I think the whole tradition in which documentaries tend to tell the stories of survivors and victims exists, in part, to reassure ourselves that we are not perpetrators, that we are beautiful souls doing beautiful things for people. In fact, we are much closer to perpetrators than we like to believe.

Everything in our daily lives - our clothes, our food - is haunted by the suffering of the people who produced them. The people who made the computer on which I am typing these words live in dormitories with netting on their balconies so that they don’t jump off in despair, so terrible and hopeless are their working and living conditions. Why? Because men like Anwar and his friends are on the ground terrorising them so that they don’t dare struggle for better conditions, and gain some control over their lives.

We are, in this sense, all guests at a cannibalistic feast. We may not be as close to the slaughter as Anwar and his friends, but we are at the table. And we know this, yet we prefer not to think about it – or to reassure ourselves that by buying organic food we are not buying into the system. But, as Tolstoy pointed out, the system by which we live and feed ourselves depends on other peoples’ suffering.

We see this in The Act of Killing. We see this in the shots of Anwar with his grandchildren, in the shots of Adi drifting through the mall, numb and listless, with his family. I think something inside of all of us dies when we kill, and it also dies when we depend, for our survival, on the suffering of others. This is tragic, sad, painful, even nauseating.

I think the film gets audiences in touch with the experience of this alienation. And one of the most powerful reactions I’ve had from the film has been people coming up to me struggling trying to find words to describe that experience. They use words like ‘alienation,’ ‘loneliness,’ ‘sadness,’ ‘disconnection.’ They’re trying to describe a feeling that we don’t even know we have.

Joshua Oppenheimer

(ich möchte, dass mich dieser film nie wieder loslässt.
dass er mich nicht dorthin zurück schickt, wo ich war, bevor ich ihn gesehen habe.
mir ist nichts wirklicher, als die kunst.)