10/8/14 (Part Two): The Ties That Blind

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31 Days of Halloween, auteur theory, Chan-Wook Park, Chung-hoon Chung, cinema, Clint Mansell, coming of age, Dermot Mulroney, dysfunctional family, English-language debut, family secrets, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Flannery O'Connor, flashbacks, Harmony Korine, insane asylums, insanity, Jacki Weaver, Lady Vengeance, Matthew Goode, Mia Wasikowska, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, murder, Nicole Kidman, Old Boy, Phyllis Somerville, psychopaths, psychosexual, Stoker, Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Uncle Charlie, uncompromising voice, voice-over narration, Wentworth Miller

Pitched somewhere between Flannery O’Connor’s Southern Gothics and Pedro Almodovar’s psychosexual jaw-droppers, Korean auteur Chan-Wook Park’s English-language debut, Stoker (2013), is quite a piece of work. Long known for films that are as impressive to look at as they are often difficult to watch, Park’s newest film pulls few punches and holds even fewer hands, coming off as more fairy-tale influenced than any of his previous films, achieving an intoxicating, if confounding, atmosphere that’s fairly close to a fever dream. For anyone who expected the transition to Western films to “tame” park, Stoker stands in towering confirmation to the idea that Park, like all true film auteurs, will always follow his muse first and popular conventions second. While the film won’t supplant Park’s classic “Vengeance” trilogy anytime soon, Stoker is a meticulously crafted, often beautiful, treatise on the destructive nature of obsession and the familial secrets that haunt us all. While the movie seems slightly more subdued than films like Oldboy (2003) or Lady Vengeance (2005), it still packs a pretty vicious bite, albeit one informed by a particularly chilly sensibility.

Stoker centers around the surviving members of the titular family, namely the neurotic Evelyn Stoker (Nicole Kidman) and her odd, 18-year-old daughter, India (Mia Wasikowska). India’s father, Richard (Dermot Mulroney) has just been killed in a car accident, an event which has, effectively, shattered what remains of Evelyn and India’s lives. At the funeral, the Stokers are introduced to Richard’s long-lost brother, Charlie (Matthew Goode), a handsome, intense young man who claims to have been traveling the world for many years. He wants to stay and help Evelyn and India make it through their current tragedy, although his motives seem to lean more towards romancing India’s mother than to helping to soothe their mental wounds.

As Charlie hangs around, India begins to pick up little hints of things that may be…well, just a little askew, as it were: a strange argument with the housekeeper, Mrs. McGarrick (Phyllis Somerville), that seems to come out of nowhere; Charlie’s strange, knowing glances at India; Aunt Gwen’s (Jacki Weaver) seeming distrust and unease around Charlie; a piano lesson that hovers at the acceptable boundaries between instruction and seduction…indeed, trouble seems to follow Charlie around like a second skin, facts which are certainly not lost on young India.

To complicate things, however, India appears to be just as mysterious and complicated a figure as her uncle. She’s a dour, serious young woman who’s constantly bullied and harassed at school (one obnoxious student draws naked pictures of India and shoves them in her face, while constantly “punching at” her face, always stopping just shy of actually making physical contact) and doesn’t seem to have any friends whatsoever. There’s one telling scene where India spends her art class drawing the detailed pattern on the inside of the vase, rather than the vase, itself, as her other classmates do: as with everything else, India just doesn’t see things in the same way as the rest of the world.

As Charlie continues to stay with the Stokers, however, the psychosexual storm gets whipped into a veritable frenzy: India’s sexual awakening seems to coincide with Charlie’s increased interest in both Evelyn and India, although her coming-of-age has started to take on certain violent aspects, not the least of which is the explosive moment where she finally strikes back at her bully. As events progress, India gets ever closer to deciphering the mystery of the key that hangs around her neck, a key that will help explain not only Uncle Charlie’s strange behavior but will also set India upon a path of self-discovery, a path that will ultimately lead to both salvation…and destruction.

