The Look of Silence

Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer was instrumental in delivering one of the most harrowing and heart-breaking documentaries in 2013’s The Act of Killing. As an impressive result of the critically acclaimed documentarian’s gut-wrenching narrative, The Act of Killing deservedly earned an Academy Award nomination for its unsettling truth and revelation. Killing concentrated on the frightening accounts involving the 1965 Indonesian genocide of over one million slaughtered people earmarked with “communist” labeling.

Well Oppenheimer ‘s The Act of Killing astutely offers a charged follow-up to this tremendous tragic tale with the revealing and devastatingly insightful The Look of Silence. The sentimental cynicism is pretty much as unbelievable and incredulous as previously uncovered in Killing. This time, however, Oppenheimer does not focus on the mass destruction of imperiled human beings whose victimization can be traced to the Indonesian government. Instead, he approaches the subject matter on a more personalized, individual level as he emphasizes one specific casualty—the late Ramli Rukun and his family left to ponder the senseless loss of life and love.

The Look of Silence is one of those rare observational sequel -minded documentaries demonstrating a genuine psychological impact despite originally making its familiar mark in the first installment. Anytime the showcasing of jeopardized humanity is profiled it is always an automatic cause to feel enraged and emotionally invested in the outrageous aftermath of the storm. Well Oppenheimer revisits the pain, resentment and frustration in The Look of Silence with convincing empowerment.

In The Look of Silence, Oppenheimer explores the regrets and quiet rage in the aftermath of Ramli’s sadistic murder and gives undivided attention to the deceased victim’s ophthalmologist brother Adi. Adi, not born yet when his brother Ramli suffers at the sinister hands of his executioners five decades ago, undergoes a tactical...

Indonesia in the mid-1960s was a dangerous place to live. With the government overthrown by the military, much of the country was left in the hands of butchers who used a fear of Communism to excuse atrocities that reputedly saw one million people slaughtered. One of those killed was Ramli and now his brother, an optician called Adi, has set about trying to help the aged with their sight problems whilst getting to the people who were responsible for this genocide but that remain largely unaccused and certainly unpunished. There is something penetratingly unassuming about this man - who does look much younger than his 44 years - as he mixes his professional responsibilities with his quizzing, and perhaps it's that boyishness that helps him get some remarkably frank responses from the commanders and politicians who were responsible for the killings at the infamous Snake River and from those still in - and even running - the local legislature whose approach to these crimes reminded me of that line attributed to Imelda Marcos about truth being an entirely subjective commodity. What adds poignancy to this is the fact that most of these perpetrators are well past the point where retribution would be possible. Their senses have long deserted them and in many cases it is their children or wives who are learning first hand of the brutality of their fathers/husbands - one even wrote a book as if it were a trophy to commemorate his "courage" in killing countless unarmed people whose face - or political opinions - didn't fit. The army was complicit too, but not in the way we might expect. They didn't want the world to see soldiers bearing down upon unarmed civilians, so they let the thugs with their machetes carry on unmolested. All the while, we watch his own elderly mother wash and care for his emaciated looking father (who still thinks he is 16) which exerts a certain calmess to this film. It's not about his search for revenge, indeed it isn't really about any naive hope of...