Movie Review: The Look of Silence

The Look of Silence
Directed by: Joshua Oppenheimer.

What Adi wants more than anything is for the people who killed his older brother Ramli to admit what they did was wrong, and show some sort of remorse. How can he, and his family, forgive people who don’t think they did anything wrong? And how can Indonesia move forward as a country, if they fail to deal with their past? Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence is a companion piece to his brilliant documentary, The Act of Killing (2012). In that film, Oppenheimer tracked down many of the men responsible for killing 1 million “Communists” in 1965 – when the military overtook the government, and had so-called gangsters murder their enemies – under the guise that they were all communists, who were working against the state. Oppenheimer didn’t have to look too hard to find these men – everyone knows who they are, and they show no remorse for what they did. Just the contrary really – they are still regarded as national heroes, and many still wield immense power in the country. Oppenheimer gave these men cameras, and asked them to recreate the killings in any way they saw fit – resulting in some stunning sequences in the form of Hollywood genre films. The protagonist in that film, Anwar Congo, seems to at least start to realize what he did all those years ago – something the rest of the men don’t want to acknowledge.

The Look of Silence is a different film. It follows Adi, an optometrist, as he interviews many of those involved in the murder of his brother Ramli – and thousands of others – back in 1965. Adi himself wasn’t alive then – he was born two years later – but the death of the brother he never knew still haunts him – and haunts his two parents. His mother still cries about the loss of her son. His father, old, blind, nearly deaf and senile doesn’t much talk about it at all. Oppenheimer returns to an image – again and again – in the movie of Adi simply watching the footage Oppenheimer previously shot with the men who murdered his brother. They laugh and joke about it, take photos (ironically flashing the “peace sign”) at the site where they castrated his brother before killing him. They show no remorse – and for the most part, take no responsibility. There was always someone above them that they say were giving orders – someone else responsible. Adi watches these videos in concentrated silence. He doesn’t look away.

What he gets when he interviews the various men who killed his brother are denials and threats. Many don’t want to talk about it at all – especially once they realize who Adi is, and why he’s there. They want to know why he’s stirring up the past. One accuses him of communist activity himself – a veiled threat on his life. Their family members are all smiles, until Adi tells them about his brother. Then, they too, start making excuses. He’s old now – senile. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Whatever he did, it has nothing to do with us. Etc. Many get angry at Adi – want to know why he’s asking them about politics. They tell him he is asking deeper questions than “Joshua” ever did. Oppenheimer is smart enough in this movie to keep silent – even when his name is spoken directly to the camera. He lets Adi take the lead – his questions, and his presence makes the men uncomfortable. They may even start to feel a little guilty. Not that they would ever admit it.

The Act of Killing was one of the best documentaries of recent years – but it wasn’t without its detractors – those who thought he shouldn’t be giving a camera to mass murderers, which could use them as a way to excuse their actions. It was a complaint I never shared – I don`t know how anyone could watch the movie, and think it was excusing the men. Oppenheimer just gave them enough rope to hang themselves with. What that film never really did however was address the victims. That is what The Look of Silence does – but in an interesting way. There are a few scenes with one of the other survivors of the infamous Snake River massacre – and the scenes with Adi's parents, who witnessed their son being taken from them. But it stays on Adi throughout – someone who wasn’t there, because he wasn’t even alive. He is, in a way, trying to take back his country`s history. There is a chilling scene in Adi’s son`s history class, where the teacher praises the men who killed those like Ramli – and uses it as a warning to the students not to go against the government. Adi later asks his son what the teacher taught him – and asks if he mentioned the victims, or the reality of what happened. The son has no idea.

The fact that Adi is an optometrist, who is often given eye exams to the men, works on a thematic level as well. He is trying to get them to see clearly – not just into what’s in front of their face, but also into the country’s, and their own, past. Indonesia needs to deal honestly with what happened, in order for the country to heal and move forward. It’s something few seem willing to do. Oppenheimer’s two documentaries – both of them are brilliant are a start. The Act of Killing has more of an exciting, formal hook to it. The Look of Silence digs deeper even than that film did, and hits even harder. It’s every bit the film the first one was – and then some. That’s saying something.

