The Act Of Killing

The genre portrayed in 'The Act Of Killing' is a hard one to estimate, as in my opinion it has more than one. I think that the main genre of this documentary is observational however it also contains a lot of performative elements. The reason i think it is observational is that there was not much sound or music included in this documentary. The film maker may have used this as a tool to make it more mature and serious as the subject that the documentary is on is quite a serious one, however as it was more about gaining information about how they killed the communists which is why it was more performative as there was re-enactment and interviews with the people who actually committed the killings.      

During the process of filming 'The Act Of Killing' the director: 'Joshua Oppenheimer' must have had an interesting relationship with the subjects as he was interviewing them on a subject that is brutal and for his subjects to share that information with him must have meant they had some kind of relationship if they were willing to share the information on how and why they killed all those communists and go into detail and even show methods and places where they committed the killings says that they trusted him and in scenes of the documentary you could tell that they had a close relationship as they are laughing and joking and they are comfortable with him there filming them, and it almost seems like they are not even bothered about the fact about how they killed all these people as they are joking a lot of the time and laughing and saying how they would do drugs and drink alcohol after they committed it and dance it off. This had an imapct on the documentary as it made it more honest and truthful as the subjects were giving truthful answers on how and why they killed the communists and they made it seem like it meant nothing, like it was an everdaything which made the documentary more interesting in the sense of it makes you wonder how rthey can kill al those people and still live the lifes they do which was shown in the dcoumentary, and how they show the re-enactments and joke about it is a strange way to talk about it.

The relationship between the documentary and reality is an interesting concept to think about