Suddenly and Slowly

The Look of Silence. Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer.

I met this film - rough, unornamented, and unprocessed emotion - on September 14^th, 2017. I stared at him approaching to me near. He was dressed with peaceful ambivalence. From him, I could see the old man with personalized glasses holding the look of emptiness and innocence. 

I waited him unarmed. Silence of the serene rustic town was what he brought to the very first moment I encountered him. He looked right through me. I followed his horizontally infinite look. Following his look, I was in the middle of the yard watching the trees under a dry sunshine. Under the tree, there was the old woman chopping fruits. Suddenly, at the end of his look of silence, the old video tape was running in front of the man with tired rage all alone in a room. 

The giggling, uncomfortable voice of the old man with power in the screen hanged on the end of the look of the man with tired rage. The voice of the old was molten in the look of the man intensified to the unbearable sadness. I was in confusion, trying to figure out the sudden influx of the sound. Then, the man who brought the silence dropped me in the middle of emotions – rough, unornamented and unprocessed. There, the absolute wreck existed. 

There, the assailant and the victim were both collapsing. The assailant – the murder of the Indonesia holocaust – was drinking a cup of blood of the dead not to go insane. The assailant was shaking, yelling, cursing, laughing, and crying. The old man with the personalized glasses were there, too. He was drinking the cup of blood. 

The victim – the target of the Indonesia holocaust – prayed for the peace and the apt punishment for the murders afterlife, dreamed day to day about the loss and the death of the days of holocaust, forgot about the pain only remembered by their physical body, and cried.

 Both of them live as neighbors in town today where the holocaust occurred. Both of them shout or murmur, “Past should be kept in past.” Both of them are old and waned by time. The eyes of the holocaust – fear and insanity - are found from the faint and weak eyes lying on their beds. Both of them shelter them in the jumping bean. Their chaotic scream was a bug inside a dead bean making the bean jump around. I looked carefully the jumping beans. Then, he put me in the eye of the hurricane. I was there holding jumping beans. He was the hurricane. The hurricane could absorb me if I take one step in mistake. So, I stood still. The wooing sound of the hurricane and the ti-tiking sound of the jumping sound surrounded me. I took my one hand and slightly covered another hand with beans. I could feel the movement of the beans – up and down – from my both hands. Their movement, small but chaotic, hurt me. My hands were bleeding. The warm blood of mine slowly flowed to my elbow and it dropped to my foot. The sudden warmness made me to accidentally take one step. My hands were firm not to let a single bean go away. In the humongous whirl, I became the emotion - rough, unornamented, and unprocessed. The hurricane stopped but he left me to be the emotion. In my perfect imbalance state, I was still making the whirl by myself. He did not take me back to the yard nor help me to find my balance again. He did not give me the peace back. I was stuck as the emotion. I felt awfully hurt. The emotion that I became was out of my capability to handle. It was too much. 

Because it was too much, I fell in love with him – the one who made me to become the emotion.