1. It's Impossible To Forget The Ending
The plays the thing, wherein Ill catch the conscience of the King. Hamlet,
Act 3, Scene 2 If you believe, as some audiences might, that it was Oppenheimer's intention all along to provoke a killer into finally accepting responsibility for his crimes, and then simply pointing the camera at the first sign of tears, then you might regard the ending as mission accomplished. But considering how both the film and its subjects inhabit the same moral grey area, any sense of resolution (much less revelation) is unsurprisingly left wanting. By the end of the film, is our protagonist a changed man? Is this the result we were waiting for? Such questions seem nothing if not insultingly simple; a grossly optimistic and over-simplistic way of asking if the ends justified the means. Like the rest of his cronies, Anwar Congo is a deplorable sadist who truly deserves the one punishment he has hitherto escaped: a lifetime of guilt. Yet he is no cartoon villain. One of the film's most moving scenes shows him standing and smiling over his young grandchildren as they play with a group of ducklings. After one of the boys accidentally pinches a duckling as he picks it up, Anwar orders him to apologise. '' Tell him you're sorry'', he says, softly but sternly, ''Tell him 'I was scared and that's why I hurt you'''. The boy obliges and Anwar affectionately ruffles his hair. To present this version of Anwar alongside the one from the preceding hour seems cruel and absurd. At several points in the film, we observe Anwar as he watches video clips of Oppenheimer's work in progress. The idea, it seems, is to gauge his greater understanding of empathy.scenes set in the detective's office are, for Anwar at least, particularly painful. He winces even though he knows exactly when his captors will strike.When Oppenheimer asks him why he looks so uncomfortable watching these scenes back, Anwar complains that he didn't know what was going to happen to him. The director replies, ''Yes, but you knew it was only pretending. Your victims did not.'' Upon hearing these words, he falls silent and looks at the floor - only, seconds later, to wake up his grandchildren with the cry, '' Come and see your grandpa get tortured!'' Nevertheless, the thought seems to have struck him. Once the video has finished, he takes us back to the courtyard rooftop where, apparently unable to finish a sentence, he walks over to the far corner and stares out into the starless sky. Here, he suddenly falls victim to a series of retching fits. Clearly content with this near-miraculous act of contrition, he then staggers out of shot - leaving only the sound of dry retching in our ears. It's an awful, guttural, unforgettable sound. It's the sound of a man trying- but failing- to purge himself of his past.