As with all of Park’s films, Stoker is so carefully crafted as to seem almost like a clockwork marvel. The film is a constantly moving, evolving puzzlebox, a tricky construction that purposefully obscures key information, leaving the audience in the dark for a majority of the proceedings in a similar manner to Oldboy. This sense of complexity extends to every aspect of the film, from its narrative structure to its visual language, although the cinematography ends up being the most identifiable aspect of this structure. Quite simply, Stoker’s cinematography and shot construction, courtesy of long-time Park collaborator Chung-hoon Chung, is a complete marvel. It goes without saying that Stoker is frequently beautiful and always interesting to look at: more impressive are the myriad ways in which Park and Chung use the visual language of film to get across their subtextual themes and ideas. The scene where India is completely encircled by identical shoeboxes…the bit where a spider crawls up her leg and between her thighs…the gorgeous, surprising shot where brushed hair suddenly becomes a flowing field of waist-high grass…unrelated imagery juxtaposed in ways that seem to indicate that everything, no matter how irrelevant is interconnected…Stoker is all but bursting with subtle nuance and just-out-of-eyesight symbolism.

Into this beautifully realized visual tapestry, then, Park pours a trilogy of performances that manage to accentuate and support each other in some nicely organic ways. Mia Wasikowska, currently making quite a name for herself in just about every type of role imaginable, is pitch-perfect as the morose, guarded India. In the hands of any other actress, India might have come across as more enigmatic than necessary, a “real-life” Wednesday Addams who exists purely to pour Pernod on everyone’s ice cream. Wasikowska is amazingly subtle, versatile performer, however, and India becomes a full-realized character in her capable hands. I won’t lie and say that I found India to be likable, at any point in time, but it wasn’t hard to see things from her point of view, as twisted as it may be: her continuous voice-overs were also well-handled, allowing us insight into her cluttered little brain.

For her part, Kidman turns in another dependably solid genre performance: there’s always a thinly concealed streak of insanity running through her controlled performance but Kidman’s Evelyn never comes across as a certifiable nut. If anything, she’s a wounded, needful mother who foolishly pines for the one thing that mothers take for granted: the love of their own children. Evelyn is never a completely pathetic character, however, mostly thanks to the cold steel that Kidman brings to the performance, as if one could see the metal framework just below the skin.

Special mention must also be made of Matthew Goode’s performance as the sinister Uncle Charlie. Although I must admit to being far less familiar with his career than either Kidman or Wasikowska’s, I was completely taken with Goode’s performance. Like Wasikowska’s take on India, Goode brings an overriding sense of barely contained neuroses to his depiction of Charlie: he’s able to convey a world of information with just the barely perceptible uptick of an eyebrow or a smile that’s just slightly too curdled to instill much warmth. Goode’s performance is the epitome of restrained tension: you know that he’s going to uncoil and explode, at some point, but you’re damned if his eyes give any indication as to when that might be. By the film’s conclusion, Goode and Wasikowska make an almost unbeatable pair, playing off of each other’s mannerisms and tics in some truly impressive, startling ways. Park is definitely an “actor’s director” and his newest film comes top-loaded with some typically impressive treading of the boards.

As with almost all of Park’s films, Stoker is incredibly easy to respect, although it’s just a little more difficult to really love. While the film is constantly twisted and the narrative always unpredictable, this complexity sometimes translates into moments that are pure-headscratchers: by the conclusion, I found myself second-guessing a few “facts” that previously seemed pretty solid, mostly because I felt a little lost in the back-and-forth of the flashback-heavy narrative. The film is also just about as bleak and chilly as a film can possibly get: this sense of frigid sterility may be a little off-putting for many Western audiences, although there’s nothing in here that will challenge Western taboos in quite the same way as the plot twist from Oldboy does.

