Peter Bradshaw introduces our favourite film of 2013, Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing. A documentary on the Indonesian mass-killings of the 1960s, Oppenheimer uses his brutal and brilliant film to invite the cinephile killers of the Suharto era re-enact their crimes for the camera
• The 10 best films of 2013, No 2: The Great Beauty
• More from the 10 best films of 2013
• Show us your favourite films of 2013 using our Movie Mashup interactive
Indonesia's military coup in 1965 ushered in the rule of Major General Suharto, after a purge during which approximately half a million people were murdered as alleged communists by paramilitaries and mobsters. The memory of this mass slaughter is reawakened by documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer in a remarkable and at times unwatchably explicit film, which tracks down the ageing and entirely unrepentant perpetrators and invites them to re-enact the most grisly escapades in the style of their favourite movies. It is...
• The 10 best films of 2013, No 2: The Great Beauty
• More from the 10 best films of 2013
• Show us your favourite films of 2013 using our Movie Mashup interactive
Indonesia's military coup in 1965 ushered in the rule of Major General Suharto, after a purge during which approximately half a million people were murdered as alleged communists by paramilitaries and mobsters. The memory of this mass slaughter is reawakened by documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer in a remarkable and at times unwatchably explicit film, which tracks down the ageing and entirely unrepentant perpetrators and invites them to re-enact the most grisly escapades in the style of their favourite movies. It is...
- 12/20/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The perpetrators of purges in 1960s Indonesia eagerly re‑enact their atrocities for this extraordinary film
Indonesia's military coup in 1965 ushered in the rule of General Suharto, after a purge during which about half a million people were slaughtered as alleged "communists" by paramilitaries and mobsters. The memory of this mass murder is reawakened by film-maker Joshua Oppenheimer in a remarkable and at times unwatchably explicit film. It could be a Marat/Sade for our times. Just as Peter Weiss's play imagined the imprisoned Marquis de Sade leading the asylum inmates in a dramatisation of Jean-Paul Marat's assassination, so Oppenheimer has found some of the grinningly unrepentant killers in present-day Indonesia, now grey-haired grandpas, and persuaded them to act out their most atrocious crimes of torture and mayhem in the styles of their favourite movie genres: gangster flicks, westerns, war movies, musicals. They are only too happy and excited to do it.
Indonesia's military coup in 1965 ushered in the rule of General Suharto, after a purge during which about half a million people were slaughtered as alleged "communists" by paramilitaries and mobsters. The memory of this mass murder is reawakened by film-maker Joshua Oppenheimer in a remarkable and at times unwatchably explicit film. It could be a Marat/Sade for our times. Just as Peter Weiss's play imagined the imprisoned Marquis de Sade leading the asylum inmates in a dramatisation of Jean-Paul Marat's assassination, so Oppenheimer has found some of the grinningly unrepentant killers in present-day Indonesia, now grey-haired grandpas, and persuaded them to act out their most atrocious crimes of torture and mayhem in the styles of their favourite movie genres: gangster flicks, westerns, war movies, musicals. They are only too happy and excited to do it.
- 6/28/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The Taviani brothers' account of a prison production of Julius Caesar marks a profoundly moving return to form
Before the emergence of the Coens, the Farrellys, the Hugheses and the Wachowskis, there were the Taviani brothers, Paolo and Vittorio, born in Pisa in respectively 1931 and 1929, the sons of a lawyer jailed for his anti-fascist activities. Coming out of Italian neorealism and the French new wave, adapting works by Tolstoy and Pirandello and much influenced by Brecht, they emerged in the late 60s. Theirs was a humanist cinema that reached out socially and chronologically, from an aristocrat disillusioned with revolution in early 19th-century Lombardy to the idealistic inhabitants of a Tuscan village standing up against the Nazis in 1944.
The Tavianis' finest film perhaps is Padre Padrone, the true story of a boy escaping from hard-scrabble peasant life in present-day Sardinia to be educated during his military service on the mainland. The...
Before the emergence of the Coens, the Farrellys, the Hugheses and the Wachowskis, there were the Taviani brothers, Paolo and Vittorio, born in Pisa in respectively 1931 and 1929, the sons of a lawyer jailed for his anti-fascist activities. Coming out of Italian neorealism and the French new wave, adapting works by Tolstoy and Pirandello and much influenced by Brecht, they emerged in the late 60s. Theirs was a humanist cinema that reached out socially and chronologically, from an aristocrat disillusioned with revolution in early 19th-century Lombardy to the idealistic inhabitants of a Tuscan village standing up against the Nazis in 1944.
The Tavianis' finest film perhaps is Padre Padrone, the true story of a boy escaping from hard-scrabble peasant life in present-day Sardinia to be educated during his military service on the mainland. The...
