In this blog post, I will summarize the reasons for selecting the film “Silent Gaze,” its plot, analysis by genre and sequence, and my concluding thoughts.

Reasons for Selection

In April 2014, while I was serving in the military as a riot police officer with the 3rd Mobile Brigade, the Sewol Ferry disaster occurred. The state has a duty to protect its citizens, but it was only natural that criticism rained down on those who abandoned that duty and were desperate to evade responsibility. Those voices gathered in front of City Hall and at Gwanghwamun Square to make an even louder protest, and I was deployed to that protest site. The sight of capsaicin and water cannons being deployed against the protesters felt like state violence intended to enforce silence, and it overlapped with the protest scenes in the film. Beyond this, there are many similar cases in South Korea, such as the Jeju Massacre and the Gwangju Democratization Movement. In this context, this documentary served as a wake-up call to my own silence, so I hope this analysis of the film will greatly help me break that silence. (Later, I developed a desire to make films like this myself.)

Synopsis

While investigating the Indonesian Massacre, Joshua meets “Adi,” a family member of a victim. People who lived there at the time of the incident do not want to remember it, so they either erase their memories or teach distorted historical views to students. The perpetrators justify their actions as a memory of eliminating the Communist Party, even glorifying themselves as heroes, and show no remorse. Furthermore, these perpetrators currently hold high-ranking positions in the current administration.
Adi hopes to meet and interview them directly, so he visits them carrying corrective eyeglasses—tools to help those who have blinded themselves see the world clearly.

Genre

This documentary is intriguing because it does not adhere to a single genre but blends a wide variety of styles. For example, at the end of each sequence, images that may slightly diverge from the film’s narrative are placed, offering a glimpse into the style of poetic documentary, while the early part of the film features elements of an explanatory documentary, using subtitles to explain the issues to the audience. The most intriguing aspect was the approach to the interviews. While the interviews with the subjects often take on the character of a participatory documentary, the film adopts a format where the director does not conduct the interviews directly; instead, it simply observes the moment when a character in the documentary (the victim) interviews another character (the perpetrator). I believe this approach was sophisticated and played a significant role in effectively conveying the message to the audience by combining various documentary genres.

Sequences and Analysis

Prologue (00:00:00–00:01:30)

The title appears as the camera cuts back and forth between an elderly man (the perpetrator) wearing corrective glasses and a butterfly. This creates the impression that the elderly man is watching the butterfly, evoking a sense that the perpetrator is observing those who are alive but silent.

Sequence 1 – What Happened? (00:01:30–00:07:03)

Adiga sits in a chair watching TV. The perpetrator of the massacre boasts about his actions as if recounting a heroic tale. The scene then shows a truck that appears to be transporting victims, with subtitles explaining what happened. Ramli’s mother provides a narration, expressing her longing for him. Three elements are evident in this sequence. First, the interview format where the perpetrator on TV explains directly. Second, the format presented through subtitles. Third, the format conveyed through narration. The first reveals the perpetrators’ perspective, the second provides a neutral account of the facts, and the third shows the victims’ perspective. By incorporating all three of these perspectives, the film conveys its overall structure to the audience.

Sequence 2 – People’s Perspectives on the Event (00:07:04–00:18:57)

Adi interviews a middle-aged woman from the village. When asked about the deaths of countless people in Aceh in 1965, she says nothing much happened. When Adi mentions the Snake River and the Communist Party, she responds that she doesn’t know, as if she weren’t a contemporary of those events and had no connection to them whatsoever. In 1967 U.S. news reports, the victims of the massacre are categorically labeled as Communists. A schoolteacher teaches students about the massacre from a biased perspective (instructing them that the perpetrators carried out the killings for the sake of democracy), effectively portraying the victims as terrorists. Furthermore, she says that their descendants cannot live a proper life in this country.
Adi continues the conversation while fitting the middle-aged woman for glasses; glasses frequently appear in the film during interviews with the perpetrators. Glasses are a tool for seeing clearly. This metaphorically expresses the hope that those who claim “the past is just the past” will see the world clearly. An insert shot of one cat attacking another seems to be a metaphor for the perpetrators and victims within Indonesia’s power dynamics.
Midway through the sequence, there is a scene where Adi’s son and daughter are talking by the water’s edge. The lines, “Can you swim here?” “Sure,” “But you’re actually scared, aren’t you…,” indirectly reveal the fear Adi feels while making this film.

