The Act of Killing Essay - are documentaries more challenging to watch than fiction?

 'Documentaries more challenging than fictional films because they appear to represent real situations and characters'. Discuss this in relation to the documentary film you have studied [35]

- The Act of Killing

When documentary emerged as the first film form in the 1890s, called 'actualities', filmmakers sought to document real life and situations often objectively, though as exampled in Robert Flaherty's 1922 documentary 'Nanook of the North', documentary generally uses elements of poetic or cinematic engagement for spectators such as music - first accompanied in theatrical screenings in the absence of sound - or a narrative conventional to fictional films to gratify an audience despite the projected 'impression of reality' (a Richard Allen theory) through the commonly used expository and observational modes of filmmaking in relation to Bill Nichols' theory. Thus, as John Grierson writes, documentaries can only show a 'creative treatment of actuality'. Joshua Oppenheimer's 2012 film 'The Act of Killing' (TAOK) though seemingly faithful in presenting the atrocities of Indonesia's political history in the utilisation of the observational, interactive, and elements of poetic modes often provoking complex spectator responses, such content blurs fiction and reality though, as I will discuss, on the surface this works to make the 'real' life content more challenging to spectators than fictional films as it appears to be grounded in reality. 

This blurring of fiction and reality is anchored from the film's opening, Oppenheimer's use of the Voltaire quote: 'It is forbidden to kill, therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets' foregrounds Oppenheimer's ideology and provokes active spectatorship, a technique often sued in cinema to engage spectators with challenging subjects. Fiction and reality overlap in the successive oneiric sequence where traditionally dressed women dance in the foreground to a waterfall a kind of fantasy created in the saturated mise-en-scene and soft focus while an Indonesian director incessantly shouts, 'This isn't fake'; Oppenheimer ironically establishes these real life Indonesian men to be liars, constructing a 'creative treatment of actuality' in the juxtaposed edit of capitalist advertisements in urban Indonesia, the gritty 'realism' of the mise-en-scene of 'third world' poverty to the spectator. The expository onscreen text anchors the men as executioners of victimised communists during the 1960s, where they 'proudly' guided the filmmakers through their history, linking back to the nationalistic critiques of Oppenheimer's Voltaire quote. By making this distinction between the 'truth' under Oppenheimer's guidance- and the blatantly false lies of the 'executioners', the spectator is presented with a 'truth' that makes content such as protagonist, Anwar's, grotesquely banal demonstration of his killing method, more challenging to watch than similar content in fiction. As philosopher Hannah Arendt's term would suit, Anwar's happy dancing and causal attitude to his past murders shows a 'banality of evil' in its 'honest' light through provoking cuts which foregrounds such challenging brutality in reality as opposed to an archetypal, Proppian construction of villainy in fiction which establishes a distance between the spectator and filmmaker, thus making it less challenging to watch. 

Despite Oppenheimer's observational documentation in TAOK projecting truth challenging to watch by the desired western audience situated in western moral values, a fictionalised narrative is constructed most prominently through Anwar's fabricated 'redemption arc'; the fact that these real life people are credited as 'character's evidences that Oppenheimer regards their existence as a way to gratify an audience through storytelling necessary to engage a spectator's interest conventional to Todorovian narratives in fiction, Anwar's 'disequilibrium' constructed again through editing: after Anwar dances 'happily' reminiscing on his past murders, Oppenheimer places a chronologically altered scene marked by Anwar's change hair colour and clothes where he sings and drinks alcohol, a redemption arc teased the the spectator in the mentioning of 'bad dreams', this Kuleshov effect stimulating the spectator to make a connection between Anwar's murderous past and his haunting nightmares. The appearance of Adi in the film's midpoint marks a second rising tension in the narrative, bringing  his unremorseful bluntness in discussing the truth; the only character in the film to acknowledge the past in an honest light as he remarks 'we were the cruel ones' and confronting a man who claims to have known nothing about the murders happening, to use the expression, under his nose. Oppenheimer tries to attach this lack of remorse to Anwar in a refreshingly honest confrontation of the past rather than the ambiguity of 'bad dreams'. Consequently in the final scene, Anwar physically retches without any result, the distant observational camera and lingering takes attempting to conclude Anwar's arc for spectator gratification in excruciatingly drawing out Anwar's positioned guilt in trying to 'release' his grotesque past, the uncomfortable spectatorial gaze - a term coined by theorist Daniel Chandler - making this a challenging scene to watch, Oppenheimer demonstrating an intended preferred reading under Stuart Hall's theory. Though in critically evaluating this scene, it is manipulative in its spectator positioning through through its fractured chronology marked by Anwar's clothes and hair colour being the same as the start of the film and thus his 'remorse' is not useful for anything than concluding the narrative, where upon further analysis spectators may take a negotiated reading. Nevertheless, though this scene on the surface seems uncomfortable to watch, the fictionalised narrative functions to allow for the real characters and situations to be engaged with rather than passively rejected, supporting the discourse around the necessity of a 'creative treatment of actuality' in order for a documentary to be successful with audiences. 

