some mangled still-kinda-catatonic-from-its-compellingness thoughts about The Act of Killing re:a conversation i overheard on the T by some jerk in a pink shirt with an incredibly wrong opinion

you decided to base your criticism entirely on "the film COULD have done this" and "if the josh oppenheimer did THIS instead then the film would be like THAT" instead of actually having an opinion on the movie that joshua oppenheimer did make! until you did come up with a sliver of that opinion, which was "i guess maybe what he was trying to do was explain why these guys are evil?" despite your equivocation, you are definitely on the right track, on one level. but you are missing the entire point otherwise.

one thing you said was that you "thought he was trying to do some Wong Kar-Wai shit with the waterfall." first of all: you are terrible. I could maybe give you a pass because it looked like you were on a date and you were trying to impress her by looking like a smart white boy who knows an asian director look how worldly you are. on the other hand, you just took someone on a date to see fucking THE ACT OF KILLING WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

first of all, there was not even a single thing related to wong kar-wai at all in this, outside of the most general definitions of dreamlike directing. there aren't even fucking happy dreamy waterfalls in any wong kar wai movie i've seen. stop saying things that don't make sense to impress people who you assume don't know any better. more importantly, though, you seemed to miss the entire very-large-part-and-also-point of the movie where there is a film within the film that the murderers are effectively creating and directing. the murderers picked that waterfall. they picked those outfits, those colors. we are supposed to be amazed, appalled, and gaggingly amused by their atonal choices because, for christs fucking sake, it looks like they're trying to make one-part giallo acid thriller, one-part budget remake of miller's crossing in their buddy's closet, and one-part zyrtec commercial. congo talks about finding the symbolism of the waterfall beautiful. you talk about finding the waterfall to remind you of a completely unrelated Chinese director. you both miss the point entirely.

the film is about evil, but it's about understanding it from different angles. it's about a very specific, terrifying type of evil: sanctioned evil. it's about evil that wins, and attempting to subvert it with some quicksand of perspective. congo's endless retching during the last five minutes of the film is so affecting because it's a murderer seeing, for the very first time, what it's like to be a loser. and he can only understand it in a ridiculously complex multi-meta process. first, he sees how the recreations affect the extras negatively. but this isn't enough. then, he places himself in the victim seat and feels a certain exhaustion and fear, but this isn't enough. he still calls in his grandkids to watch the scene as if he won a hot dog eating contest and was appearing on the evening news. when he finally watches himself as the victim, he starts to crack. but it's joshua's words, on top of his own revelatory confession, that finally get him -- if not to empathize or fully understand the actions he committed -- realize the effects they had. he realizes his fucked up perspective on the act of killing, and finally questions himself. "have i sinned?" it's a question that the entire indonesian society failed to ask itself. he, alone, begins to break from the denial.

it's a tremendously pitiable and affecting moment, made possible through layers of literal self-reflection, and it's a process that mirrors watching the act of killing itself. as the audience, we are the next layer on top of this perspective onion. and, watching it, we are constantly reminded of this institutional, unrelenting evil as it gets reinforced as reality one surreal juxtaposition after another. the point (at least, in my reading) of the movie isn't trying to qualify or understand how or why the indonesian paramilitary people are evil. it's about taking it one step further. the root of their evil lies in the overall denial that their actions were evil inandofthemselves, as evidenced most strongly in the minister's speech after the staged "KILL ALL COMMUNISTS!!!" shot. "We don't want to appear brutal, but we also must exterminate the communists." By presenting evil through seeming self-parody, we are forced to understand their delusions as reality. They boast in front of the camera. They are more honest with others, in their schlock and overacting and artifice, than they will ever be with themselves,  their souls. And only by turning an eye on themselves, as we turn onto them, will they truly realize the breadth of the destruction they have caused.