Ultimately, Park’s Stoker is an impressive English-language debut and a mighty fine film on its own rights, even if it’s not quite as incendiary or feral as the Korean films that preceded it. On a craft-level, the film has few equals: quite frankly, it’s one of the most astoundingly beautiful films I’ve ever laid eyes on. If the narrative/thematic elements of the film don’t get me quite as jazzed as the visual/aural elements…well, that’s alright, too. I respect and trust Park enough to stay with him on his cinematic journey into the darkness of the human soul: in a world where more and more things seem to get “dumbed down” for the masses, it’s always refreshing to find an uncompromising voice who trusts that we’ll “get it,” even if we’re not quite sure what “it” is.

7/29/14 (Part One): A Totally Wack Experience

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Andrea Runge, ax murders, bad movies, based on a true story, Billy Campbell, Christina Ricci, Clea DuVall, dysfunctional family, famous trials, Gregg Henry, historical drama, Lifetime Channel, Lizzie Borden, Lizzie Borden Took An Ax, murder, Nick Gomez, patricide, period-piece, set in the 1890s, Shawn Doyle, sisters, Stephen McHattie, true crime, TV movie

You’d think that making a film about the murder trial of Lizzie Borden would be kind of a no-brainer: after all, this is a case about a young woman from 1890s Massachusetts who was accused, tried and acquitted of butchering her father and step-mother with an ax. The case is so famous that it even inspired a children’s’ playground rhyme (“Lizzie Borden took an ax / And gave her mother forty whacks. / When she saw what she had done, / She gave her father forty-one.”). In certain ways, the media frenzy surrounding the case could be seen as a precursor to modern-day murder trials like Casey Anthony and Jodi Arias: young women who were all considered unlikely murder suspects thanks to their ages, looks and social statuses.

You would think that making a film about a fascinating, real-life case like this would be simple: judging by Nick Gomez’s truly terrible Lizzie Borden Took An Ax (2014), however, you would be wrong…dead wrong, as it were. While the film comes with a fairly huge handicap (it was a “Lifetime Channel original film”, which carries about as much artistic weight as do the terms “Syfy original” or “Asylum exclusive”), the problems (almost too numerous to count) go far and beyond the film’s place of birth. Lizzie Borden Took An Ax is a film that manages to get almost nothing right, managing to be simultaneously over-wrought, lackadaisical, over-the-top and duller than dishwater: no mean feat considering that the film whiplashes tone so often that one could get seriously motion-sick trying to keep up.

The film begins by sketching out (very skimpily) our major players: we meet the obnoxious Lizzie (Christina Ricci), a sort of 1890s take on Macaulay Culkin’s version of Michael Alig from Party Monster (2003); her supportive but numbingly milquetoast sister, Emma (Clea Duvall); her strict, closed-off father (Stephen McHattie), who’s interest in Lizzie appears to border on the incestuous; and Lizzie’s much hated stepmother (Sara Botsford). As far as characterization goes, that’s just about it. We do get a throwaway bit where a couple of town guys argue with Lizzie’s father, Andrew, about being shorted on payment for services rendered but this is never explored any further: I’d be shocked if the information was ever supposed to be more than a MacGuffin. With these characters, what you see is what you get.

So what do we get? Well, we get a ridiculously modern, stomping hybrid of hip-hop and blues for the musical score, which goes superbly with all of the ridiculous slo-mo shots: there are so many “badass” moments where characters stride in slo-mo down the street, accompanied by the over-the-top score, that I briefly wondered if this was the first ever historical drama completely informed by modern super hero movies. We get a performance from Ricci that ranges wildly between “just rolled out of bed stoned” to “every vein standing out in relief,” although the key connecting tissue is that no part of her performance ever feels accurate or real: it’s difficult to tell whether the odd characterization is Ricci or director Gomez’s fault but either option seems entirely valid. Stephen McHattie, who’s normally an incredibly reliable presence in indie genre films like Pontypool (2008) just looks confused here, as does Clea Duvall: both actors have the bearing of performers who are receiving their scripts a page at a time, just as lost as the audience.

