Anwar Congo’s eagerness to reconstruct his own killings makes him a disturbing presence in The Act of Killing. We strongly recommend the documentary, with reservations about the history it leaves outside the perpetrators’ accounts.
Fi1m perspective
On a rooftop where he carried out executions, Anwar Congo dances the cha-cha. We were horrified by his ease: he is entertaining the camera at the place where he killed people. Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (2012) makes Congo its central presence, allowing him to reconstruct his own crimes. His enthusiasm is one reason we recommend the film so strongly, and one reason we find watching it uncomfortable. He seems pleased to have an audience.
This is Congo’s sole credited screen appearance, and the usual measures of acting skill are little help here. He had sold black-market cinema tickets in Medan, and the reconstructions draw on Hollywood genres he admired. His interest in films matters to how he presents himself: he already has models for the screen appearance he wants to make. Oppenheimer gives him and his associates the opportunity to stage the killings, and their enjoyment becomes part of the documentary’s evidence. We can recognise the wish to look good on camera without finding anything to excuse in the acts being recreated.
Congo’s willingness to demonstrate his methods makes him an unusually revealing documentary subject. He explains the use of a wire garrote to reduce blood and mess, approaching killing as a practical problem with a practical solution. The specificity is appalling; Oppenheimer has no need to ask an actor to supply menace. Yet calling Congo a gifted performer would give him credit for an opportunity that exists because of his crimes. What holds our attention is the freedom he feels to describe them, and the care he takes over how he will be seen.
The limitation is how little history the film supplies outside the perpetrators’ accounts. Congo’s eagerness to talk cannot make him a sufficient guide to what he describes. His presence is compelling enough that we have to keep that reservation in mind when the reconstructions absorb our attention. See it, but do not mistake Congo’s willingness to talk for a complete account.
Biography
Anwar Congo was an Indonesian gangster from Medan, North Sumatra. He appeared as himself in the 2012 documentary film The Act of Killing, directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, in which he and other former death squad members reenacted killings they carried out during the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66.
In the film, Congo is credited as Self - Executioner in 1965. He estimated that he had killed as many as 1,000 people during that period and was a prominent figure in the Pancasila Youth paramilitary organisation in Medan.
Congo died in Medan on 25 October 2019.
