The Act of Killing
Chris Hedges, Truthdig
have spent time with mass killers, warlords and death squad leaders as a reporter in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Some are psychopaths who relish acts of sadism, torture and murder. But others, maybe most, see killing as a job, a profession, good for their careers and status. They enjoy playing God. They revel in the hypermasculine world of force where theft and rape are perks. They proudly refine the techniques of murder to snuff out one life after another, largely numb to the terror and cruelty they inflict. And, when they are not killing, they can sometimes be disarmingly charming and gracious. Some are decent fathers and sentimental with their wives and mistresses. Some dote on their pets.
It is not the demonized, easily digestible caricature of a mass murderer that most disturbs us. It is the human being.
Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary "The Act of Killing," which took eight years to make, is an important exploration of the complex psychology of mass murderers. The film has the profundity of Gitta Sereny's book "Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience," for which she carried out extensive interviews with Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka, one of the Nazi extermination camps. Oppenheimer, too, presents candid confessions, interviewing some of the most ruthless murderers in Indonesia. One of these is responsible for perhaps 1,000 killings, a man named Anwar Congo, who was a death squad leader in Medan, the capital of the Indonesian province North Sumatra.
Continue Reading: The Act of Killing