The Look of Silence - a film that makes us reflect on our humanity

Joshua Oppenheimer did exactly that when he directed and released the documentary film ‘The Act of Killing’ in 2012. The film discusses the 1965-1966 genocide that happened in Indonesia when a military coup took over the government.

The new regime brutally killed around 500,000 Indonesians who they claimed were ‘communists’. The film’s main character is Anwar Congo, the leader of one of the local gangs who carried out the killings on behalf of the government.

The film made so much of an impact that it was banned in Indonesia and was even nominated for an Academy Award. It also opened up a whole can of worms among Indonesians, who started questioning their own national history.

Oppenheimer is now back with a sequel to ‘The Act of Killing’. If the first was shown from the perspective of the perpetrators, the new documentary, ‘The Look of Silence’, turns the table and we see things from the eyes of the victim’s family.

Disturbing - Humans or monsters?

The main protagonist is Adi Rukun, the brother of a victim who was brutally killed by the local gangsters. He never met his brother because he was born after the genocide period to his parents who wanted a child to cure their heartbreak.

The films starts with Oppenheimer showing Rukun video footage of interviews he had done ten years ago while shooting and researching for ‘The Act of Killing’. The interviews are with those who conducted the killings in in the 1960s.

As is with Anwar Congo from ‘The Act of Killing’, the perpetrators feel no remorse. They, in fact, are proud of what they did and boast to the camera the number of people they successfully killed and how proud they are of being national heroes.

It is as if humanity was thrown out the window as we hear them tell how they would mentally torture the ‘communists’. They would also laugh as they describe in graphic detail how they butchered their victims and threw their broken bodies into the river.

But that isn’t the most disturbing parts of ‘The Look of Silence’. As the film progresses, we follow Rukun into the houses of the perpetrators as he goes on the pretext of checking their aging eyesight and wanting to help them get proper spectacles.

Rukun, who is in his 40s, is actually an optometrist who makes house calls in his local village. And once he has their undivided attention, he reveals himself to them and starts asking them questions about what they did decades ago to his brother and thousands others.

One family he visits (whose patriarch has passed away and was one of those who killed Rukun’s brother) reacted very hostile. The sons were screaming at Rukun and also at Oppenheimer (who was behind the camera) for trying to stir things up.

In another scene, Rukun visits another perpetrator and his daughter. The old man even goes on to explain how he drinks the blood of his victims to protect himself from going insane. The daughter is horrified, to say the least.

In both of these scenes, the family members (the wife of the deceased and the daughter who was sitting next to her father) eventually offered their apology to Rukun over what their fathers had done so many years ago.

In ‘The Act of Killing’, Oppenheimer had on several occasions been accused of manipulation, of taking advantage of his protagonists and portraying them in a more dramatic light to the audience. But to me, these are just the emotional and human connections that we make.

And in ‘The Look of Silence’, the most emotional scenes happen with Rukun’s elderly parents who are now over 100 years old. His father, now blind, partially deaf and crippled, is almost totally senile and isn’t aware of his surroundings.

His mother, although physically still strong, is obviously still traumatised by the events. She constantly reminds Rukun about his brother and what had happened the evening he was killed. Rukun is always patient and listens intently.

There is even a point when Rukun finds out that her brother (his own uncle) was actually a prison guard where his brother was held. He tells his mother about it and her reaction was clear to the audience how betrayed she felt.

Finding skeletons in our closet

'The Look of Silence' was screened as the opening film of the Freedom Film Fest 2015. Organised by the NGO Pusat KOMAS (Pusat Komuniti Masyarakat), the theme of the festival has always been about highlighting human rights issues in Malaysia. And this film will set the appropriate tone for the the festival.

After the screening, Rukun and the film's co-director, Anonymous, was ready via Skype for a short question and answer session. This proved to be an insightful experience for the audience even though Anonymous' participation was cut short due to an unstable Internet connection.

Rukun shares his feelings saying that he really didn't feel any anger or sadness when he met with this who were responsible for his brother's death. All he hopes for is that the perpetrators of the genocide would apologise for what they had done.

He also adds that he would never want his parents, especially his mother, to ever watch the film because it would be too traumatising and hurtful for them and that they had been through enough losing their son. Only he and his wife has seen it.

When asked if more Indonesians would have the opportunity to watch this film, Rukun says that it is a challenge because whenever a screening is organised anywhere in the country, people will make police reports. But obtaining the film to watch privately isn't a problem.

A film like this, even as we watch it here in Malaysia, will make us wonder about the true history of our societies and what version of it rings true depending on who is the power of the day. It also brings forth to attention our own humanity.

It is disturbing to see how people in the film can seem so apathetic about the atrocities done and how many try to justify it by claiming they are on the right side of history. And even after finding out what the truth, they still want to just sweep it under the carpet.

It's scary to think that if our closest neighbours Indonesia can have such skeletons in the closet, what would we Malaysians discover in our own closet if we were to start digging. And if we do find skeletons, will we be able to handle it?