Opening Indonesia's Eyes In 'The Look Of Silence'

Transcript

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American filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer went to Indonesia in 2001 to make a documentary about plantation workers. What he found was the legacy of genocide. The documentary he made, “The Act Of Killing,” looked at life in the country since a 1965 coup led to the slaughter of between 500,000 and 2 million people by paramilitary death squads, all in the name of stamping out Communism.

That film told the story through the killers' eyes. Now, Oppenheimer is back with a sequel that follows one of the victims as he confronts the men who murdered his brother. Howie Movshovitz of member station KUNC reports.

HOWIE MOVSHOVITZ: Joshua Oppenheimer spent nearly a decade making “The Act Of Killing.” He discovered that in the years since the genocide, former death-squad members had become anti-Communist heroes in the eyes of some, rising to become community leaders and even a national legislator.

JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: I had this feeling that I’d wandered into a place where killers have won. In fact, I felt like I’d wandered into Germany forty years after the Holocaust only to find the Nazis still in power.

MOVSHOVITZ: It’s an apt analogy says Jeffrey Winters, professor of politics at Northwestern University. He’s spent years researching the events in Indonesia following the 1965 coup.

JEFFREY WINTERS: Both Nazi Germany and Indonesia attempted to exterminate a group of people. In the case of Nazi Germany, they lost and they were ultimately brought up on tribunals, and major lessons were learned about never doing this again, confronting it, the horror of it.

In Indonesia, it’s just the opposite. They people who did the killing won the historical moment. They came out triumphant; they ended up running the country for 32 years under a dictatorship. And they were backed by the West also.

MOVSHOVITZ: The person who carries this story in “The Look Of Silence” is 46-year old optician Adi Rukun. That’s not his real name. As he says in the film...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE LOOK OF SILENCE")

ADI RUKUN: (Speaking Indonesian).

MOVSHOVITZ: Please understand, I must hide my identity, he says.

RUKUN: (Speaking Indonesian).

MOVSHOVITZ: Because the killers are still in power and still consider themselves heroes.

Adi travelled to the Toronto International Film Festival last September with Joshua Oppenheimer, who served as his translator. Adi says that ever since the genocide, the perpetrators have shown no remorse.

RUKUN: (Speaking Indonesian).

OPPENHEIMER: The victims' families - our families were regularly taunted by the perpetrators and their families. So they would talk openly about the killings in front of us. And even though we were the relatives of their own victims, they weren't reluctant to speak about it. And they and their relatives would taunt us for being their victims.

MOVSHOVITZ: "The Look Of Silence” intercuts Adi’s interviews with some of the killers with him staring silently at a television - at footage Oppenheimer shot, including two men enthusiastically acting out how they killed Adi’s brother.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE LOOK OF SILENCE")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Speaking Indonesian).

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Speaking Indonesian).

OPPENHEIMER: There’s a scene in “The Look Of Silence” where two aging death-squad leaders take me down to a place on the river bank where they helped kill 10,500 people. And they take turns re-enacting the roles of victim and perpetrator, boastfully describing what they did, and stop to pose for photographs at the end. And that awful afternoon of filming for me is the genesis of my last two films.

MOVSHOVITZ: Recent political change in Indonesia has allowed challenges to the story of heroic killers saving the nation. Political scientist Jeffrey Winters says Oppenheimer’s two films have been part of that change.

WINTERS: The pendulum is swinging now in Indonesia, in the direction of asking how did we kill all these people and why did we kill them? And how have we lived side by side without confronting this historical horror as a people. And that process is underway now, and there’s no doubt that Joshua’s movies are moving that process forward.

MOVSHOVITZ: Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer and his subject were able to ask those questions in part because of Adi’s job.

RUKUN: (Speaking Indonesian).

OPPENHEIMER: My job is working as an optician. It’s my career. I love the work because I can ask a lot of questions, mainly about the past. It’s something I feel I need to know, because my older brother was murdered.

But not only my older brother - in my neighborhood, in my village, many, many people were killed. And so I’m trying to understand what happened there and why everybody is as they are, why people are afraid, why people are silent.

MOVSHOVITZ: For Joshua Oppenheimer, Adi’s work became the central metaphor for "The Look Of Silence."

OPPENHEIMER: Adi’s correcting the vision, both literally and metaphorically, of people who are willfully blind. And the film is about willful blindness and the willful blindness that underpins silence. And in that sense, we come full circle to the title.

The film is about looking at silence and the look of silence, the blindness that underpins silence. And then the look, of course - maybe what most poignantly the title refers to is the look on Adi’s face as he’s watching the testimony of the men who killed his brother.

MOVSHOVITZ: In the film, Adi says if they felt regret, we could forgive them. After all, we’re neighbors. It’s a tiny glimmer of hope, but he still can’t use his real name. For NPR News, I’m Howie Movshovitz. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.