My Mini-TIFF Wrap-Up

If you read my mini-TIFF preview a few weeks ago, you know that unlike most years, I wasn’t able to do a weeklong movie binge this year – having a 6 month old baby at home will do that to a guy. I was only able to attend two days on the weekend, and I decided to go to the second weekend, instead of the first – and I have to say the experience was wonderful. When you go early in the festival, the media and celebrities are all over everything, everything gets delayed and the whole thing is chaos – enjoyable chaos, but chaos just the same. When you go the second weekend, the media has all but left, there are few if any celebrities still around, the whole thing runs smoothly. The lineups are shorter, the theaters slightly less packed, everything starts on time, and you get into the theaters way earlier. In short, when you go the second weekend, it’s all about the movies not the hype – and I highly suggest anyone who can to do that next year. I know I will.

Anyway, onto the movies themselves. My 8 film weekend started with The Humbling directed by Barry Levinson, co-written by Buck Henry based on Philip Roth’s novel, and starring Al Pacino in the lead role as Simon Axler – an aging actor, who falls off the stage during a performance, and decides to retire. After a stay in a mental hospital, he retires to his large house in Connecticut. It’s there he meets – or re-meets I guess – Pegeen (Greta Gerwig) – the daughter of his old friends who he hasn’t seen since she was 10, decades ago. She always had a crush on him, and that has stopped all these years later – despite the fact that she’s now a lesbian. The filmmakers wisely turn one of Roth’s least novels – which is really a misery tour that borders on the comedic – into a full blown comedy. Pacino gives the role his all – and it’s nice to see that at least one of the great actors from the 1970s is still willing to challenge himself and not just coast (like DeNiro). It’s a broad performance, but Pacino hits all the right notes – and the supporting cast, from Kyra Sedgwick to Dianne Wiest to Dan Hedaya to Charles Grodin – all hit the right notes in rather small roles. A particular highlight is Nina Arianda as Sybil, a woman he meets in the mental hospital, who thinks Simon can kill her husband because he has experience killing people in the movies. The problem with the movie is that it never really figures out who Pegeen is – despite a valiant effort on the part of Gerwig, who plays like a caricature of a typical Roth woman (or actually, perhaps a Woody Allen woman) – although since the movie segues back and forth between reality and fantasy, perhaps that’s intentional. Still, it seems like her whole purpose is to destroy Simon – or at least come along and move the plot in whatever way it needs to go, instead of being an actual character. It’s still one of the better movies Levinson has made in a while – and one of the best performances Pacino has given not for HBO in a decade.

Another movie star showed up in Time Out of Mind directed by Oren Moverman. This was Richard Gere, who plays the homeless George in what is mainly a plotless movie. What little plot there is involves Gere trying to reconnect with the daughter he abandoned (Jena Malone) and navigating the bureaucracy of the shelter system, and the Government, as he tries to get some proof of who he is (he has no ID). Mainly though, Moverman is interested in re-creating the day-to-day life of a homeless man – often shooting Gere from a distance, observing him as most of the people he passes takes no notice of him. It’s a fascinating film, with a great performance by Gere, who has never disappeared this far into a role before, nor done something that doesn’t utilize his natural charm to this degree. It’s also kind of dull to be honest – but still well worth seeing to see both Moverman and Gere take an interesting step in a new direction for their careers.

I ended up seeing three blood soaked foreign films, of varying degrees of quality. The worst was Shrew’s Nest from Spain, directed by Juanfer Andres and Esteban Roel about a pair of sisters living in an apartment building. The older one never leaves the apartment, where she makes a living making dresses, and the younger one – who is more beautiful, has just turned 18, and may want out soon. When there upstairs neighbor falls down the stairs, breaking his leg outside their apartment, the older sister takes him in – he’s grateful of first as he was planning on disappearing for a while anyway – but soon he discovers she’s basically planning on keeping him in bed forever, Misery-style. The first half of the movie is restrained, but also kind of dull – because it’s clear everyone is holding back REALLY BIG secrets that will eventually be revealed. The second half of the film is bonkers, with the revelations and corpses piling up every five minutes or so in a blood soaked finale, which requires pretty much every character to behave in completely unbelievable ways for the sake of its “shocking” finale that was telegraphed almost from the beginning. It was only 90 minutes, but felt much longer.

There was also Fires on the Plain by director Shin’ya Tsukamoto, a remake of Kon Ichikawa’s 1959 WWII classic about dehumanization. Tsukamoto’s film hits some of the same themes, but does so in a much more blood soaked way – including a massacre in the middle of the movie which is as chaotic, violent, bloody and disturbing as any scene of its kind – until it goes slightly too far. The same can be said of the movie, which is a weird mixture of art-house sensibilities – with long portions with little or no dialogue, with the main character on his own, mixed with the splatter film violence that Tsukamoto is most known for. The effect is surprisingly effective and disturbing – but of course, falls well short of Ichikawa’s classic, which was pretty much inevitable.

