A Danish filmmaker, named Joshua Oppenheimer, was interested
learning more about a little known Indonesian purging that took place in 1965.
He decided to make a movie, and his research further into the event showed some
gory details, and a glorified group of killers. The group of people who were
slaughtered were apart of labor unions. Those unionized were labeled as
communists and viewed as a threat to the nation. When Oppenheimer was in search
of more information, he was told by one of the workers to “speak to the
killers.”
The men who carried out the murders were apart of death
squads that were celebrated as heroes in Indonesia. They were called gangsters
and their actions were glorified and normalized in the nations history. These
death squads killed as many as 3 million people, and even now these men view
what they did as good. Since 1965, unions have not been a part of Indonesian
labor, and mostly because of how brutally they were oppressed.
One of the men who Oppenheimer spoke with, Anwar Congo, told
him how they fashioned themselves and their killing techniques, after American
gangster movies, such as those starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. The
interesting thing about this statement is that a 1954 movie, On The Waterfront, starring Marlon
Brando, covers this very theme. Marlon Brando is a dockworker, who is also
mixed up in the mob who runs the docks and the dockworker’s union. Anyone who
attempts to speak out about the way the mob is doing things is killed. In the
end, Marlon Brando stands up to the mob boss and the rest of the dockworkers
back him up, which brings an end to the brutality on the docks. I wonder if
Congo and his fellow death squad members ever saw this particular Marlon
Brando?
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