The Act of Killing: Perspectives in Psychology The producers of this film exposed the ghastly and terrible mass executions of those who were accused of being a communists in Indonesia in 1965-1966. It was the era in Indonesia wherein millions of lives were lost due to numerous murders committed by a group in a bloody anti-communist movement. The perturbing documentary focused in challenging the former Indonesian paramilitary death-squad known as the Pancasila Youth in reenacting the kind of murders that they had committed through describing in detail how they tortured and killed millions of Indonesians, either alleged of being a communists, an ethnic Chinese or just being an intellectual. In addition, it so ironic that those gangsters …show more content…
The film also included classic crime scenarios and various melodic musics. Furthermore, it was indeed that “The Act of Killing” was something that the perpetrators of the crime was not guilty of committing since that those violations were for the sake of the majority of the citizens of Indonesia so they have to suppress the communism spirit among the minority of the population for the betterment of Indonesia as a whole. The evidence for my previous statement was that the leaders of the Pancasila Youth, nationalist paramilitary group still apparently popular — and also still feared — for its role in wiping out suspected Communists almost 50 years ago was critized by the director of the film, Joshua Oppenheimer, tagging them as “bloodstained scumbags” given the fact that many of them were still affiliated and associated with the Indonesian national government. As for the “actors” or those who had been part of the gang, role reversals add to the impact, with killers playing their victims, stumbling toward something resembling empathy, seeing their own actions as if for the first time – finally real, only for reenactment. Why do they laugh as they reenact on how they brutally killed their fellowmen?