While the story doesn’t veer far from the historical details of the murder, the script (which is as reliably awful as the rest of the film) still manages to throw in a raft of completely unnecessary, underdeveloped bullshit: we get another murder, which may or may not be related, although the film doesn’t care enough to explore it further; we get the suitably ridiculous portrayal of Lizzie as a modern-day party-girl magically transported to turn-of-the-20th-century Massachusetts; a stupid “insane roommate” subplot between Lizzie and her sister (the musical stingers and Ricci’s “crazy eyes” are straight out of Single White Female (1992) and enough over-acting to shame an ancient Greek theater troupe.

Picking a single low-point for the film is almost impossible but one of my favorites has to be the astoundingly stupid scene where Lizzie sneaks out to go to a party. The scene is shot exactly like a similar scene in a modern “wild youth” film might be staged: red-lit, thumping music, wild teens drinking…except it’s a period-piece, so all this takes place while the aforementioned “wild youth” are dressed in their best 1890s finery, dancing politely with each other. We get it: kids have always been kids. This doesn’t make it any less of a stupid affectation, however, although it goes hand-in-hand with that ridiculous musical score.

Essentially, Lizzie Borden Took An Ax is completely DOA, flatlining way before we limp in to the inane “twist”ending (spoiler alert: Lizzie did it, after all…duh). Truth be told, there’s virtually nothing to recommend about this film: the cast is pretty bad, including the more established actors like Ricci and McHattie; everything about the storyline is obvious and telegraphed; the score is ludicrous; the acting is too over-the-top, which turns the pulpy dialogue into something resembling film noir for idiots; the courtroom/trial stuff is simultaneously cheesy and boring…truth be told, the only miraculous thing about Gomez’s film is how it manages to be so bad without ever skipping over the line into “so-bad-it’s-good” territory.

If one is so inclined, however, there’s a pretty vicious drinking game that can be applied to the film. To whit: every time you get a gratuitous shot of McHattie’s ax-ruined face, take a drink. Since this happens at a ratio of at least once a minute for the first 30 minutes or so (including a hilarious bit where his face is covered…only for the cloth to be dramatically whipped away, revealing that damn bloody face again…take that!), you’ll either be toes-up drunk by the mid-point or completely unconscious: either way, you win.

5/6/14: It’s His World…We Just Live Here

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absentee father, American Beauty, Ann Magnuson, Arizona, Catcher in the Rye, Chris Klein, cinema, coming of age, depression, developmentally disabled, divorced parents, Don Cheadle, drama, drug abuse, drug dealer, dysfunctional family, fate, films, flashbacks, Holden Caulfield, independent films, indie dramas, infidelity, James Glennon, Jena Malone, Jeremy Enigk, juvenile detention facility, Kerry Washington, Kevin Spacey, Leland Fitzgerald, Lena Olin, Martin Donovan, Matthew Ryan Hoge, mentally challenged, Michael Pena, Michael Welch, Michelle Williams, Movies, murder, Nick Kokich, prison films, revenge, romance, Ryan Gosling, shattered families, Sherilyn Fenn, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Notebook, The United States of Leland, troubled teens, vengeance, voice-over narration, Wesley Jonathan, writer-director, youth in trouble

Grainy, home movie footage of a yard gives ways to a slow pan across the bright, vibrant green grass, as Ryan Gosling’s familiar, rather bored voice talks about “not being able to remember that day.” The pan continues, as deliberate as a lazy summer day, before finally ending on the obviously dead body of a young man. Gosling stands there, looking pensive for a moment, before jogging off as the Pixies’ iconic “Gigantic” bursts from the soundtrack. It’s a dynamic, effective opening and as a good a way as any to pull us into The United States of Leland (2003), a coming-of-age downer that often plays like a lesser American Beauty, despite having a few extra tricks up its sleeve.

