Hello, everyone, and welcome to my new series. In this series, I will dive through movies that are lesser-known or have lost at the box office and argue why you should watch them. I obviously rate these movies highly, and I hope you find new movies that you'll like in this series. Today, I am going to share instead of just one.
The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence
The two films I am picking today are documentary movies that while each of them serves as a good piece of film on their own, each one completes the other.
Judging Documentaries
My method of judging documentaries is based on a simple fact: if this is a film, would I rate highly? The answer here is yes. Maybe a different director would have given us a history lecture. The way Joshua Oppenheimer, the documentary director, approached it elevates this to a work of art, you will see how later.
Background
In 1965–66 there were mass killings in Indonesia. It can be called a communist purge, genocide, or a politicide. What matters is the fact the number of deaths is estimated to be between 500,000 and 1.2 million.
The Act of Killing
The first of the two focuses on the killing squads hired by the Indonesian governments in the 1960s to kill everyone opposing the government. The most unnerving part of the documentary is that you're not hearing people who are ashamed or have regrets about what they have done. In fact, many were proud of what they did.
The documentary clearly shows the depths of normalizing evil. How far one would go to justify their actions, also it focuses on a man, whose identity kept hidden, seeking to confront the killer of his family.
Anwar Congo, a man who has led many of these killings was a featured actor in this. Talking proudly about what he did. There's something unnerving with how many of his actions are described because he described with a normal tone like he was describing buying something from the market.
You leave the movie with overwhelming facts of life. Like the fact that Anwar Congo himself continued to live until 3 years ago and remained politically involved afterward.
The Look of Silence
Unlike its predecessor, this documentary focuses on the survivors and those who lost family members during the genocide. It's almost impossible to think that both were made by the same people, as it offers a completely different tone than the Act of Killing.
We go on an unsettling journey with individual survivors and how they continue to live their lives. You get a close-up of how these people react upon remembering their horrible ordeal.
What Makes Both Documentaries Special
Joshua Oppenheimer treated the people in both documentaries as characters in the movie rather than just talking points. You see how they react and get a close, in-depth look at the different ways the events of the genocide were carried with them.
You also revisit many places where everything happened. You also get the sinister feeling of how things haven't changed in a way as there are still killers from that period and how there are still people who feel haunted and must keep their identities secret.
In Conclusion
Both documentaries are magnificent, it doesn't matter what order you watch them in, they offer completely different perspectives. If I had to pick one as my favorite, it would be The Look of Silence as tells the story of the survivors and the legacy of the innocent who died.
Both are very heavy documentaries, however. So, you may want to keep a box of tissues close and enter them with the right state of mind.