I always ask myself one question: what is human? What does it mean to be human? Maybe people will consider my new films brutal again. But this violence is just a reflection of what they really are, of what is in each one of us to certain degree.
The Oscar-nominated documentary The Act of Killing tells the story of the gangster leaders who carried out anti-communist purges in Indonesia in 1965 to usher in the regime of Suharto.The film__ hook, which makes it compelling and accessible, is that the filmmakers get Anwar __ne of the death-squad leaders, who murdered around a thousand communists using a wire rope__nd his acolytes to reenact the killings and events around them on film in a variety of genres of their choosing.In the film__ most memorable sequence, Anwar__ho is old now and actually really likable, a bit like Nelson Mandela, all soft and wrinkly with nice, fuzzy gray hair__or the purposes of a scene plays the role of a victim in one of the murders that he in real life carried out.A little way into it, he gets a bit tearful and distressed and, when discussing it with the filmmaker on camera in the next scene, reveals that he found the scene upsetting. The offcamera director asks the poignant question, __hat do you think your victims must__e felt like?_ and Anwar initially almost fails to see the connection. Eventually, when the bloody obvious correlation hits him, he thinks it unlikely that his victims were as upset as he was, because he was __eally_ upset. The director, pressing the film__ point home, says, __eah but it must__e been worse for them, because we were just pretending; for them it was real.__vidently at this point the reality of the cruelty he has inflicted hits Anwar, because when they return to the concrete garden where the executions had taken place years before, he, on camera, begins to violently gag.This makes incredible viewing, as this literally visceral ejection of his self and sickness at his previous actions is a vivid catharsis. He gagged at what he__ done.After watching the film, I thought__s did probably everyone who saw it__ow can people carry out violent murders by the thousand without it ever occurring to them that it is causing suffering? Surely someone with piano wire round their neck, being asphyxiated, must give off some recognizable signs? Like going __uch_ or __top_ or having blood come out of their throats while twitching and spluttering into perpetual slumber?What it must be is that in order to carry out that kind of brutal murder, you have to disengage with the empathetic aspect of your nature and cultivate an idea of the victim as different, inferior, and subhuman. The only way to understand how such inhumane behavior could be unthinkingly conducted is to look for comparable examples from our own lives. Our attitude to homelessness is apposite here.It isn__ difficult to envisage a species like us, only slightly more evolved, being universally appalled by our acceptance of homelessness.__hat? You had sufficient housing, it cost less money to house them, and you just ignored the problem?__hey__ be as astonished by our indifference as we are by the disconnected cruelty of Anwar.
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The Oscar-nominated documentary The Act of Killing tells the story of the gangster leaders who carried out anti-communist purges in Indonesia in 1965 to usher in the regime of Suharto.The film__ hook, which makes it compelling and accessible, is that the filmmakers get Anwar __ne of the death-squad leaders, who murdered around a thousand communists using a wire rope__nd his acolytes to reenact the killings and events around them on film in a variety of genres of their choosing.In the film__ most memorable sequence, Anwar__ho is old now and actually really likable, a bit like Nelson Mandela, all soft and wrinkly with nice, fuzzy gray hair__or the purposes of a scene plays the role of a victim in one of the murders that he in real life carried out.A little way into it, he gets a bit tearful and distressed and, when discussing it with the filmmaker on camera in the next scene, reveals that he found the scene upsetting. The offcamera director asks the poignant question, __hat do you think your victims must__e felt like?_ and Anwar initially almost fails to see the connection. Eventually, when the bloody obvious correlation hits him, he thinks it unlikely that his victims were as upset as he was, because he was __eally_ upset. The director, pressing the film__ point home, says, __eah but it must__e been worse for them, because we were just pretending; for them it was real.__vidently at this point the reality of the cruelty he has inflicted hits Anwar, because when they return to the concrete garden where the executions had taken place years before, he, on camera, begins to violently gag.This makes incredible viewing, as this literally visceral ejection of his self and sickness at his previous actions is a vivid catharsis. He gagged at what he__ done.After watching the film, I thought__s did probably everyone who saw it__ow can people carry out violent murders by the thousand without it ever occurring to them that it is causing suffering? Surely someone with piano wire round their neck, being asphyxiated, must give off some recognizable signs? Like going __uch_ or __top_ or having blood come out of their throats while twitching and spluttering into perpetual slumber?What it must be is that in order to carry out that kind of brutal murder, you have to disengage with the empathetic aspect of your nature and cultivate an idea of the victim as different, inferior, and subhuman. The only way to understand how such inhumane behavior could be unthinkingly conducted is to look for comparable examples from our own lives. Our attitude to homelessness is apposite here.It isn__ difficult to envisage a species like us, only slightly more evolved, being universally appalled by our acceptance of homelessness.__hat? You had sufficient housing, it cost less money to house them, and you just ignored the problem?__hey__ be as astonished by our indifference as we are by the disconnected cruelty of Anwar.
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The pinnacle of human consciousness must be the rejection of unhealthy competition, war and violence.
If you happen to hold that human consciousness is no more than the epiphenomenon, or secretion, of our individual brains then you are more or less trapped in your own skull. But if consciousness is open, if it can partake in a more global form of being, if it can merge with the natural world and with other beings, then, indeed, it may be possible to drop, for a time, the constraints of one's personal worldview and see reality through the eyes of others.
Empathy was written from many male and female points of view because each character reacts differently to the emotional fallout from one binding circumstance
Men who give up the common goal of all things that exist, thereby cease to exist themselves. Some may perhaps think it strange that we say that wicked men, who form the majority of men, do not exist; but that is how it is. I am not trying to deny the wickedness of the wicked; what I do deny is that their existence is absolute and complete existence. Just as you might call a corpse a dead man, but couldn't simply call it a man, so I would agree that the wicked are wicked, but could not agree that they have unqualified existence.
Doing nothing is even worse than doing the wrong thing.