After the opening, we get the meat of the situation: Leland Fitzgerald (Gosling) has just admitted to his mother, Marybeth (Lena Olin) that he killed Ryan Pollard (Michael Welch), the developmentally disabled brother of his girlfriend, Becky (Jena Malone). The whole thing comes as even more of a shock since Leland is so easy-going and seemed to genuinely care about Ryan. His admission is emotionless, distant and he’s locked up post-haste. While inside the juvenile detention facility, Leland meets the usual, stock “guy in prison” characters: a kindly Hispanic inmate (Michael Pena) who tries to strike up a friendship with Leland and a young, black inmate (Wesley Johnathan) who is initially hesitant of the “devil worshiper who killed the retard,” but gradually warms to him. More importantly, however, Leland meets Pearl Madison (Don Cheadle), an aspiring author who teaches classes at the facility.

Pearl sees something in Leland and convinces him to keep a journal, which the boy dubs “The United States of Leland.” Seeing the perfect subject for his long-gestating novel, Pearl tries to get to the essence of Leland, hoping to figure out what drove such a seemingly nice guy to do such a terrible thing. Meanwhile, on the outside, the dead boy’s family is falling apart: father Harry (Martin Donovan) is obsessed with the idea of killing Leland, mother Karen (Bongwater-member Ann Magnuson) has completely shut down, sisters Becky and Julie (Michelle Williams) are a wreck and Julie’s boyfriend, Allen (Chris Klein) is doing his best to hold everything together. He can’t, of course, because the situation continues to spin out of control, even as Leland seems to get some semblance of peace behind bars. As the reasons for Leland’s actions become more clear, including life-long issues with his absentee, famous writer father, Albert (Kevin Spacey), and Becky’s backsliding into heroin addiction, via her slimy ex-boyfriend, Kevin (Nick Kokich), everything seems to move along the most fatalistic path possible. When Allen decides to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to heal the wounded family, his actions bring everything to a boil, changing all of their lives, forever, in the process.

Released the year before Gosling would find super-stardom with the romantic hit The Notebook (2004), The United States of Leland is an odd role for the burgeoning superstar. While an argument can be made that many of Gosling’s performances hinge on his handsome, slightly bemused face taking stock of the situation (any situation…every situation…), it seems a rather unfair criticism to say that he spends the entire film staring off into the distance. Yet, essentially, this is what he does for the better part of the film’s almost two-hour-run-time. There’s not a whole lot of acting going on here, to be honest, more like a studied attempt to under-act whenever possible. While this affectation may have worked wonders in films like Drive (2011) and Only God Forgives (2013), where Gosling served more as an enigmatic symbol than an actual person, it only serves to strip any chance of relating to his character: in most cases, Leland seems about as alive and “with-it” as someone in a semi-catatonic state.

With Gosling effectively out of the picture, then, the “heavy emotional lifting,” as it were, needs to come from American Pie’s Klein as Allen, one of the most obvious “white knight” characters in recent memory. Allen is such a ridiculously nice guy that he never seems to do anything for self-serving reasons: coupled with his kindly demeanor, soft-spoken strength and determination, Allen is just about the nicest nice guy you’d ever meet. Yet, time after time, the movie takes care to shit on Allen from a great height, beginning with the rather callous way that his girlfriend, Julie, kicks him to the curb when things get bad and culminating with his spectacularly terrible plan to “make everything better.” The film never makes any attempt to explain away Julie’s change of heart, which is actually pretty par for the course in a film where characters seem to make arbitrary decisions that are designed to propel the narrative forward.

Pearl cheats on his girlfriend with a co-worker, seemingly for the sole reason of giving Leland some moral high-ground on him. Leland’s father, Albert, is nothing but contradictions: the character seems so mercurial that it almost feels as if Spacey is playing two separate people, super-glued together. Becky, despite being a junkie (those folks aren’t normally known for being reliable), is a complete mess: none of her actions seem to go together and her motivations range from unknown to insane. While Malone is a more than capable actress, I felt a massive disconnect with her character: she seemed so arbitrary and calculatedly cruel that she was completely unrealistic: uber-nice guy or not, I find it hard to believe that Leland would put up with too much of her shit.

