The Look of Silence
Drafthouse Films | Release Date: July 17, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
92
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 29 Critics
Positive:
27
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAug 12, 2015
Harrowing and important documentary. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrJul 30, 2015
Over and over in The Look of Silence, we hear people tell the filmmakers, “The past is past.” The wound is healed, they say, and if you don’t want trouble, don’t reopen it. The movie itself proves otherwise. Read full review
100
Washington PostStephanie MerryJul 30, 2015
The Look of Silence is as beautiful as it is bleak. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJul 23, 2015
His film makes it clear that these monstrous humans are very much a part of our species. In a way, I wish I’d never seen The Look of Silence, because now I won’t be able to forget it. But that’s the point, and the film’s purpose—calling attention to the cost of staying silent, and willfully forgetful, in the face of implacable evil. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottJul 16, 2015
A painful, profoundly empathetic work of moral reckoning. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Jul 15, 2015
The Look Of Silence is a powerful gesture of political rebellion, one whose boldest action isn’t damning mass murderers to their faces, but being willing to believe that their stranglehold on country and history could be broken. Read full review
100
EmpireDavid HughesJul 13, 2015
As bleak, unflinching and utterly unmissable as its predecessor. Read full review
100
IndieWireEric KohnSep 1, 2014
Compared to "The Act of Killing," Oppenheimer's technique with The Look of Silence is deceptively simple, but it applies a more traditional style of documentary storytelling to extraordinary goals. Read full review
100
CineVueJohn BleasdaleAug 28, 2014
Oppenheimer's first film maintained a passive detachment, allowing the killers to re-enact their own atrocities and metaphorically hang themselves with their own words. The Look of Silence takes a far harder line, probing the killers more deeply and confronting them in an attempt to shake some sense of remorse out of them. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawAug 28, 2014
The Look of Silence — like The Act of Killing — is arresting and important film-making. Read full review
100
VarietyGuy LodgeAug 28, 2014
So involving is the raw content of The Look of Silence that some might view its formal elegance as mere luxury, yet the film reveals Oppenheimer to be a documentary stylist of evolving grace and sophistication. Read full review
100
The PlaylistJessica KiangAug 27, 2014
The film does not stab as deeply in laying bare the schizoid moral hypocrisy of the perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide as its peerless predecessor, but instead offers an extraordinarily poignant, desperately upsetting meditation on the legacy of those killings, and on the bravery required to seek any kind of truth about them. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua RothkopfAug 27, 2014
A superior work of confrontational boldness, it might be the movie Oppenheimer wanted to make in the first place. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 27, 2015
What Rukun wants, one suspects, is closure. What he gives the rest of us is a face in which to see the pain the butchers caused, a reminder that the architects of a massive tragedy remain present and unrepentant, the personification of the evil men do and a warning that it could happen again. Read full review
90
SlateDana StevensJul 23, 2015
[It] isn't quite documentary filmmaking, but it certainly (and sickeningly) isn't fiction either. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony LaneJul 20, 2015
The Look of Silence is a simpler work than “The Act of Killing,” and a better one. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriJul 20, 2015
This small, grim documentary about Indonesia is actually a bigger and grimmer movie about all of us — our capacity for both breathtaking evil and, occasionally, profound bravery. Read full review
90
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekJul 14, 2015
If it's a far less flashy film than The Act of Killing, it's also a better and possibly more honest one. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungAug 27, 2014
The Look of Silence is perhaps even more riveting for focusing on one man’s personal search for answers as he bravely confronts his brother’s killers. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanAug 17, 2015
The film moves slowly, yet at exactly the right pace. Long holds on faces let us ponder what’s said and look for visual clues that it may be a lie. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 13, 2015
Painful and unforgettable — a serious and honorable form, perhaps the highest, of "gotcha" journalism imaginable. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyJul 17, 2015
Post-Holocaust discourse frequently used the phrase “Never Again” as a slogan, specifically referring to persecution of the Jews but also denoting a prohibition against barbarism; the events under consideration in these films are dispiriting reminders that human progress in this area has been meager at best. Read full review
88
New York PostFarran Smith NehmeJul 15, 2015
“The past is past. I don’t want to remember . . . the wound is healed,” says Kemat, an Indonesian man who survived the massacre of more than 10,000 people at the Snake River in 1965. As this documentary shows, nothing could be further from the truth. Read full review
80
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottAug 6, 2015
Simply, this is a story that needs to be told, one that proves that sometimes the past shouldn't be relegated to the past. It also makes The Look of Silence an unassailably essential and necessary film. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinAug 28, 2014
This is an essential companion piece to Oppenheimer’s earlier film; another astonishing heart-of-darkness voyage into the jungle of human nature. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoJul 30, 2015
It’s a testimony to how much this is a live issue in Indonesia that some of the credits are listed simply as “anonymous.” Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJul 24, 2015
Oppenheimer may have thought that by giving these murderers center stage they would expose their bestiality for all to see (except themselves). But what comes across instead is something far more insidious: a showcase for depravity. Read full review
52
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeSep 1, 2014
The Look of Silence feels more like an extended DVD extra to his genre-defying previous film than a stand-alone documentary. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineJames LattimerJul 13, 2015
If The Look of Silence still remains a gripping, vital, consequential documentary, it's in spite of its approach rather than because of it. Read full review
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