Oppenheimer manipulates content to be more challenging to watch for the spectator through habitual switching between the observational and poetic modes. For example, Oppenheimer, though handheld observational camerawork, follows paramilitary leader Yapto and the positioned comic relief Herman as they demand and steal money from ethnic Chinese in a crowded marketplace, their corrupt bullying shot in such a close and aligned perspective in more of Indonesia's gritty 'realism' encoding to the spectator that this exists in the real world, evidencing more of Oppenheimer's satirical irony placed on these men in power. The frequent close-ups on the victimised Chinese put forth their passive compliance to Yapto and Herman's corrupt bullying, evoking sympathy challenging to accept that this happens in real life because it is not made remotely cinematic, sensationalised, or positioned conventional to fictional films: we are positioned with the 'villains' and are a passive force to corruption. Herman's repositioning is also significant, as he had been functioning for comic entertainment as a 'side-kick' to Anwar, as he is introduced with an expressive countenance and idiotic behaviour, to a shockingly corrupt bully - in referring to effects theory - this disruption in narrative function makes this scene more challenging to consume because it foregrounds its existence in reality: these are no longer characters in a narrative but real people. This is enhanced further through the editing as this scene succeeds a take of Anwar interactively explaining to Oppenheimer how he 'killed them' if Chinese communists did not pay, intertwining past and present by alluding to the spectator that this behaviour still happens. Though in documentary there is no easy route to authenticity, in contrast, to such examples of banal corruption foregrounded in the present, Oppenheimer places a certain distance between the past and present through how they're explored: for scenes shot by the Indonesian executioners to include in their fictional film intending to frame their own actions as heroic, Oppenheimer documents the scenes that serve as theatrical re-enactments of events that occurred in the 1960s through a cinematic and poetic lens: perhaps this is a representation of how the executioners view their history, especially in consideration that they consistently refer to themselves as 'movie gangsters'. While Oppenheimer captures the present in a visibly unfiltered light to provoke spectator visceral repulsion, the re-enactments are shot like a fictional film, with motivated and stylised lighting such as the film noir aesthetic potent in an interrogation scene, the camera lingering in a close-up on Anwar - performing as the interrogated - to obscure Herman's sudden hit so the spectator reacts with Anwar and thus his victimhood. Similarly in a re-enactment of a village burning, the camera focuses on the victims of the scene - the crying women and children - framing the Pancasila youth from low-angles constructing archetypal villainy, and non-diegetic sound permeating the scene while the camera captures flames: Oppenheimer constructs a theatrical and poetic engagement with 'reality', letting this serve as the actual event that occurred in the 1960s. Though these scenes are impactful in cinematically engaging the spectator with the horrors of the events that took place, like a fictional film it places distance between the spectator and scene from the cinematic distance and awareness it is a only a fictional -re-enactment of reality. Thus I would argue Oppenheimer's choice to film atrocious scenes occurring in the present in an un-sensationalised and observational format is far more challenging to consume that fictional representations of similar atrocities.