Sightlines · reception

How The Look of Silence was received

2014 · Joshua Oppenheimer · The Look of Silence on Sightlines

The arc

No flop-to-classic arc here — it landed acclaimed (Grand Jury Prize at Venice 2014, an Oscar nomination) and has stayed there; if anything has shifted, it's that more people now call it the equal or better of its famous companion piece, The Act of Killing.

What’s debated

The perennial cinephile debate: which is the greater film, The Act of Killing's surreal perpetrator theater or this one's quiet, devastating restraint — with a vocal camp insisting the quieter film cuts deeper.

Its footprint

The image of optometrist Adi Rukun fitting eye-test lenses on the men he's questioning has become one of documentary cinema's most referenced metaphors — and the end credits, filled with 'Anonymous' where Indonesian crew names should be, are a statement in themselves.

Where it stands

Half of one of the great documentary diptychs — the standard cinephile line is that you haven't really seen The Act of Killing until you've seen this too.

Did you know? Dozens of Indonesian crew members are credited only as 'Anonymous' to protect them from reprisals — and Oppenheimer has said he can no longer safely return to Indonesia. Werner Herzog and Errol Morris both signed on as executive producers.