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Why do we need his permission to laugh? Is he demanding that we feel comfortable watching boastful reconstructions of mass butchery by the death squads of Medan? What is he nervous about? Oppenheimer also reminds us that we are all capable of good and evil…that any among us could be tempted. Addressing the camera, Joshua Oppenheimer gives the audience permission to laugh when there is something funny. “The Act of Killing” now began with a new introduction by the filmmaker. Two months later, perplexed by the rave reviews trailing the film from festival to festival, I went to see it again when it opened in theaters. (Estimates range from 500,000 to two million accused “communists” and ethnic Chinese were slaughtered.) I walked out because I was miserable in my viewer’s seat – shackled in the intolerable position the film suggested I should be comfortable in. These stories, told by low-level assassins, employed during General Suharto’s 1965 coup to depose left-leaning President Sukarno and to destroy all his opponents, aren’t new. I walked not because talk of murders by murderers made me queasy.
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After an hour, I walked out, stepping on the toes and handbags of mesmerized audience members. In the theater, first I was fascinated, then puzzled, then increasingly disturbed by the film’s shock therapy approach to the horrors of political life in Indonesia. There was a big buzz about a new film called “The Act of Killing” and I wanted to see it. In March 2013, I bought a ticket to a screening at the Museum of Modern Art. While we have published many positive responses to “ The Act of Killing” since its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, we felt it was important to represent multiple perspectives on this film, which continues to generate much discussion. Editor’s note: The following editorial was submitted to Indiewire’s editors by the author, an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker.