Page - 37 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/01

Trauma and Conformity | 37www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/1, 35–46 killings. We listen to them, but we also see how they re-enact episodes from that earlier period. The spectators are shown how these perpetrators intimi- dated their anxious and helpless victims, how they interrogated them and how they strangled them with iron wire. In these re-enactments the murderers play both perpetrators and victims. ANWAR CONGO One of the perpetrators stands out. Anwar Congo attracts attention because of his complicated character and because viewers will be ambivalent towards him. At the time of the killing, in which he was very active, Congo, who had been a small-time criminal before the coup, was in his twenties. Now he suffers as a result of his past actions. He is both a brutish and unscrupulous murderer, and a charming man. The audience is captivated when he has mercy on young, still-downy duck with a broken leg and warns his grandchildren to be careful with this duck. Completely bizarre is the scene in which he cherishingly takes his grandchildren onto his lap to show them a video with re-enactments of the events of the 1960s. The grandchildren see how their grandfather, made up as a severely wounded victim, is cruelly interrogated. But Anwar Congo is also ter- rifying when he demonstrates how he used iron wire to strangle the people he had arrested. He killed thousands in this way. And the spectator is unlikely to feel compassion when they see him as an old man walking or, better, lumbering down the stairs, for now he suffers as a result of his past. When he leaves the location where he had created so many victims, he vomits, nauseated by his ac- tions and by himself. The director portrays Anwar Congo as traumatised but does not use the term trauma anywhere in the movie. In interviews, however, Oppenheimer has re- peatedly remarked that Congo is traumatised, as for example in a conversa- tion with the Hollywood Reporter. In this interview Oppenheimer also relays the meaning of the re-enactment scenes for Anwar Congo. He refers to Anwar Congo’s “horrifying and traumatic set of memories” and notes: But for Anwar, I think the real story of why he wants to make these fiction scenes about what he’s done is more complicated. I think he’s trying to work through his pain and remorse – and his disgust in himself. He just didn’t have the language to put it that way. He’s trying to do it by transforming this horrifying and traumatic set of memories, into contained ideally heroic film scenes – to replace this miasmic, un- speakable horror, which is haunting his dreams.2 It is risky to diagnose at a distance for one too quickly runs to stereotypes. But the images that are shown suggest we see Anwar Congo as traumatised. He 2 Brzeski 2013.