The best of the blood soaked triad was Alleluia directed by Fabrice du Welz based on the infamous Honeymoon Killers, who have had several movies made about them in the past. In the film, a normal woman – a mother of young woman – falls for a womanizing conman, and even after she learns his secrets, wants nothing else than to be with him. She poses as her sister as he seduces three other rich women for their money – but completely loses it every time she sleeps with them, leading to bloody murder and dismemberment – and even a surreal musical number. The film never really attempts to answer the question of why – why this normal woman fell so hard for the conman, or why the conman lets her keep screwing up his plans – but as a portrait of obsessive love and violence its damn good – particularly the insane performance by Lola Duenas. The film is at its best when it’s at its most unhinged and surreal – and Du Welz goes for broke.

I suppose the mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows directed by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi could also be described as a blood soaked foreign film – there are literally geysers of blood throughout the film, and it is from New Zealand, but unlike the other three films its goes for comedy more than anything else – and the results are delightful and hilarious – it won the People’s Choice for Midnight Madness, and is a cult film in the making. The film follows four vampires who are also flatmates in New Zealand, who have to have meetings to ensure everyone is doing their fair share of the chores, and other such issues. Waititi is wonderful as Viago, a “former dandy” who is a little obsessive about cleanliness – he asks the others to put down some paper or towels before killing a victim, so as not to get blood everywhere. Clement is even better as an older vampire – once known as Vladislav the Poker. The film plays with every vampire movie cliché imaginable – from Nosferatu to Twilight – and has great fun the entire time. In a festival where almost everything else I saw was heavy, violent and disturbing, this one was a pure joy.

The best film I saw was The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer’s companion piece to his previous documentary The Act of Killing – a film that left me stunned two years ago at TIFF, where it completely surprised me as I had no idea what to expect. In this film, Oppenheimer accompanies Abi, an optometrist, as he goes to visit the men who killed his older brother during the 1965 Indonesian “cleansing” of Communists. Oppenehimer returns, repeatedly, to Abi simply watching the footage of the killers as the recount, without a hint of remorse, what they did to his brother – and to his two aged parents – the mother who still cries for her lost son, to his father, who is sick and somewhat demented, but still sad. When he confronts his brother’s killers he encounters a series of denials, excuses and threats. They don’t want to stir up the past – at least not with the family of one of their victims, as they seem to have no problem revealing to Oppenheimer what they did, and no remorse for it either – as we saw in The Act of Killing. The children of his brother’s killers are perhaps even more interesting than the killers themselves – one makes excuses for her father – telling Abi he’s old and senile and doesn’t remember much, even though this follows his rather precise re-telling of what he did. Two sons of a man who wrote a book – complete with drawings – of what he did don’t want to hear anything about, and say they knew nothing. “Can’t we just all get along like the military dictatorship taught us?” one asks Abi. All Abi really wants is to see some sort of remorse from his brothers killers – and it’s the one thing they seemingly refuse to give. As a chilling scene in his son’s classroom makes clear, Indonesia still hasn’t come to terms to the reality of what was done – and they don’t seem to much care either. The movie doesn’t have the same hook as The Act of Killing – killers re-enacting their crimes in the style of various Hollywood films – but is even more devastating. I’m not sure if Oppenheimer made the film is response to some of the criticism the last one received, but if he did it refutes it brilliantly. This may be even better than The Act of Killing – which was the best documentary I had seen in years.

I ended my TIFF experience with Goodbye to Language 3-D by Jean-Luc Godard. Any regular readers know that I am ambivalent at best about almost everything Godard has made since Weekend way back in 1967 – and I have downright hated some of them, like his last feature Film Socialism. But Goodbye to Language is my favorite Godard film is years – its more playful and less didactic than Film Socialism, even though it is definitely related to that film. The film is more accessible than that film as well – even if I still think I only understood about half of it. But even when the film left me confused, it was brilliantly filmed in 3-D – giving us images that no other filmmaker would think of doing. Godard is experimenting with 3-D – and gives us some amazing images – most notably a moment when the screen splits, the camera revolves, and then comes together again. For the most part, I am indifferent at best to 3-D – since it became the norm for large scale movies, the only ones I think truly utilized it well are Gravity, Hugo and Avatar – the rest are merely unnecessary or distracting. While Goodbye to Language isn’t the best 3-D movie I have ever seen, it is certainly the most unique use of 3-D I have ever seen – and perhaps the thing the technology needed the most – a true innovator trying to do something completely different with it. I’m not as in love with the film as many are – it comes back to that only understanding half of it thing – but I’m glad I saw it at TIFF, as I am well aware that I may never get another chance to see it on the big screen in 3-D the way it is meant to be seen. If you have the opportunity, you should definitely seize it.

