The Act of Killing, as well as The Look of Silence, is framed by the fact that there was government participation on both the side of the U.S. and Indonesia, -and it's a context important enough that Oppenheimer made sure to put it into the film- but taking it in that direction would have made the films a more historical undertaking. It would have taken us out of the physical space where the atrocities occurred. It would have lost the intimacy and personality of the films that is so important and makes them great pieces of art.
To say that these people were simply following orders is such an overstatement, and works only to grossly brush over their active complicity and participation in the genocide, not to mention their disgusting and excessive boasting after the fact. Their lack of remorse and guilt is just another example of them not "just following orders." They seemed more than willing to take up the cause. The leaders of these paramilitary groups, and so many others, should be held just as accountable.
Joshua Oppenheimer wanted to make a film about countless victims that quite literally live next door to their perpetrators and murderers of their families; perpertrators that are celebrated for what they did. That is a situation rarely, if ever seen, especially on this scale. The films are so much about the people, both the victims and perpetrators, inhabiting and revisiting these spaces of horrible atrocities. He wanted to make a film about the people who have been denied the right to properly mourn their lost ones, because the ones lost are never acknowledged, at least not as people. They're not films about how it happened or why the governments initiated it. They're more personal than that. It's certainly a subject worth devoting two films to, and arguably many more since these films are just now blowing the lid off this issue and forcing people to take a serious look at what has happened over there.
A documentary look into the U.S. and Indonesian's role in the situation would be an excellent topic for a documentary, but that's not what these films are about. Nor do they need to be.
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