Sequence 3 – The Lives of the Victims (00:18:58–00:34:35)

A mother is interviewed while cutting fruit in the garden. When asked what she thinks of the village officials who participated in the massacre, she says they will all be punished in the afterlife and that there is no need to stir up trouble now. Additionally, their father sometimes claims to be 17 years old. Adi watches the perpetrators on TV as they reenact the murders. The perpetrators walk around the site of the incident, reenacting the killings. Later, as Adi walks down that same street with a survivor of the Snake River massacre, he begins to sense the victims’ state of mind at the time. This sequence serves as a clear motivation for Adi to go meet the perpetrators. Although it is the same location, the scene alternates between the perpetrators and the victims, clearly revealing just how different their perspectives are. Her mother’s statement, “It will be difficult to punish them in this lifetime,” serves as a sufficient reason for the victims not to want to remember the incident.

Sequence 4 – The Perpetrators’ Perspective: It’s Not My Fault

Adi interviews the execution squad leader—the same man from the prologue—while helping him put on his prescription glasses. The leader insists he is not at fault, claiming he merely killed communists who were disrupting the country; he argues that the incident is over and that the past is the past. Adi tells him the truth, but the leader refuses to listen.
After watching an interview video of the Snake River execution commander, Adi goes to find him. When asked about the source of his wealth, he replies that it comes from a heroic award for his role in the past massacre. He claims he bears no moral responsibility because his actions were carried out under state orders. When Adi confronts him about this, the commander instead threatens him and claims that Adi’s actions are also those of the Communist Party.
In an interview with the Action Squad Leader (now a local council spokesperson), he claims the massacre was a spontaneous act by the people and was not a grave crime. He concludes the interview by stating that he is able to retain his seat because the people elected him, and that if past events are brought up again, the same thing will happen.
Adi interviews his uncle. His uncle was a prison guard when Ramli was incarcerated, and he too claims he merely carried out state orders and bears no responsibility. It is highly dramatic for a victim’s brother to meet and interview a perpetrator. The sound design deserves special attention. Unlike other sequences, the ambient sound in this scene is static, with only the characters’ dialogue filling the audio space. The perpetrators’ words are heard more clearly and distinctly, conveying their cruelty to the audience with striking clarity.

Sequence 5 – Living as the Family of a Perpetrator

Adi visits another perpetrator. The perpetrator’s daughter is sitting beside him. Although the perpetrator is not of sound mind, he speaks proudly of the acts he committed at the time. When Adi mentions Ramli, the perpetrator’s daughter asks for forgiveness on his behalf. Another perpetrator has already died, and the people welcoming Adi are his wife and children. They express their displeasure at the interview, claiming they were unaware that their father (or husband) had committed murder. At the same time, the wife tries to understand Adi’s feelings as someone who lost a brother. The scene where the daughter asks Adi for forgiveness on her father’s behalf feels as though it is spoken by those who have forgotten or distorted history (those who remained silent), and it is moving in that it offers an apology that transcends a generation. It is heartbreaking to see that the families of the deceased perpetrators must act this way just to survive.

Sequence 6 – What Remains

A survivor of the massacre visits Adi’s mother. Seeing him, she sheds tears as she is reminded of her own son. The scene concludes with a shot of the mother’s hand, touching a butterfly and saying, “Come out.” This scene offers hope for what is yet to come. It could represent the next generation of Indonesians, or it could be interpreted as a message to the audience who will break their silence after watching the film.

In Conclusion

While watching the film, I found myself thinking, “Is this really a documentary?” Upon reflection, I identified a few reasons why I felt that way. First, the premise itself is quite dramatic. The fact that the victim seeks out the perpetrator to request an interview, and that they agree to it, felt very dramatic in itself.
Second is the sound. In my subjective view, documentaries often give the strong impression of being recorded with synchronous sound. Of course, this film, ‘The Silent Gaze’, also appears to use synchronous sound, but compared to other documentaries, the mixing was very clean and crisp. While other documentaries create a sense of being on-site through significant variations in sound depending on the location, this film seems to focus on the characters’ dialogue and the emotions that emerge as they speak.
Third is the editing and imagery. Rather than a monotonous plot structure, it shows a location in Indonesia at the end of each sequence. I personally found these images quite beautiful, and I believe the editing—which creates emotional tension—maximizes the emotional conflict felt by the audience.
I felt a great deal watching the father, who had lost himself to dementia. At times, he appeared as Ramli; at others, as an enlightened viewer; and he also served as a symbol of the silent masses.
I believe there are many similar events in Korea as well—from the Jeju Massacre mentioned earlier, to the Gwangju Democratization Movement, and even the recent Sewol Ferry disaster. Rather than adopting an attitude of “the past is gone, so let’s forget it and do better from now on,” I hope that everyone will speak out, because the past becomes history, and history is the greatest tool for reflecting on the future.