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I saw this documentary at the Darklight Festival in Dublin in April and it has stayed with me since. It's the story of a handful of members of the death squads who committed mass murders for the Indonesian Government in the 1960s. The twist, as it were, is that the director more or less allows the men to tell it themselves. It is an astounding, surreal journey, for both the participants and the viewer, and is probably the most remarkable thing I've ever viewed on screen. I'll not bother with drowning it in superlatives, I'll just give you the trailer and recommend downloading from iTunes (or wherever). The extended director's cut is well worth the extra time.
I saw this earlier in the year, and think I have to agree with Mark Kermode's take on it, that it's a pretty uncomfortable watch allowing these men to unrepentantly live out their 'triumphs'.
Not saying it's not essential viewing, but really didn't sit right with me in how they were unchallenged.
Unchallenged by whom?
that it's a pretty uncomfortable watch allowing these men to unrepentantly live out their 'triumphs'.
The point of a the film in a way is that they live in a world where they've never needed to repent. Instead they've been turned into celebrities. It shows how subjectively war crimes can be viewed if you're on the winning side. As a for instance here in the UK we'd classify something similar to Operation Chastise as a was crime if another country were to instigate it.
Whats interesting is their actions have never been challenged and that means they're utterly unguarded in expressing and recounting everything they did. Its only when they start to [i]act [/i]it out their stories rather than just brag about it that they begin to realise the horror of what they've done, simply because acting them out forces them to put themselves in the shoes of their victims, which up til now they've never had to do.
Its in interesting achievement to make an account of such an awful event so compelling to watch. The film is absolutely bat shit mental, totally surreal and properly laugh out loud funny. You find yourself utterly bewildered as to why you're watching it. But if it wasn't so utterly nuts then nobody would ever have seen it.
Yeah, saw this on TV a while ago. Pretty sickening, didn't make it to the end.
Series 2?
Himmlers hits?
This thread just reminded me that I put this on my Love Film list, months ago, before my Love Film subscription was cancelled. Totally forgot about it.
Are these these the brave boys that Thatcher sent the Royal Navy to help as their boss was "one of the best."?
Are these these the brave boys that Thatcher sent the Royal Navy to help
Sort of - Britain supplied and supported Suharto's military. The guys in this film were death squads made up of gangsters and petty criminals, they didn't require guns and ammo - the film focuses on Anwar developing a cleaner, quieter way of killing people with a length of wire and stick - no screaming and no mopping up to do afterwards. I don't think the UK supplied the wire or the stick. The reason [i]their [/i]acts weren't 'war crimes' is because they weren't soldiers so they don't come within the scope of the geneva convention and they're not crimes within their own country because the government they helped to power is still in power.