Is it possible to help a murderer? Reflections from the documentary The act of killing, by Joshua Oppenheimer

Abstract

In the 1960s, a surge of killings occurred in Indonesia, not only perpetred by the Indonesian military, but also by popular death squads. These events, called “Indonesian genocide”, on account of the prevailing dictatorial regime, have only recently been investigated. Director Joshua Openheimer had planned to film the story of the descendants of the dead for a documentary, but the number of killers who came forward to explicitly describe them actions was so great that he shifted his focus. From this came the film “The Act of Killing”, composed of the stories and scenarios of those who perpetrated the killings. From its reading, the author briefly reviews the historical events, describes attempts to understand them, addresses possible elements that favored the massacres, confronts the murderers’ symptoms with the health/disease binomial, and reflects on whether it would be possible (and in what way) to help such people.