; and what I am even more afraid of is that when we evade all the way to rationalization until the day when we are forced to the corner, everything is too late.
View more about The Act of Killing reviews