The film makes a few rather sharp points about the human tendency to mess up, something which Pearl repeatedly blames on human nature. In one of the most thought-provoking lines in the film, Leland smiles and tells Pearl that he thinks it’s amusing that people always blame bad stuff on human nature but not good stuff: that’s all us. It’s a smart observation and one of the few times in the film were we seem to get a (mostly) conscious Gosling. By contrast, the film’s coda, which purports to explain Leland’s mindset, is a complete muddle. There’s an allusion made to a family that he met years before, the Calderons, and we’re made to believe that sleeping with the mother opened Leland’s eyes to the sadness of the world. While it’s an intriguing thought, it’s also an underdeveloped one, coming as it does in the final few moments of the film. It’s not a revelation, per se (hence I don’t feel the need to warn about potential spoilers), mostly because it’s difficult to see how it actually influences the course of the narrative: it’s equivalent to finding out that someone wore a blue shirt on the day they killed someone. Since the color of the shirt, specifically, doesn’t have anything to with the killing, knowing this bit of information doesn’t provide us any further insight. It’s a sort of MacGuffin, if you will, but for character development.

One of my biggest issues with the film has to do with its structure. For most of the movie, The United States of Leland utilizes almost continual flashbacks: often, it’s difficult to figure out exactly what time-frame we’re currently in, especially with some of Becky’s drug activity. This seems particularly unnecessary since the actual plot of the movie is pretty straight-forward: the flashback structure just seemed like a way to “gussy up” the proceedings, some way to make the film stand out a little more. Ultimately, the flashbacks feel as unnecessary as Gosling’s constant voice-over, which does little to add to either his own motivations or the actual story at hand. Whenever I complain about voice-overs (which I constantly do) I’m complaining about superfluous ones like this. For the most part.

Most of the cast does just fine with their roles, although Spacey’s screen-time really amounts to more of a glorified cameo than anything else, which is kind of disappointing. During those few scenes, however, Spacey is a nearly perfectly pitched alpha-male asshole, a pretentious word-cruncher who can’t stop his compulsion to correct someone’s grammar even as they’re offering him help. Cheadle is reliably solid as Pearl but I can’t help feeling that much of his actions and characterizations were just as arbitrary as those of Becky and Julie. At least Albert’s actions all fit with his obnoxious personality but Pearl was always something of an enigma.

One notable aspect of The United States of Leland would definitely be the soundtrack and score. Beginning with the Pixies song in the opening, music plays a pretty big part in the overall design of the film. This isn’t surprising when you consider that Jeremy Enigk, the frontman for ’90s-era emo-band Sunny Day Real Estate, handles the score duties here. Considering that veteran cinematographer James Glennon – whose resume includes Flight of the Navigator (1986), Citizen Ruth (1996), Election (1999) and About Schmidt (2002) – was behind the camera, The United States of Leland has a consistently good look, especially with some nicely saturated colors. While the film isn’t particularly original, it’s never a chore to watch.

Ultimately, The United States of Leland is a decent effort but one that breaks no new ground whatsoever. Despite a decent ensemble cast, there just isn’t much here to write home about. If you’ve always wondered what a less-focused, more vague take on American Beauty would feel like, The United States of Leland might just fit the bill. Otherwise, it’s a pretty basic drama about dysfunctional families, our dysfunctional society and the million little ways we find to make ourselves truly miserable.

3/2/14: Do Not Look Away (Oscar Bait, Part 13)

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2013 Academy Awards, 86th Annual Academy Awards, Adi Zulkrady, Anwar Congo, atrocities, Best Feature Documentary nominee, cinema, death squads, documentaries, documentary, Errol Morris, film reviews, films, gangsters, genocide, Herman Koto, Indonesia, Joshua Oppenheimer, junta, mass killings, military dictatorship, Movies, murder, Oscar nominee, Pancasila Youth, paramilitary groups, snubbed at the Oscars, Syamsul Arifin, The Act of Killing, Top Films of 2013, torture, Werner Herzog

Very rarely, if ever, would I call any film “required” viewing. Humanity is just too fundamentally diverse to ever see eye-to-eye on issues like housing, health care, religion, government, child care and equitable living wages, so asking everyone to agree on entertainment seems like a pretty silly pursuit. I think that Dawn of the Dead is one of the most amazing films ever created: if you don’t like horror movies, the conversation is over. Some people listen to EDM and hear the new noise of a generation: others might hear a modem connecting. There are masses of people who swear that The New Girl is funny, while I agree to respect their opinions. At the end of the day, it really is all just a matter of taste and perspective: like what you want to like, watch you want to watch. In a world where everything is essential, nothing can truly be essential.

