The greatest compliment I can pay The Look of Silence, the second documentary about the Indonesian genocide of the sixties, from Joshua Oppenheimer is that it is well worthy of its place as a companion piece to his first, the staggering The Act of Killing.
It is no exaggeration to say that his 2012 documentary was amongst the most remarkable films I have ever seen, extraordinary as it was in depicting those responsible for the slaughter of over a million suspected communists re-enacting their crimes in the style of their favourite films. Just how Oppenheimer achieved this astonishing feat warrants praise enough, but to craft such a masterful and visually magnificent film from those bizarre events is worth Herzog dragging 100 steamboats across the Peruvian rainforest.
Whilst the subject matter and impeccable visual sense might remain the same, the shift in tone in The Look of Silence differs greatly from its predecessor. To say it is more conventional as a documentary is not to do it a disservice, rather to explain the difference in approach Oppenheimer has opted for. The actions in The Act of Killing were so wildly outside the realm of our understanding that it often felt like some bizarre, post-apocalyptic fantasy being played out, rather than the descriptions of actions less than half a century old. Here, the façade seems to have lifted slightly, with those being interviewed seemingly aware just how horrific the events of the killings were.
A renewed sense of confrontation and justified anger might make it slightly more conventional as a documentary, but in no way make it anything near formulaic or familiar; the events of The Look of Silence are just as realistically brutal and horrifying. The main subject of the documentary is Adi, whose brother Ramli was killed by the militia just before his birth. Rather than being killed as a Communist, Ramli was a petty criminal who was taken from his prison and butchered in the street to help raise the body count for the killers.
The specific method of killing is told in gruesome boasts by his killers on tapes filmed previously by Oppenheimer. An expressionless Adi watches this footage, before himself interviewing the killers in a series of meetings arranged by Oppenheimer. It is these interviews that provide the most staggering parts of the film, as moment after moment of sheer madness make it impossible to think that this could all be real and true.
But sadly, it is all true. And Oppenheimer deserves universal recognition and praise for bringing such an unbelievable subject to the public’s wider attention in such a masterful and delicate way. His two films genuinely draw worthy comparisons with the best work of Herzog, Morris or Broomfield, establishing him as one of the most important voices in contemporary documentary filmmaking.
The Look of Silence will be shown at Broadway Cinema on Tuesday 30 June 2015 at 7:45pm.
The Look of Silence Official Site
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