Seite - 64 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 04/01

64 | Freek L. Bakker www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/1, 63–77 both temporally and geographically. The mass killing that is their topic hap- pened in Indonesia 25 years after that in Eastern Europe. Differences are at the core of my investigation: the differences between the films themselves, the im- ages they use and their approaches. I scrutinise the differences in the filmic representations. How did the Ger- man soldiers react to the orders they received? And how do the Indonesians, in particular Anwar Congo and Suryono, look back at what happened? I read the films as bridges between documentary representation and social memory of the massacres, with the psychic effect of the killing on the perpetrators playing an important role and differing widely in Europe and Indonesia. The differences in how these events are perceived retrospectively has probably to do not only with psychology, but also with religion. At the same time, it cannot be denied that there are also strong similarities between the films, particularly when they are viewed more expansively. I seek to outline these aspects by analysing three key sequences in the films. Finally, and to permit more profound analysis, I have drawn on the thought of the Pol- ish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) and of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995). In the background of this academic exploration lurks the question of what I myself might have done in such circumstances. I am not sure that I would have acted differently. TITLES We start the comparison by looking at titles. Das radikal Böse reminds us of a statement made by Hannah Arendt, in the Kantian tradition. Arendt wrote: “The radical evil is something that should have never happened, something with which one can never reconcile, and therefore also something which may never be passed in silence.” Arendt believed that the radical evil is an open wound which will never heal. Filmmaker Stefan Ruzowitzky deliberately went back to this statement by Hannah Arendt and not to her better known “das banal Böse” (the banal evil). “The banal evil belongs to Adolf Eichmann”, Ruzowitzky said, “the man killing people from behind his desk. This film is about people who did the shooting themselves.”1 At the beginning of the film, frequent reference is made to the idea within the title “The Act of Killing”. Time and again filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer asks Anwar Congo: How exactly did it happen? What did you do? This seems a questionable form of curiosity, a morbid interest even. Who would want to know how people kill other people? But in the course of the film it turns out that 1 Zawia 2014, interview with the director.