Imagine, for one sobering moment, that the Nazis had triumphed in World War II. No suicides in bunkers, no Nuremberg Trials, no reparations, no apologies, no guilt-burdened children and grandchildren. Hold on, it’s going to get even worse.
Conceive of a filmmaker in, say, 1965, approaching Klaus Barbie about making a documentary about his wartime tenure as the head of the Gestapo in a key French city. The Butcher of Lyon, still savoring the nickname bestowed by his grieving, terrorized victims, charmingly offers the director much more than a candid sit-down interview: He’ll take him to the former Gestapo headquarters in the Hotel Terminus and demonstrate how he tortured and killed countless enemies of the state in the basement.
The lack of remorse, the arrogance in the absence of law or justice, the sheer impunity of this paragon of evil — just the suggestion may be enough to turn your stomach. Now you have some small sense of The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer’s one-of-a-kind documentary about the cheerful perpetrators of Indonesia’s mass murders of suspected Communists, intellectuals, leftists and Chinese nationals in the 1960s.
I recognize that a healthy response of most readers would be to avoid any dark room with unrepentant thugs who’ve gotten away with murder. So I’m well aware that I’ve already sabotaged my goal of encouraging you to see The Act of Killing. Plainly, it’s not a film for everyone. But it is essential viewing for anyone concerned about the conditions that allow ordinary people to justify their participation in mass killing. And for moviegoers interested in the ethics of filmmaking, documentary and otherwise, The Act of Killing is a fascinating, disturbing Escher print.