The Look of Silence, 2014.
Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer.
SYNOPSIS:
A family that survives the genocide in Indonesia confronts the men who killed one of their brothers.
After two films on the same subject, it’s difficult to tell whether director Joshua Oppenheimer is more repulsed by the perpetrators of the 1965 Indonesian genocide or fascinated by their crimes. Does he dwell on the testimonies just because he knows they’re effectively enraging, or is he also engrossed in the sickening truth? It feels like a little of both. In The Look of Silence as in The Act of Killing, Oppenheimer gives a platform to former death squad marshals describing their atrocities for a disturbing length of time, in detail.
Vilified abroad but vindicated in their homeland, these gangsters, now old men entering their twilight years, discuss with unnatural honesty their torturing women, carrying around human heads as props, and drinking human blood (it’s both “salty and sweet”, in case you wondered). Oppenheimer hangs on every blood-curdling word. The number of people sitting on my row at the film’s UK premiere almost halved. Not even The Act of Killing aired tales quite as gruesome in such a callous, uninterrupted manner.
Oppenheimer’s two films are no doubt, important historical documents. And yes, The Look of Silence should always be mentioned in the same breath as The Act of Killing, not just because Silence was made as a companion piece, but because it’s every bit as effective. Silence doesn’t play around with the format as Killing did, but it takes that same formula – interview the executors that still hold power in Indonesia and that, 50 years later, continue to boast of their crimes – and withholds the feverish imagery.
This time, the killers are asked questions directly by the brother of one of those one million ’65 victims, and give their answers with shocking frankness before the camera. Oppenheimer’s keen sense for black humour remains, but here there are no dance numbers to distract, no bizarre reconstructions to lend the atmosphere a comforting sense of unreality. The Look of Silence is a more straightforward documentary than Killing, and as such the viewer is confronted by the horror head-on.
Intimate and personal where Killing was wider-reaching and approached from an outsider’s perspective, The Look of Silence follows family man Adi as he quizzes the death squad leaders responsible for the horrific murder of the older sibling he never knew. Challenging the state-held view that the enemy ‘communists’ – one of which Adi’s brother Ramli was accused of being – were not in fact innocents killed almost arbitrarily, however, isn’t strictly tolerated in today’s Indonesia.
Instead, children like Adi’s son are taught a false history of communist villains and pro-military heroes. Adi, an optometrist, must conduct his interviews with the surviving killers under the auspices of an eye examination. When his questions are felt to get too “political”, he is openly threatened, the discomfort in his patients – grown fat and rich as reward for their misdeeds – emerging as defensive, guilt-laced aggression.
Oppenheimer has revealed that Adi and his family have since been forced to move to a new location, as a result of appearing in this film. It makes Adi a very brave man and Oppenheimer a potentially rather exploitative one, though that would depend on your view of the function of the documentary and on the free will of the participant. Whatever your take, it would be foolish to deny how essential The Look of Silence is. If you believe in the power of film as a tool for change, this one could serve as a warning to a whole new generation. It’s that powerful, that well-crafted, that crucial as a piece of cinema.
The Look of Silence isn’t perfect; as with its forebear, what works just happens to massively overshadow what doesn’t. The semi-focus on Adi’s parents, for instance – Oppenheimer’s purpose there is questionable, as he chooses to dwell on the misery of the deaf, blind and senile 103-year old father and the elderly wife now forced to take care of him. If Oppenheimer was trying to suggest the death of a child had left the father this shattered, he doesn’t quite make the link (surely hitting 103 is explanation enough for a failing body?). If he wanted to use Adi’s father as a metaphor for contemporary Indonesia – deaf, blind and ‘ignorant’ to the truth about the genocide – then it’s not just a little offensive.
You could debate the ethics of Oppenheimer’s endeavour all day. His filmmaking, though, is unquestionably brilliant. His eye for lyrical photography, always highlighting the lush green backdrop to the violent drama, is rare, his ability to instil such ease in his subjects even rarer. This director has now given us two queasy masterpieces based on a single specific idea, and in unforgettable fashion has put the spotlight on an issue most weren’t even aware of in the first place. Now the truth is here, and it’s horrible – but everyone should bring themselves to witness it.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brogan Morris – Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the young princes. Follow Brogan on Twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion.
https://youtu.be/yIuEu1m0p2M?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published June 13, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