- 3/3/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
For the rest of the Notebook's Fantasy Double Features of 2012, see the poll's main index.
***
New: Far from Afghanistan (John Gianvito, Jon Jost, Minda Martin, Soon-Mi Yoo, Travis Wilkerson)
Old: Allons enfants... pour L'Algerie (Karl Gass, 1961)
Two works of international(ist) solidarity made exactly half a century apart (Far from Afghanistan was already shown on the net last year in the so-called October Version), both dealing with a colonial war and its ramifications for the victim—as well the aggressor and collaborator state. Two works, also, of fragmentation, multitudes of voices, dialectic pluralism; Gass sub-divided his film into three parts (actually, it's more like two halves and a coda), while the Gianvito-masterminded project consists of five quasi-independent segments (working also quite well as stand-alone shorts) plus half a dozen interludes. Yet, in one—maybe the most—crucial way they're light years apart: Gass lays it down smack from the center...
***
New: Far from Afghanistan (John Gianvito, Jon Jost, Minda Martin, Soon-Mi Yoo, Travis Wilkerson)
Old: Allons enfants... pour L'Algerie (Karl Gass, 1961)
Two works of international(ist) solidarity made exactly half a century apart (Far from Afghanistan was already shown on the net last year in the so-called October Version), both dealing with a colonial war and its ramifications for the victim—as well the aggressor and collaborator state. Two works, also, of fragmentation, multitudes of voices, dialectic pluralism; Gass sub-divided his film into three parts (actually, it's more like two halves and a coda), while the Gianvito-masterminded project consists of five quasi-independent segments (working also quite well as stand-alone shorts) plus half a dozen interludes. Yet, in one—maybe the most—crucial way they're light years apart: Gass lays it down smack from the center...
- 1/7/2013
- by The Ferroni Brigade
- MUBI
People have been walking out of the RSC's risqué new production of Marat/Sade. Are critics ever tempted to follow them? Guardian reviewers reveal the times they just couldn't take any more
Although the play is nearly 50 years old, Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade still has the power to shock. Around 30 people per night have walked out of the Royal Shakespeare Company's revival in Stratford-upon-Avon, disgusted by scenes including stun-gun torture and simulated sodomy by a sex toy, with one theatregoer describing it as "utter filth and depravity". In response to the row, Katy Brand tweeted about a version she once starred in: "Production ended with me on stage masturbating. Seems tame by RSC standards."
Critics, of course, are required to sit through whatever is thrown at them, be it shocking, preposterous, dreadful or dull. But have there ever been times when they left early? Here, Guardian reviewers reveal the...
Although the play is nearly 50 years old, Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade still has the power to shock. Around 30 people per night have walked out of the Royal Shakespeare Company's revival in Stratford-upon-Avon, disgusted by scenes including stun-gun torture and simulated sodomy by a sex toy, with one theatregoer describing it as "utter filth and depravity". In response to the row, Katy Brand tweeted about a version she once starred in: "Production ended with me on stage masturbating. Seems tame by RSC standards."
Critics, of course, are required to sit through whatever is thrown at them, be it shocking, preposterous, dreadful or dull. But have there ever been times when they left early? Here, Guardian reviewers reveal the...
- 10/25/2011
- by Alexis Petridis, Tim Ashley, Michael Billington, Judith Mackrell, Peter Bradshaw, Brian Logan
- The Guardian - Film News
British actor Mark Jones appeared frequently on films and television from the 1960s. He was featured as Arnold Keeler in the 1976 Doctor Who serial The Seeds of Doom, and was an Imperial Officer in the 1980 Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back.
Jones was born in England on April 22, 1939. He made his film debut in Peter Brook’s 1967 adaptation of the Peter Weiss play The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (aka Marat/Sade).
He starred in the 1973 television production of the science fiction drama A.D.A.M., and was seen in the 1975 adult sci-fi film The Sexplorer (aka Girl from Starship Venus). His other film credits include 1978’s The Medusa Touch, a psychological thriller about a telekinetic novelist, starring Richard Burton, and the 1984 holiday-themed slasher film Don’t Open Till Christmas. He was...
Jones was born in England on April 22, 1939. He made his film debut in Peter Brook’s 1967 adaptation of the Peter Weiss play The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (aka Marat/Sade).
He starred in the 1973 television production of the science fiction drama A.D.A.M., and was seen in the 1975 adult sci-fi film The Sexplorer (aka Girl from Starship Venus). His other film credits include 1978’s The Medusa Touch, a psychological thriller about a telekinetic novelist, starring Richard Burton, and the 1984 holiday-themed slasher film Don’t Open Till Christmas. He was...
- 2/12/2010
- by Bryan
- FamousMonsters of Filmland
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