The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated documentary about the Indonesian killing fields, is required viewing. I say this with no hyperbole whatsoever and with full acknowledgement that it completely contradicts my earlier statement. Up until now,  for one reason or another, I had never seen a film that I felt needed to be seen by everyone. I’ve seen plenty of films that I felt all film fans or film students or music fans or (insert favorite niche here) fans needed to see but never a film that all humanity needed to see. The Act of Killing, however, is that film. This should be given away to everyone (Alamo Drafthouse, the doc’s distributor, already set up ways for the film to be freely viewed and screened in Indonesia, where it’s also been banned), taught in school curriculum and made a part of international dialogue. Otherwise, there is the very real risk that the atrocities portrayed within the film will be forgotten by the world at large, something which must be prevented at all costs. There is a lesson for the whole world to learn here, a terrible lesson that very few will want to hear.

In the mid-1960’s, the Indonesian government was overthrown by the military, resulting in a brutal junta that ruled by fear, violence and the trumped-up threat of “Communism” sweeping into the area. Using local gangsters and paramilitary units, the military rounded up, tortured and murdered any and all opposition/undesirables, including  union members, farmers, intellectuals and ethnic Chinese. Within a year, these massacres had claimed the lives of over one million Indonesians. To this day, almost 50 years later, the military is still in power and the men responsible for all of the killing are still extolled as national heroes and civic leaders. Imagine a case where Hitler grew old and was allowed to retire to a quaint, rural Polish village, a village where he was routinely celebrated as not only a hero but as a kindly, grandfatherly gentleman. This, in a nutshell, is the situation in Indonesia.

When Oppenheimer and his courageous crew traveled to Indonesia, they had the great fortune to find two of the most notorious – and most celebrated – local gangsters: Anwar Congo and Herman Koto. Not only were Congo and Koto unrepentant regarding their past crimes: they were openly proud and had nothing but fond memories of the murders. Under the guise of allowing Congo and Koto to further their own propagandist notions, the filmmakers offered the two men the opportunity to film their best “activities” using the mannerisms and styles of the American films that they love so much: musicals, gangsters pics, film noir, etc. At first, the two men are overjoyed at this chance to fully portray and laud their “heroic” activities, offering future generations the chance to learn from their initiative. Along the way, however, something quite surprising happens: when presented with the never-ending tidal wave of his past atrocities, crimes which have gone not only unpunished by celebrated, Anwar Congo begins to crack. By the time the film is over, this smirking charlatan, this two-bit street thug turned defacto robber-baron, will lose the only thing that could ever truly matter to him: his own sense of self-worth.

The Act of Killing is, for lack of a better word, crushing. There are few words that can accurately describe just how powerful, how unbearably nihilistic, the film is. In one scene, Koto moves through a slum neighborhood and attempts to enlist the services of the locals to play the part of “Communists” in their staged production. The locals agree (what else could they possibly do?) and even participate somewhat enthusiastically (if rather confused) but they are still participating in the re-enactment of things that happened to them as directed by the men who originally committed the acts. It’s akin to forcing a rape victim to reenact the crime for the sole enjoyment of the perpetrator. At another point, one of Congo’s men fondly recalls how raping young girls was one of his favorite things to do: “I would always say this is going to be hell for you but heaven on earth for me.” Adi Zulkadry, one of Congo’s fellow executioners in the ’60s, happily discusses the “Crush the Chinese” campaign where he, personally, stabbed dozens of Chinese Indonesians in the street, including the father of his own Chinese girlfriend. The list of atrocities is seemingly endless, many of which Congo and his goons gleefully reenact as splashy, Golden-Age-of-Hollywood” vignettes, complete with singing, dancing, costumes and surreal sets.

