The Look of Silence

The Look of Silence is such a brilliant title for this movie. For one, it's a good description of Adi's reaction when hearing about the murder of his brother. (And it's oddly fitting that he is an optometrist). It's also a description of the response they get from the perpetrators, refusing to show any guilt or remorse, preferring to pretend that it never happened. And that seems to be what Oppenheimer is tapping into in Indonesia, the look of silence, and what really lies behind it.

This is definitely a companion piece to the previous "Act of Killing". Not because it does not stand on its own, which it does, but because they stand so much stronger together. Each documentary has an unique perspective on some mutual themes. Especially guilt and remorse.

It's amazing how it all comes together in a movie like this. Oppenheimer must have done a lot of work for this. Adi is such a good subject for a documentary like this, and having him being willing to explore this dark side of his nation's history, and openly talk to the people who brutally murdered his brother - it's such an unique way to explore all of this. And Adi does a really good job with it all.

I didn't really know much about the mass killings in Indonesia in the 1960's before watching this documentary, but something about it was so compelling and unbelievable that it practically was a mini-ww2. The Indonesian government at the time were very much like Nazi's, which is sickening, and this documentary brings light about the disgraceful ways religious propaganda can persuade people to kill.

What I got out of this documentary was that many of the killers didn't know what a communist was, let alone think they were people. They were spun lies about the communists and many took joy in killing them. One of the most eye opening documentaries I've seen, amongst one of the most sadistic and terrible mass killings in history.

With just two films to his name, both about the Indonesian mass-murders of the mid-1960's Oppenheimer has become the most important documentarian of his generation.

His second film, "The Look of Silence", coupled with his "The Act of Killing" has created a sea- change in the Indonesian truth, justice and reconciliation movement. Forcing new laws to be written and putting the government in a defensive position against the nation's media.

But Oppenheimer is more than an activist. He's an artist. His films are contemplative, playful and quietly confrontational. His visual attack is succinct, his marriage of form and theme is flawless and his moral intent is thunderous.

Where "Act of Killing" was concerned with a larger study of post-massacre Indonesia, "Look of Silence" chooses a more intimate landscape. Geographically, emotionally and cinematically it is regional. Concerned with a single killing, the men who did it – directly and indirectly - the family it affected and the small village that has lived with questions about other killings like it for fifty years. Where "Act of Killing" lived in absurdist grand cinema, "Look of Silence" exists in tight close-ups of the perpetrators, survivors and truth-seekers. More than anything, more than words, their faces tell the story. So much happens behind the eyes, around the corners of the mouth, in unspoken glances. The horror, doubt, guilt and seemingly impossible reconciliation stirs below the surface. For all the cinematic flex of "Act of Killing", this contained take on the same material, seems more haunted and human.

The star of the film, Adi the eyewear peddler, pursues this mission with intelligence and courage. We meet his family. His happy playful daughter, his thoughtful son, his cautious loving wife, his ageless mother (probably the most engaging character captured on film this year), his wisp of an ancient father, and his memory of a murdered brother, looming over everything. From them he finds the courage to question murderer after murderer face-to-face. The combination of his profession as an optometrist with his quest to seek truth would seem heavy-handed if it were fiction, but nothing here is inauthentic. In showing all of Adi's family, from the fresh and young, to the spent and dying, we see the full arc of life.

Lastly, the film makes a glancing but firm indictment against the American anti-Communist fervor that fed into - and the American corporations that profited from - these killings. It gives strong evidence that the Cold War, the war of ideology and the murder of millions, allowed for, and was even fought for, Western corporate dominance in places like this. And here the grinding up of human beings for profit in this situation is undeniable. Oppenheimer wants to make sure no one involved gets off without having to face, if not their own role in the massacre of millions, then at the very least, their culture's.

And so it goes, the people (wives, mothers, daughters, sons, fathers, husbands), the silence, the haunted jungle hum that fills most of the auditory space in the film, the great and overwhelming significance of it all… everything pools together to show us something words alone can't manage. Something about how a horror can be so great that its impact can loom over generations. About living with debilitating fear of those who have claimed power over you through violence. About the most nightmarish tendencies in humanity, and our courageous capacity to overcome the worst of ourselves. About just how difficult it is to look into the eyes of a killer and say, "I know what you did."

And more profoundly, more frighteningly… "I know you."

The Look of Silence. The follow up to Joshua Oppenheimer's incredible The Act of Killing, which focused on the unrepentant perpetrators of the under-reported (thanks to western support) 1965 Indonesian 'Communist' genocide. TLOS not as shocking as its predecessor (one watch was enough) but still eye opening and disturbing. TLOS focuses on the brother of one of the murdered who meets the perpetrators to seek solace and for them to express regret. A must see double bill - but the antithesis of popcorn fodder so not for a cosy date! 8 out of ten (The Act of Killing got 9)

Act of Killing I bought with some trepidation and settled down on my own to watch it (and watched again immediately after with the Josh/Werner Herzog background discussion - rather the film background to the discussion). Next day I bought Look of Silence. Watched it next night both without and with the background discussion. I was mesmerised (and still am), and so many questions come to mind.

The two films work well together, Act of Killing being more overview and focusing on the killers and the political structure/mob rule that is still in power. Act of Killing doesn't particularly explore how they got away with genocide (why the world turned a blind eye), but this is alluded to carefully and specifically in Look of Silence.

I could write so much because the two films together have provoked in me a profound perspective on human horror, which has gripped me most recently with what we see on the news with ISIS (Paris Masacre).

What are human beings capable of, and why is an individual able to make such choices? What are the structures that facilitate the most grotesque of human acts of wickedness upon one another. Do we all contain wickedness, does a killer lurk inside us all? Does fear itself propel the killers - kill or be killed? Are we (cells in the human organism) enacting our worst imaginable terror, excising evil, I kill therefore I am?

Josh Oppenheimer, I applaud your work. The sensitivity and attention to the finest detail employed in your work is, for me, beyond words. The cinematography, colours you choose, balance in composition. Even the subtitles were easy to read. Beautiful lingering pauses. You said of one still scene, a bridge, pale green, a river bank; you have no words to describe how this scene makes you feel, what the scene says. For me this scene (in LoS) is terrifyingly beautiful, sad, the weight of recent history hanging there in the stillness. Embodying the sadness and fear. I love that still scene.

Superb, I do not have the words to describe what your films say to me... I will think about them for a long long time, and watch them again.