The Look of Silence (UK Rating: 15)
When The Act of Killing was released in 2012, it put the spotlight on the Indonesian genocide of the mid 1960s, a long-forgotten corner of modern history. Joshua Oppenheimer's stirring documentary challenged leaders of the death squads to re-enact their killings in a cinematic style of their choice. It wasn't an easy watch and neither is its sequel, The Look of Silence, which is released this Friday, 12 June, and, while it's a more personal story, it's no less powerful or shocking.The genocide may have happened in the mid-60s, but its effects haven't gone away, and the biggest one is a universal sense of fear. Many of the death squads, and their leaders especially, now occupy positions of political power in Indonesia. Therefore, people are initially reluctant to talk to Adi and resist his questions; the first person he talks to denies that any killings took place and says she didn't know any communists (the generic term for anybody who opposed the new regime behind the carnage). There's been no reconciliation process for the victims or their families and this film is quite possibly the closest they will get. That fear is at its most visible right at the end of the movie, when the credits roll, with many of those involved listed simply as Anonymous. It speaks for itself.
It's a film punctuated with long moments of silence and they're essential for the audience to take in the full reality of what they're seeing and hearing. Oppenheimer blends impressive simplicity with a moving intimacy in his camerawork; there are frequent close ups of faces and hands, together with some powerful images laden with significance or comment on the narrative. It's a film that needs to be slowly digested afterwards, in some of that silence.