“The Truth Without Reconciliation Committee”: I review “The Look of Silence”

for AmCon:

For the extraordinary 2012 documentary “The Act of Killing“, filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer encouraged participants in the Indonesian death-squad killings of 1965 to reenact their murders of suspected or fabricated Communists. The killers, who have reaped material and political success from their violence, were for the most part happy to oblige. Their reenactments became increasingly baroque and Hollywoodized; they expressed the self-image which made them feel powerful and free, and allowed them to evade remorse. This was not a film about the victims but about the victimizers: the phantasmagoria of their rationalizations.

Now Oppenheimer has released “The Look of Silence”, a companion piece that follows Adi, a 40-something father of two whose brother was killed in ’65, as he confronts his brother’s killers. The movie’s title refers most obviously to the fixed stare with which Adi watches footage of the killers chortlingly reenacting and expounding on the proper methods for throat-slitting and dismemberment.

“The Look of Silence” was made before “The Act of Killing” had been released, so nobody Adi interviews starts out with any suspicions. But Adi explains that he is the brother of someone they killed. He will not let his interviewees get away with easy answers: “I don’t mean to offend you—but I think you’re avoiding your moral responsibility,” he tells one man, striking his chest at the final words as if reciting the Confiteor.

more