Far from serving as a glorified snuff film, however, The Act of Killing has a much more subversive intent. Since the people who Oppenheimer and his crew intend to target are still very much in power and “beloved” by their countrymen, shedding light on their heinous actions isn’t quite as easy as sitting down for a traditional interview. As one of the soldiers says, regarding the Geneva Conventions definition of war crimes: “War crimes are defined by the winner and I am the winner.” When the vice-president of the country is speaking at one of your rallies, you have to assume that your group has official government support. In order to “hang” these criminals, Oppenheimer needs to give them enough rope: the result will speak to the whole world.

Since so much of the world seems to either turn a blind eye to the massacres in Indonesia or was actively supporting it (Western governments threw their support behind the cleansing under the guise of “stomping out Commies”), The Act of Killing may serve as the first real glimpse into that past history. Even more importantly, this comes directly from the mouths of those who committed the crimes: an unwitting digital confession, as it were. When Congo takes the filmmakers to the area where they conducted mass executions and describes, proudly, how he made the killing more efficient by switching from beating to a wire/strangulation technique, he’s doing something very important: documenting for the entire world his complicity in the crimes. Perhaps I’m being unduly optimistic, but if Congo and his cronies are ever actually brought to justice, it will probably be from evidence like this. Rather than relying on the eye-witness testimony of survivors, this is straight from the horses’ mouths, as it were: the killers aren’t denying the events, they’re describing them in gory detail.

The whole film is wretchedly, terribly powerful, the kind of movie that becomes instantly unforgettable, for better or worse, the moment you watch it. You will be changed by this: maybe a little, maybe a lot…but you will be changed. There’s something about seeing events this terrible, this real, that brands your soul. We’re used to seeing the face of evil, by this point in humanity’s history, but I don’t know that evil has ever looked this happy, this complacent and at peace with the world. Up until the end, viewing so much grinning depravity, so much hopeless oppression, made me lose hope: this wasn’t a story where the good guys won…where there even were good guys, to be honest. This was the story of terrible, amoral people committing heinous acts to innocent people.

But then, towards the end, something happens. Congo, whether through the constant reminder of his past or through his own portrayal of various murder victims, seems to change. He begins to grow wearier, smiles less. He seems to be troubled, instantly, as if he’s aged 30 years overnight. Could it be that he has finally come to realize the weight of his actions, that he sees the inherent evil of a massacre perpetuated because he and his young friends, in their words, “would do anything for money and wanted new clothes?” He seems to be more thoughtful but Congo is a cagey guy: could this be some sort of attempt to hedge his bets, to straddle both sides of the fence? Congo makes a statement that seems to confirm this: watching the footage has made him feel what the victims felt. He seems genuinely sorry but then the filmmakers land the killing blow: as Oppenheimer gently reminds him from off-camera, what happened to his victims was actually real, not a film. For the first time in the entire film, the light goes out of Anwar Congo’s eyes and the aging gangster/torturer/mass-murderer/statesman/grandfather seems completely speechless. This is not about Congo receiving redemption: he doesn’t deserve it. This is, however, about finally admitting (even if only to himself) that what happened was actually wrong.

The 1965-1966 massacres in Indonesia are a terrible dark stain on humanity’s blood-spattered history and have been largely over-looked and downplayed in the 50 years since. The film begins with a terrible, but true, quote from Voltaire: “All killing is prohibited and punished unless done in large number and to the sound of trumpets.” This is true and only another reason why The Act of Killing should be required viewing: it refuses to let this pass into the gauzy fog of time, obscured from the prying eyes of the world. This was a film that hit me hard, as if someone had punched me right in the gut. I’m willing to wager that it will hit you equally hard, if you give it the chance.