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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp1xT302VcY Hey guys, remember back in 2013 when we all got bowled the gently caress over by this newcomer's first film that was instantly regarded as one of the best documentaries ever made? Turns out that against all odds, and having gone through the most honorable rite of passage an American documentarian can reach (getting screwed out of an Oscar), he's got another film coming out related to the same subject as The Act of Killing. I caught it in March and it's just as good if not an even better film. This approach is a great deal more subtle and less stylized, but it has comparable emotional and intellectual impact. Oppenheimer co-directed the picture with the film's star, Adi (who must otherwise remain anonymous to protect his family), whose brother was killed in the 1960s massacre. In one of those perfect 'only in real life' kind of ways, Adi's job is seeing if villagers need glasses. Helping them to see is an amazing metaphor for what he otherwise attempts in the film. This movie is much more about the victim's family than the perpetrators of this massacre that the world is now only too familiar with. We spend time with Adi's family and get exposed to their most mundane moments, which resonate in their silence. The other portion of the film consists of Oppenheimer and Adi going around the village interviewing these perpetrators, who now exist as normal civilians having faced no reproach for their actions. Getting out of both of these films, I didn't even know how to articulate the mesh of feelings I was walking around with. I wasn't just angry or sad, but this bizarre amalgamation that left me very quiet and stupefied. The range of humanity one witnesses in The Look of Silence is staggering; murderers boast of their atrocities while Adi courageously challenges their hardened way of thinking. His passion is utterly inspiring, but then I feel so bad about feeling good in anyway because the context is so devastating. Here's Oppenheimer's artist's statement, of sorts: Joshua Oppenheimer posted:The Act of Killing exposed the consequences for all of us when we build our everyday reality on terror and lies. The Look of Silence explores what it is like to be a survivor in such a reality. Making any film about survivors of genocide is to walk into a minefield of clichés, most of which serve to create a heroic (if not saintly) protagonist with whom we can identify, thereby offering the false reassurance that, in the moral catastrophe of atrocity, we are nothing like perpetrators. But presenting survivors as saintly in order to reassure ourselves that we are good is to use survivors to deceive ourselves. It is an insult to survivors’ experience, and does nothing to help us understand what it means to survive atrocity, what it means to live a life shattered by mass violence, and to be silenced by terror. To navigate this minefield of clichés, we have had to explore silence itself. Here's what I wrote back when I saw it: Joshua Oppenheimer’s second film after The Act of Killing is another triumph, and despite treading the same content it’s a completely different, entirely bold movie. Oppenheimer and his anonymous co-director, Adi, explore the latter’s family life as well as arrange interviews with the reprehensible gang leaders responsible for Adi’s older brother’s vicious murder in the massacre of 1965 that Act of Killing made us all to well-acquainted with. Adi makes his living determining eye prescriptions for villagers, a metaphor so vibrant and challenging it could only be real life. The craft on display is unforgettable; the film shifts seamlessly from intense encounters to contemplative sequences of normal life utterly heartbreaking in their silence. The tragedy never escapes a single moment of life here. Hearing Oppenheimer speak afterward, it was made even more clear why this dude is a rock star. His efforts have involved so much more than fashioning a great film; his methodology for shifting the discourse in Indonesia, in participation with all manner of anonymous activists in the country, has been brilliantly strategic. There is not an artist working today that makes me more confident that documentary can be an agent of social change. It is very clear, however, that it involves thinking far beyond the silver screen, a fact that a tragic majority of social documentarists never tackle because the dominance of commercial thinking in cinema makes it too hard to scrape by even without rattling cages. So yeah, it’s a masterpiece, by far the best film I saw at the festival, and probably this year. Anyway, limited release starting July 17th. Go see it because it's unforgettable. Kull the Conqueror fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Jul 16, 2015 |
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Jul 9, 2015 16:57
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You don't have to see it to appreciate this film, but it's absolutely worth checking out. e: Actually, now that I think about it, Act of Killing probably does a good job explaining the historical situation in Indonesia, so yeah, watch that first. It should be on Netflix (right? I don't have it anymore).
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Jul 9, 2015 17:13
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This is up on Netflix as of a couple days ago if you want to check it out. Watched it for the second time tonight and it really is a cut above the rest.
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Feb 29, 2016 06:23
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