ABSTRACT
Joshua Oppenheimer’s film The Act of Killing (2012) begins with a troubled man fishing from a wharf on a dark night. He is holding the line in his hand and he says, “Now, look around and it is all darkness. So very terrifying.” This sets the scene for a reenactment of various scenes incident to the extermination of one and a half million individuals in Indonesia, alleged members of the Communist party, during the military coup of 1965–1966 that brought General Suharto to power. At a period when Communist insurgencies had just ended in Malaya and the Vietnam War was in full swing, there was very little objection to what happened, and no attempt to punish the perpetrators or console the children of their victims. Astonished by a silence that has lasted almost 50 years, Oppenheimer thought it time to bring this shame to the attention of the West as well as Indonesia, and possibly to set in train a sequence of the apologies and testimonies similar to those presented to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
