The Look of Silence (2015)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Let's be realistic.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's hard to "review" a movie like "The Look of Silence". You don't really watch it and evaluate it like you do anything else. You bear witness.I have never been able to write anything about its prequel, "The Act of Killing". I broke my rule of reviewing every movie I watch on here because I just wasn't up to the task. Watching that movie, and "The Look of Silence" to a slightly lesser extent, was like being dosed with heroin and hit with a sledgehammer. The usual "disturbing" movie, documentary or otherwise, has an impact that can be shaken off eventually. With "The Act of Killing", I never really felt it, but I knew it was there. It took something from me. The impact bled through into my day to day life. It wasn't just like a bad dream. It was real.Here is "The Look of Silence". It gives a different side of the story that "Act of Killing" presented, through the son of survivors of the Indonesian genocide. He learns about the fate of his older brother, killed two years before his birth. Then he confronts some of the killers and their families, though these meetings don't go as you might expect, especially for the son, Adi.This movie really should be watched alongside "The Act of Killing". Whereas "The Look of Silence" is no less horrible in its descriptions of actual murder, I have a feeling that it is the goodness of Adi and his family you will remember.

This documentary is first of all, the visceral fermentation of a man that can withhold and suppress any retributive feeling, with almost zen-like attitude, while his eyes humidify with utter contempt as he stares into the face and gestures of his brother killers gone old ... and doing quite well. Directly or indirectly, he's just formulating the questions that in most cases seem nonsensical to the perpetrators of the mass killings that took place in the 60' Indonesia. The real tragedy unfolds as the footage unveils fully towards the end, because u realise that there is no action that Adi, or any of us could take, except forgiveness, against people that never even formulated in their own language, the concept of morality. It's like looking at some grumpy old man talking about a high-school "beef", back in the days, with the "commies", that ended a bit sour ... Except the sourness of that "beef" is counted in the slaughter of human lives, that never got redeemed, apologized for, or felt any regret about them. It's not even really about religious or political indoctrination, but definitely it's a documentary about the versatile human nature that set's us apart so much one from another, to the extent where one can legitimately ask : Ar we even belonging to the same species? Endure, all you that feel compassionate about the world.

I didn't really know much about the mass killings in Indonesia in the 1960's before watching this documentary, but something about it was so compelling and unbelievable that it practically was a mini-ww2. The Indonesian government at the time were very much like Nazi's, which is sickening, and this documentary brings light about the disgraceful ways religious propaganda can persuade people to kill.What I got out of this documentary was that many of the killers didn't know what a communist was, let alone think they were people. They were spun lies about the communists and many took joy in killing them. One of the most eye opening documentaries I've seen, amongst one of the most sadistic and terrible mass killings in history.

******* Minor spoiler warning (nothing major) ******I just saw The Look of silence at the local art house type theater near my house. The title of this film had several meanings to me. Will touch more on that later tho. The Look of Silence is a follow up film to The Act Of Killing. The focus of the film is on a man named Adi whose older brother was killed by the Indonesian Komando Aksi death squads during the 1965 Indonesian genocide. This was during the cold war era, therefore the United States government chose to help Indonesia mass murder millions of suspected communists and make profits from the death and corruption that ensued.Adi's brother Ramli was one such Indonesian that was branded as a communist, therefore the Komando Aksi arrested him and relocated him to a prison camp, from the prison camp he was loaded onto a truck with a bunch of other suspected communists, and driven to Snake River and butchered in horrific form. Ramli was one of the more graphic executions that took place, and many of the death squad leaders still remembered Ramli because of the over the top execution that was done to him. It is really graphic, they not only stabbed him and chopped him up, but they also tossed him into the river to die, when he was crying for help the murderers pulled him back out of the water and cut off his genitals, then he died. A very evil and sadistic way of killing someone.Adi travels around his village and beyond meeting with the death squad leaders who were indirectly, and directly involved with his brothers death, and confronts them about the past and very cleverly and gently recalls the past to them, and in some cases their children, and force them to remember the uncomfortable past that they so desperately try to forget. This seems to be very important to Adi and Josh Oppenheimer that the true story of what really happened does not become forgotten, and to inform current and future generations of Indonesians that the narrative that their government has been going by, is a huge lie and full of propaganda to make the killers look like celebrated heroes of the state. This film is immensely important and the whole world needs to know and make the governments involved take action and own up to the truth. We cannot live in the shadows of tyranny and pretend that it didn't happened.Back to the name of the film. The look of silence was represented to me through the look on the faces of the killers as Adi recalls the gruesome accounts that they were involved with, and the look on Adi's face when the killers seem to not feel remorse for their actions. However, there was an alternate interpretation of the title for me. As I said, I watched this film at the local movie theater, and never have I seen a film anywhere, at any theater in which the audience did not talk or be disruptive at all. It was literally the audience looking at the film in complete silence. Also when the credits rolled, every single person in the theater stayed in their seats until the credits were over, and then walked out of the theater still in silence. Josh is a damn good director and story teller, and I admire him so much for having the courage to make such a film like this one and The Act Of Killing.If you care about history, and humanity you should watch this film. If you only have the capacity for Michael Bay films, then you probably aren't mature enough to handle this film.I give it a 9 out of 10.