Our take
A follow-up/companion piece to the award-winning The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence is another compelling documentary from Director Joshua Oppenheimer. Both films aim attention at the Indonesian Genocide of 1965-66, when the military government systematically purged up to one million communists. While the first film’s focus was on the culprits and on providing facts, the second one lets us meet the victims. One victim in particular: a soft-spoken optician named Adi Rukun, who meets with various members of the death squad who murdered his elder brother Ramli, under the guise of giving them an eye test. As he questions them about the killings, the murderers, again, show little remorse and eagerly provide the lurid details to the many executions. It’s a stunning and provocative look at the legacy of historical mass killings, along with the insidious propaganda that provokes them, and continues to justify them to younger generations. A testament to the power of cinema to remember the forgotten.
What it won
Other
1 nom
The story
An optician grapples with the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-1966, during which his older brother was exterminated.
Elsewhere
""The Look of Silence" is a simpler work than "The Act of Killing," and a better one."
— Anthony Lane
"In contrast to the sometimes lurid tenor of The Act of Killing, and despite the extremity of its own content, Oppenheimer's follow-up has a calm, contemplative tone."
— Jonathan Romney
The details
Who picked it
Jamie Rutherford is a contributing writer at A Good Movie to Watch, with film reviews spanning a wide range of genres and eras. Their work on the site has covered titles from Behind the Candelabra to Last Days in Vietnam to Love is Strange.
This documentary was so devastating, I did not talk to anybody for a week.