THE LOOK OF SILENCE
Drafthouse Film/ Participant Media
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya. Databased on Rotten Tomatoes.
Grade: B+
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Screenwriter: Joshua Oppenheimer
Cast: Adi, an optometrist, and several subjects
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 4/8/15
Opens: July 17, 2015
During the Holocaust in the early 1940s which centered on Germany but spread to surrounding countries, millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and Russian prisoners of war were murdered. Now, instead of “Germany,” substitute “Indonesia.” In place of “surrounding countries,” substitute “Java, Bali and Jakarta.” In place of “Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and Russian prisoners,” put in “Communists.” In lieu of “millions,” let’s say “a million” (though some insist as few as 500,000). The “1940s” becomes “1965.” This gives you an idea of another Holocaust that few in the West today know about. Somebody said that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. A more accurate statement is that those who are well aware of history are also condemned to repeat it. In Indonesia, killings that started in October 1965 in Jakarta, spread to Central and East Java and later to Bali, with smaller outbreaks on other islands. States a Wikipedia article on the Indonesia genocide of 1965, the United States shared in the guilt, as the American embassy in Jakarta supplied the Indonesian military with lists of 5,000 suspected Communists. Even Chinese were killed and their properties—like those of the murdered Jews in the Europe of the 1940s—were looted and burned as a result of racism.
Indonesians, like Germans before them, are not shielded from knowledge of the disaster that unfolded in 1965 as this film premiered in Jakarka on November 10, 2014, when 2,000 people attended the official premiere. Moreover there were 480 public screenings throughout Indonesia sponsored by that country’s National Human Rights Commission and the Jakarta Arts Council. Director Joshua Oppenheimer focuses on interviews conducted by an optometrist, Adi, who uses his eye examinations of people as an icebreaker to interview them about the killings fifty years earlier. He has a personal interest, as his older brother was among the dead. Obviously the perpetrators are now old, some senile.
They divide themselves into two distinct categories: one group are proud of what they did, as they considered Communists, particularly members of the PKI party, to be enemies of the state. One fellow is seen on video bragging about how he would cut the victims up with a machete or slice their throats, a few holding that they would have gone crazy if they did not drink the blood of the victims. In one case, the killer would hold a glass under a poor guy’s throat to capture two glasses of blood, which he attributes to his strength today despite being in his eighties.
Adi evokes some contrition from another bunch of idiots, all of whom appear to be lucky to have had second-grade educations. For example one interview subject, now approaching senility, does not admit to remorse but his young female caretaker, like her patient at first praises his actions, then recants as soon as Adi mentions that the optometrist’s own brother Ramli was killed—and what’s more he knows the identity of the murderers. One of them is fitted with a prescription for glasses and appears at least ambivalent. When Adi’s questions become threatening, he cuts the interview short with “Your questions are too deep. You’re too political.”
Adi comes across as a good man. He serves with his aging mother as caretaker for his senile father, a painfully thin man whose body seems barely able to hold up his large head, and who is deaf and blind as well. The old man is unable to contribute anything of value to the film, but his wife would like revenge: against the children and grandchildren of her own son’s killers. Though most of the film deals with one-on-one interviews, often the bane of documentaries, the subject matter and reactions of the persons interviewed make some of the moments riveting.
In addition to the interviews, director Joshua Oppenheimer, who is apparently addressed by some subjects by his first name, presents scenes such as one in an elementary school classroom where the teacher lectures his charges—who seem fascinated by their teacher’s strong opinions—about how bad the Communists were. Another tape, a NBC clip, finds a subject who states, “Bali has become much more beautiful without Communists.” Strangely enough, nobody is asked specifically what the Communists have done to threaten the state, save for the comment by Muslim subjects that “the Communists do not believe in God. They do not go to the mosque.” I guess that’s a capital offense in some lands just as it is today when ISIS and Al Queda believe that those who do not go regularly to the mosque perhaps because they’re Christians or maybe they’re Muslims of the wrong sect, should be put to death.
Another omission: only once does a subject say that “America taught us to hate Communism.” How about the fact that the U.S. during the height of the Cold War cheered the coup that put Suharto in power over Sukarno, putting a bloody end to the PKI? U.S. News and World Report, no bastion of revolution, used the headline,”Indonesia: Hope where there was once none.” And Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt stated in the New York Times, “With 500,000 to 1 million Communist sympathizers knocked off, I think it is safe to assume a reorientation has taken place.” Only Robert F. Kennedy among prominent individuals condemned the massacres.
“The Look of Silence” follows the director’s even more vital “The Act of Killing,” in which members of the Indonesia death squads are asked to act out their crimes in whatever genres they wish, whether crime story or musical.
Unrated. 103 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – A-
Acting – B
Technical – B
Overall – B+
