The Act Of Killing - How can Documentary be manipulative?

How is Documentary manipulative and unreliable to the spectator? 

- The Act Of Killing

When documentary emerged in the 1890s as the first film form, filmmakers sought to document real life through short films – called ‘actualities’ – of which became popular with audiences. Robert Flaherty was a pioneer in these, his 1922 film ‘Nanook of the North’ becoming a worldwide success. Despite the expository on-screen narration and observational camera projecting a factual and truthful account of the subject, many scenes were re-enacted for the camera’s benefit; while documentary has a general purpose and intention to present reality in an unbiased way, it has always had a blurry line between objective truth and what the filmmakers seek to project. Particularly in the 1920s-30s with limited technology, music was often used to engage an audience, but it also guided an emotional response suited to the filmmaker’s bias/perception of the subject: thus, a fabricated reality is constructed. Although documentary has changed significantly, documentary generally cannot engage a wide audience if there are no additional factors like music, aesthetics, or a sense of a ‘narrative’ to gratify an audience. Because wartime documentaries presented reality through a nationalistic bias as a tool for propaganda, Cinema verité of the 1960s sought to represent reality as truthful as possible with filmed interaction between the filmmakers and subject like interviews and conversations. This is the general form that Joshua Oppenheimer presents in his 2012 documentary ‘The Act of Killing’ (TAOK), which combines and switches between the interactive, observational, and some elements of poetic documentary mode (in relation to Bill Nichols’ theory) to highlight the corruptive ‘reality’ of Indonesia’s political history. But, as I will explore, Oppenheimer presents this information through a manipulated lens.

Narrative / chronology:

The film is seemingly faithful in presenting the horrors, ironies, and attitudes of its focused ‘characters’ – the fact that they are credited as characters raises the issue that the film treats their existence in the film as a function of some form of storytelling for spectator entertainment, relating to how documentary has an unreliable relationship between the truth and the filmmaker’s bias/intentions – through the use of interactive interviews, conversations, and observational footage of the characters explaining their history: how they were hired to capture ‘communists’, demonstrating how they killed them, the documentary based around the characters filming a fictional film intended to frame their own actions as heroic, while at the same time the documentary constructs a narrative for its protagonist, Anwar; a redemption arc for his murderous past. Oppenheimer lets the camera roll while Anwar ‘proudly’ demonstrates his killing methods, juxtaposing his carefree demeanour with the brutality of the killing, how he was ‘killing happily’ before the camera cuts to him drinking and singing with a group of men, where his redemption arc is introduced as he claims to have had ‘bad dreams’ haunting him from his past. This editing leaves no further justification for Anwar’s shocking statement at how he killed ‘happily’, showing how the filmmakers prefer to present these attitudes at the early stages of the film to create a narrative, a reason for the spectators to continue watching in order to see the narrative concluded, even though Anwar’s hair colour has changed to black in that succeeding cut. The film fractures the chronology of the real events in order to fulfil a biased narrative whereby the end Anwar has expressed his guilt, how he ‘took life’ from ‘human beings’ as he physically retches, wearing the same clothes and hair colour as he did at the start. Theoretically, the audience has been recompensed for their time and interest, but this ending is not useful for anything except concluding Anwar’s fabricated character arc; a black and white moral resolution to the genocide’s aftermath. Therefore, Oppenheimer engages the spectator with a biased ‘reality’.

Re-enactments, performative theatrical engagement with reality, Grierson:

