In Joshua Oppenheimer's unforgettable documentary, Indonesian executioners re-create their killings for the camera.
by J.R. Jones
More than a half million people died in 1965 and '66 when the Indonesian military, capitalizing on a brief coup attempt against President Sukarno, decided to exterminate the country's large communist party; the killings were never punished, and many of the perpetrators, who seized victims' property as their own, are still part of the power structure there. For this unique and unforgettable documentary, Joshua Oppenheimer persuaded former executioners to create scenes about their killings, then recorded the process of their staging the vignettes, some of them done in the style of Hollywood movies.…[ Read more ]