Oppenheimer discussion thread. C'mon, let's have a long one. Favourite scene? Favourite character? Was it exploitative? Is it not the greatest duo of documentaries ever? Or at least of the 21st century so far?
What a weird fucking country though, it's basically a mix between china, the middle east and africa which is run by a bunch of muslim libertarians wearing incredibly impractical camo uniforms and who binge-watch oldass hollywood gangster movies for some weird undisclosed reason
These are legitimately kino. Oppenheimer had a Q and A after the screening of the look of silence I went to, and he was very interesting but also very strange. He was a really soft spoken guy that somehow learned Indonesian and gained the trust of pretty much everyone he met.
The Act of Killing is great but very long and emotionally draining.
The Look of Silence is very good and more accessible due to its shorter length.
They are both stunning looks at the bizarre aspects of Indonesian society.
My favourite part of them that comes to mind is how in both whenever someone doesn't want to talk about a topic they lie and say "I don't know anything about that." Then, when Adi finds out his uncle worked in the prison where his brother was held in before he was killed, guess what his mother says? "I didn't know anything about that."
Greatest documentaries of all time.
>>70152785
It's the commentaries that really cemented it for me. Hearing Oppenheimer explaining the reasons for specific cuts and realising that I'd indeed been feeling the things he had specifically been aiming to provoke. Great, understated editing on top of everything else.
I was at a screening for Look of Silence that had a Q&A after. After the film there was a 10 minute break for people to use the bathroom. When I was waiting in line to piss some bald guy behind me goes "Hey is it okay if I cut in front of you, I'm the director and I have to get mic'd up."
Then when he was pissing a guy in line was like "I loved your film" and while pissing he awkwardly goes "Thanks."
These films are amazing, one of the things I loved about his Q&A was how he described how he knew he wanted to do a film about Anwar because of the way he could tell Anwar was boosting about himself to hide his insecurities.
>tfw /tv/ is so inundated by /pol/tards now threads about actual film discussion get buried because they're not about cuck memes or waifus
>>70153251
kek
>Then when he was pissing a guy in line was like "I loved your film" and while pissing he awkwardly goes "Thanks."
some people are so autistic
Favourite docus in a long time, they're really well made. Probably a touch exploitative.
>tfw tempted to put together a supercut of the two films as an exercise in editing
I just finished the act of killing... God damn bros. I don't smoke, but I felt like I needed a cigarette after it. Also, that one killers daughter a cutie.
>>70154741
All documentaries are explotive
>>70155874
you had better have watched the Director's Cut
>>70155945
I did. For me, I understood what the director was trying to envoys with the "movie" but it felt like it slowed the natural progression a little. The science where he is sitting out on the dock in the darkness stuck with me the most. You could feel the judgement of the universe waiting to meet him.
>>70156093
Sorry for the typos, iPad a shit. Meant to say envoke and scene.
>>70152155
I just watched the act of killing, the extended version but without commentary, afterwards I looked online to clear up my confusion about certain things.
I went in knowing nothing about it too so half the time I wasn't even sure if these guys were for real or not, the part with the talk show was especially bizarre, especially when I found out that it wasn't staged at all and that they were actually discussing openly such things in a talk show. Indonesia is a weird place.
Herman was my favorite character but Adi was probably the most interesting with his thoughts on the matter.
Is the look of silence as good as the act of killing?
>>70156868
Yes.
>>70152155
>is it exploitative
I think it is, more than a little bit. In the Act of Killing he's giving the killers another platform to glorify themselves and distress the victims, just to give the audience a bigger show.
>>70156868
The Act of Killing very perplexing to view (both intellectually and emotionally) as the line between reality and fiction seemed so indistinct and the feeling of uncertainty that the bizarreness of it all gave was a spinning mix of nausea and bliss.
Just thinking back at it gives me a peculiar sensation in my stomach.
Have not seen The Look of Silence yet and will definitely give it a go.
>>70158568
What did he mean by this?
>>70152155
One of my favourite films ever.
That bloodcurdling ending tho.
>>70158744
Silencio
>>70152155
desu The concept of Act of Killing is brilliany, but the execution makes it just mediocre.
The version I have seen is messy, lacks context and has no clear pacing. For every great scene, there is three minutes of Anwar rolling in bed.
>>70156868
Fun fact: According to Oppenheimer, after viewing the finished film Herman reacted with disgust and quit the Pancasila Youth immediately, and has gone on to be one of only a few people to hold screenings of the film in Medan, the city where it was made.
>>70159238
You don't understand film
>>70160030
>>70160030
Really? He seemed the most enthusiastic about all of it
>...but something inside him draws him back toward his pain, toward his terror -- for that is precisely what he is trying to “make okay” by representing on film; he knows, at some level, that the vision of redemption at the waterfall is a lie, and he feels the need to return to the source of his pain, and reassure himself that it’s only a movie. He asks to see the scene where he is strangled with wire. But then, he calls in his grandchildren, using them almost as human shields. He tells them - and wants to reassure himself - that it’s “only a movie”. They get bored because, indeed, for them it is only a movie. They go back to sleep. Now he is naked, without the protection of his grand children, without his shields, as it were. He makes a final effort to convince himself that it’s only a movie, by offering me a generic confession: “Now, I feel the same as my victims.” He hopes I will accept - and that I will confirm to him - that there is no difference between the fiction scenes and the horrible reality he is attempting to tame by making them. He is hoping I will agree that there is no difference between acting and dying, and I cannot do that. And I think this is evidence that my goal was never Anwar’s redemption, for if it were I would surely have felt that finally he has given me the confession that I was waiting for all this time, and I would have accepted that he feels like his victims. But when I say “no”, he is forced to deal with the fact that he will never be able to escape the horror of what he has done, he will never escape the horror of his past.
>>70160115
To be fair, he was also the most... socially progressive. Tbh he just seems like a goofy fairly nice guy caught up in the propaganda they're all raised on there.
>>70160129
Fucking bleak as fuck, man. Joshua Oppenheimer basically going full Rorschach from Watchmen there.
>ywn devote 10 years of your youth to bringing an international atrocity to the world's attention whilst also bringing an art form to its absolute high-water mark to date
>Oppenheimer crafted the village assault scene as “an icon for a genocide.” That desire in part informed his insistence that the women and children used in the scene be the actual wives and kids of the paramilitary members.
I feel so much better knowing he didn't torment potential survivors of the genocide
>>70160189
from his reddit AMA
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1ypzrg/we_are_werner_herzog_errol_morris_and_joshua/cfmr02o?context=10000
Absolutely. Fucking. GOAT.
The act of killing is available on the Internet archive. I have yet to see it myself.