Oppenheimer constructs a biased reality through the characters’ re-enactments: often re-enactments are a common method for documentaries to present a ‘reality’ to the spectators even though, of course, its premise contradicts. In TAOK, Anwar and his friends film an ‘interrogation’ scene for their own film, but Oppenheimer uses this fictional footage to serve as how the real ‘interrogation(s)’ occurred in the 1960s. The editing and camera relies on intimate evidence of the perpetrator’s caused damage to evoke an emotional response from the spectator rather than presenting this footage from an observational distance; while Oppenheimer rarely interferes with the characters’ moral discussions or approaches to their own film, avoiding an expository voiceover who could guide our interpretation of the perpetrator’s performances and confessions, along with archival footage, he utilises more performative audible and visual methods which are equally – if not more so – manipulative for the spectator’s response: we identify with the camera and thus Oppenheimer’s unseen presence. Such reliance is exampled through how the camera films the ‘interrogation’ scene through the emotional scope of the victim, acted by Anwar. Anwar, sat in the interrogation seat, tells Herman to hit the table to scare him in order for his performance to seem more convincing. Oppenheimer crafts this scene like a fictional film by placing the spectator with Anwar’s experience by staying at a close mid-shot, obscuring Herman’s sudden hit so we react and thus identify with Anwar, the victim, and feel the corruptive power the interrogators hold. Oppenheimer uses this manipulation again when Pancasila youth, in a re-enactment, burn down a village. The youth members are framed in low-angles conventional to how villains in fictional films are portrayed and thus we identify with the victims of the scene – the women and crying children – while incessant shouts, screams, and cries dominate the diegetic sound, placed against theatrical shots of the burning, the camera seeing through the fire to performatively experience the destruction and pain. Slowly non-diegetic music fluctuates in a high pitch while a surreal rhythm plays; such sound emphasises the shots and manipulates the spectator to engage with the performative documentary mode over authenticity of the actual reality of the fictitious re-enactment – distancing from the reflexive mode of documentary and instead favouring a theatrical experience. D.A Pennebaker was a pioneer in abstracting the observational camera during the ‘direct cinema’ approach to documentary whereby filmmakers sought to represent reality as ‘truthfully’ as possible, his first 1953 documentary ‘daybreak express’ his use of vivid aesthetic, music, and editing/cinematography abstracting the ‘reality’ he captured. Oppenheimer, while less aesthetically/theatrically provoking, utilises the observational camera in a way that theatrically engages the spectator, wanting these re-enactments to serve as the truth, as the actual events that occurred in the 1960s by overlapping reality and re-enactments to receive a biased emotional response. Thus, as mentioned, documentary uses sound and aesthetics to manipulate how an audience should engage with reality; the filmmakers present a ‘creative treatment of actuality’ as defined by John Grierson.

Representation, bias:

The opening oneiric sequence of the documentary anchors our reading of the characters from the start as Oppenheimer wants them to be shown. Traditionally dressed Indonesian women dance in the foreground of a waterfall, directed by authoritative men who intend to fabricate this ‘reality’ by incessantly shouting ‘this is not fiction’. Oppenheimer thus establishes them to be liars but makes no evaluation of their truth when demonstrating their executions, for example. The camera habitually cuts away from the characters when they have said something morally shocking or embarrassing, often Herman who acts as Anwar’s comedic sidekick of lesser intellect. In contrast to the projected satirical lies of the characters, we feel the filmmaker’s presence during the succeeding montage of Indonesian streets, with overcrowded capitalist advertisements suggesting ‘third-world poverty’, with onscreen text documenting the corruptive history of Indonesia and how the perpetrators ‘proudly’ guided the filmmakers through their history. This juxtaposition from the bright, fantastical colouration of the opening sequence directed by the Indonesian men against the gritty, capitalist ‘reality’ of Indonesia shows how Oppenheimer wants the spectator to identify with the filmmakers and their more ‘truthful’ depiction of reality. we are shown the two extremes of fiction and truth being intertwined and blurred: if the first images are blatantly fictional and untrue then the written words of Oppenheimer against its realistic background establishes the documentary to be an historically accurate depiction that the film is to be viewed when of course, it can’t be when there is a filmmaker bias. Therefore, the film is incautious in its representations of the Indonesian people and their complicated morals and history, and we are often encouraged to view the men as pathetic and evil, employing a (western) spectator moral superiority which I believe is irresponsible for documentary filmmakers to project the reality they film as the objective truth when inevitability the content has been filtered (edited) through a bias.

Conclusion, opening sequence establishment, conflict: no evaluation, final scene not useful, impossible 4 documentary reality without bias – cultural etc:

Oppenheimer establishes his documentary to be the truth and the men to be liars from the start yet we are to view their actions of killing ‘communists’ among other historical events as truthful to how they occurred in the 1960s, and Oppenheimer makes no attempt to evaluate the truth of the men’s claims evidencing he has a bias and thus specific intention to how audiences should receive the film and therefore Indonesia. many scenes, such as the final scene concluding Anwar’s arc, seem performative or misplaced; after all, how can we ever know if Anwar was told to act or say something in a certain way to steer a narrative or representation? Thus, Oppenheimer is not adhering at his own establishment of his documentary being the ultimate revelation of the horrific truth behind the perpetrator’s corruptive lies. So, using this contemporary documentary - that attempts to frame its subject truthfully through the largely interactive and observational modes popular to the cinema verite movement – as an example, it is largely impossible for any documentary attempting to present reality as truthful as possible to present such reality without the filmmakers’ bias manipulating how the spectators view such reality; after all, there is no objective truth to any reality. So, while the general purpose of documentary is to present reality in an unbiased way, it is impossible for filmmakers to adhere to that ‘rule’ when there are, for example in TAOK, different cultural, political, and social experiences and attitudes – a situated culture -that filmmakers and audiences bring to and view a reality through.