The Look of Silence is a sequel to the critically acclaimed documentary The Act of Killing. Both films deal with the massacre of communists in Indonesia in the 1960s. Where The Act of Killing focuses on the actual executioners reenacting their murders, The Look of Silence zooms in on one family. Adi's brother faced one of the most brutal executions during the massacres. Adi is sent to reinterview the families of the executioners and political officials who oversaw the killing. Then, when they finish describing their version of events, he confronts them with the truth about his brother and all the inaccuracies in their stories.
Director Joshua Oppenheimer's style in both films is to let the proud killers hang themselves for their own misdeeds. He lets the camera just sit there on silence, confusion, joy, fear, sorrow, and pride depending on who is being confronted with history.
The focus on Adi and his family is especially heartbreaking. His mother is still haunted by her late son's brief return to her home before his final execution, intestines hanging out of his stomach and barely clinging to life. She's also responsible for the full time care of her husband, who is now blind, deaf, and physically disabled. Worst of all, his mind is slowly melting into senility and he doesn't even remember their late son at all.
There are essentially three motifs in the film. First is Adi watching all the reenactments from The Act of Killing featuring people connected to his brother's brutal execution. These are simple shots of Adi on a chair in front of a small TV watching these men proudly describe how they tortured their victims, drank their blood, and profited off of their inhumanity.
Second are interviews with Adi's family as they go about their daily life. Adi's mother cares for the home and her husband, while Adi sells glasses house by house to some of the men involved in the massacre of his kin. They try to go on with life as they are threatened to do by the government, but the murder of one million civilians at Snake River down the street is too gruesome a shadow to overcome.
Third, and most effective, are the interviews with the executioners and their families conducted by Adi. It's a bitter manipulation to force them to watch their own reenactments of their crimes after downplaying their role in the more formal interviews, but a necessary one. The men supported by the military all deny they are responsible for any cruelty, always finding someone else to blame. Their families claim ignorance (even when footage shot for The Act of Killing shows them involved in the reenactments) and beg for forgiveness. The ones who truly know nothing are shocked to find out that so many were murdered and the barbaric rituals used in the crimes.
The Look of Silence is a troubling documentary. You cannot escape the horror that overtook Indonesia and still reigns to this day. The slightest provocation from Adi results in men, too old to be working still, demanding his actual name and address so that they can report him for communist activity. The next generation of children are indoctrinated with the government's lies about a spontaneous revolution of the people against communism and those who survived the genocide are too frightened to speak out.
One needs only look at the final credits scroll to see how real this threat of retaliation is. So many people involved in the crew are credited as "Anonymous." It's not until you start to reach elements of the film that can safely be conducted outside of Indonesia that you see full names again. Joshua Oppenheimer once again opens a door to a world so controlled by fear and cruelty that no one is safe to talk about their own history.
The Look of Silence is available for digital rental at all major sites.