Page - 69 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/01

Intercultural Perspectives | 69www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/1, 63–77 Next another soldier says: “I tried to suppress the pictures of the past from my memory. But I couldn’t.” Now his face appears on the screen looking into the darkness of the night. His glasses lie on a small nightstand next to his bed. A third soldier begins to speak. He says: “Somebody told me that Blobel was lying in his room with a nervous breakdown. ‘My mood is very gloomy’, he said. I went into his room. Blobel was talking gibberish. He said it was impossible to shoot so many Jews. The sight of dead bodies isn’t jolly, especially women and children.” (01:12:59–01:13:21) Both sequences reveal that the soldiers feel a strong repugnance at killing women and children. But then they recall the explicit propaganda statements that explained why they must kill them. “These hordes would do the same, even worse.” Simultaneously, however, the soldiers try to dodge this task, passing it on to others, to the Ukrainian militias; nobody objects. The second sequence is about nightmares and again the focus is on the killing of women and children. Now we shall give particular attention to a sequence in The Act of Killing that shows a re-enactment of the chasing down and torturing of women and children, as well as the setting alight of houses in a village. The men wear the same red-black shirts and black trousers as they did in the 1960s. Afterwards one of the women who participated in the re-enactment faints. A girl, the daughter of one of the perpetrators, cries. These acts were horrible. The camera focuses on Anwar Congo, the man who was so proud of his role in the killings. Fig. 3: Women pulled out of a burning house (The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer, GB/DK/ NO 2012), 01:58:29.