Irony, Cruelty, Evil (and a Wink) in The Act of Killing

Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing invites mass murderers, who act in service to the state, to forge a mise-en-scène that captures how they see themselves now and to reenact their past crimes in the heroic mode in which they continue to fantasize them. In this case, the filmmaker enables his subjects to offer their interpretation of past events. Here, Nichols extends his career-long, field-defining work on documentary categories and typologies to consider the referential standing of The Act of Killing and how it frustrates audience expectation of documentary probity.