Fabulation and Performance of the Killer in Joshua Oppenheimer’s Documentaries

Abstract

With the diptych that comprises the films The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), Joshua Oppenheimer and his collaborators create a full portrait of present-day Indonesia, where the ghosts of the genocide that took the lives of more than half a million people still linger. The filmmaker asserts that neither of his films attempt to represent the genocide. Instead, they explore the vestiges that Indonesia’s traumatic past has left in an ailing present, through two strategies: first, The Act of Killing examines the stories, fantasies and false myths that the perpetrators create to be able to live with their heinous past, and how they see themselves and want to be seen; and then, The Look of Silence uses the perpetrators’ testimonies to instigate a kind of political intervention in Indonesian society that would allow the victims to finally confront the killers. It is a dual story that poses various dilemmas for the spectator, ranging from the ethics of the filmmaker to the ontology of the documentary making itself.