Joshua Oppenheimer’s chilling, surreal and at times very funny documentary tracks down some of Indonesia’s most notorious death squad leaders, who are only too happy to recount and even act out the atrocities of their younger years. They are proud of what they have done, and show no remorse, and over the course of Oppenheimer’s 159-minute film we grow closer to these monsters, see them for the (sick) human beings that they are, and attempt to understand them. but in the midst of this, the director has somehow convinced these men to make a film, about them but also starring them in multiple roles – hero, villain, victim, god – and in doing so warps the boundaries of documentary filmmaking into a whole new genre of meta story-telling. A testing but thoroughly rewarding watch.
I discuss the film in more detail on our latest podcast dispatch here