So that’s it for TIFF for another year. Hopefully next year, I.’ll be back to another week long trip. But this year, despite how short my stay at TIFF was, I had a great time, some saw great films – and isn’t that what TIFF is supposed to be all about.

Movie Review: The Act of Killing

The Act of Killing
Directed by: Joshua Oppenheimer.

When most people think of documentary films, they imagine a series of talking heads interspersed with archival footage. This is what most documentaries over the years have been, and probably will continue to be for years to come. But more and more often, documentary filmmakers are stretching the boundaries of the genre – doing fascinating, interesting things, and coming up with movies as original as any fiction film. Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is one of these documentaries. There will be people who complain that the movie is too easy on or sympathetic with its subjects or bring up ethical concerns with how Oppenheimer goes about getting the scenes he does, but it didn’t bother me. The Act of Killing is one of the most original, best documentaries of the year.

In 1965-66 the military tried to overthrow the government in Indonesia, failed, but then used “gangsters” to slaughter over half a million “communists” that led to a massive change in the political climate of the country. If you were identified as a communist, you were killed – although many weren’t really communists – they were union members, critics of the military or native Chinese citizens. This “purge” was supported by most Westerns governments, but what it was really genocide. But while most people who take part in this sort of slaughter are eventually held accountable – or at least viewed as murderers and war criminals, the gangsters who slaughtered the “communists” have been celebrated as heroes in their home country ever since. The Act of Killing sets out to explore this act of mass killing – and mainly the men who did it.

They are not hard to find. Everyone knows who they are, and in some cases, they live on the same street as the family of their victims. They also make no attempt to try and hide their involvement. They openly brag about it to anyone who will listen – often talking in front of their young grandchildren, and whoever else happens to be around. Members of the military don’t make it much of a secret either that they still respect these confessed killers – and the media brags about the role they played as well. In short, it doesn’t seem like anyone has any regrets about what happened or all the people they killed.

Oppenheimer comes up with an interesting way to get the killers to tell him about what happened – by having them recreate them. Learning that many of the killers loved American movies, the killers recreate the events in any way they choose to – and use different films genres – film noir, war film even the most bizarre musical I have ever seen – to show us what they did. This makes the whole movie rather surreal, and often very unsettling. The killers themselves play themselves, as well as their victims, and they use neighborhood children to play the kids of their victims, screaming and crying. The whole thing is surreal, disturbing and extremely effective.

Out of everyone Oppenheimer talks to, Anwar Congo starts to stand out. One of the gangsters who performed the killings, he starts out with the most swagger of anyone – bragging about what he did, showing how he came up with a way to make the killing less bloody. He seems completely at peace with everything he has done. But gradually, he lets the walls he has built around himself down. He confesses to nightmares he has had for years about the killings – which of course, they recreate – and when he has to play the victim in the “film noir” sequence, he breaks down – he cannot go through with it, because it feels too real to him. When questioned later by Oppenheimer, he says he now knows how his victims felt – but Oppenheimer challenges that idea. Congo knew he was going to be okay – his victims knew they were going to die.

The movie never loses sight of the fact that Congo is a murderer – by his own estimate, he killed at least 100 people. But it also never loses sight of the fact that Congo is a human being, not some kind of mythical monster. This will trouble some viewers – they want to hate Congo, see him not as a human, but as evil. But what Congo did was human – many, many people the world over have done what he has done. I was reminded by a moment in Werner Herzog’s TV documentary series On Death Row (Herzog, by the way, lends his name, alongside Errol Morris as an executive producer to this film) when one of the prosecutors says it is very easy for Herzog to “humanize” the murderer he is interviewing and Herzog replies “I do not humanize her. She is a human being, period.” And so is Congo. What he did was vile and evil, but Congo is a complicated human – and he is at the center of this fascinating documentary that deserves to be seen and debated, no matter what you make of it.