The Zone of Interest (2023) - new Jonathan Glazer/A24 film

[lazyhour]

Yeah Levi did a whole full length soundtrack for it but Glazer decided to only feature bits in the intro and outro, as having it during the scenes would have disrupted the tone. Would be interested in hearing the full thing if it's ever released.

Wait, so the horrific ambient drones and rumbles through the film aren't part of Levi's score? That's fascinating - I may have been giving them way too much credit for the overall sound of the film in that case.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Wait, so the horrific ambient drones and rumbles through the film aren't part of Levi's score? That's fascinating - I may have been giving them way too much credit for the overall sound of the film in that case.

Possibly, although I think a lot of it was just heavily distorted/stretched etc sound effects (which I think he had a hand in) rather than the traditional music cues which were recorded and didn't make the final cut.

[13 schoolyards]

Didn't some interview or article say Glazer and company did masses of historical research to find out exactly what kind of sounds a (death) factory would have made in the 1940s? I assumed the mechanical sounds were just industry at work - the score only came in at the beginning and end 

[Oosp]

Finally got to see this the other day. Outstanding. Made me think of The Cement Garden at times, but overall it just felt like a new type of film. The sound was every bit as amazing as people have made out. Nothing forced, nothing laboured. And that closeup of Höss in the smoke knocked me for six.

Thoughts/observations spoilered below:

Spoiler alert

- The prolonged blackout at the start, signalling that a) we're descending into the dark (much like Höss at the end), b) the story will be told through sound, c) we will only see what the director allows us
- The contrast between how the "house dog" and the other one were treated
- The boardroom table and the new crematorium having the same shape
- The very deliberate, systematic even, locking of the doors each night
- The furnace in every room in the house
- The prisoner drowned for fighting over one of the apples left out by the girl
- The water motif: the river made treacherous by the atrocities nearby; Höss cleaning himself intimately at the washbowl, thinking himself physically unclean after the act he perpetrated offscreen upon the prisoner, whereas he was simply morally unclean; and of course, right above the swimming pool, that solitary shower, a stark if on-the-nose inversion of those within the gas chambers
- The parallel, intentional or otherwise, with Charon on the Styx as Höss sailed the kids across the river of death
- The tiny locked room at the end of a snaking corridor, with the cloths folded and placed just so; if it were anyone else, we'd see this as a a sordid little chamber of the id, constructed at tremendous cost so he could wash his dick and deal with his shame, but this guy built a fucking death camp over his garden wall, so...?
- Their separate beds - Hedwig's way of distancing herself from her husband's activities, and a concise illustration (in actual business German, no less) of I don't like it, but I'll go along with it. It suggests that Fritz Bracht had already told Hedwig the full extent of the atrocities in the camp, which apparently prompted her decision to no longer sleep with her hubby, which was literally the only thing she did in response to the news and made her no less of a Nazi than before. She only truly gave a fuck about the house and the shit they thieved from their victims - didn't shed a tear for her imminent separation from Höss when he was to be redeployed, only for the potential loss of the paradise she'd cultivated. All very classic dysfunctional rich marriage stuff, but amplified and made far more ghoulish by the means by which they accumulated their wealth. I mean, she retained her staff but reminded them constantly that she could do to them what her husband did to their "kind" over the wall. And her plants were fertilised with human ashes
- The speed with which Hedwig tossed her mother's letter in the furnace - neat shorthand for the pathological refusal of all of these fuckers to acknowledge their complicity, given the likely content of the letter. Also a way for her to figuratively punish her mother, as she explicitly threatens to do elsewhere to a servant
- The mother, who was annoyed that she didn't get her Jewish neighbour's curtains, now peering through the net curtain at Hell itself

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[popcorn]

Loads of interesting thoughts that hadn't occurred to me there.

edit: it doesn't mean I'm thick for not thinking of them though.

[madhair60]

i'm afraid that isn't up to you.

[iamcoop]

Didn't some interview or article say Glazer and company did masses of historical research to find out exactly what kind of sounds a (death) factory would have made in the 1940s? I assumed the mechanical sounds were just industry at work - the score only came in at the beginning and end 

Yes, there's been some good podcast interviews with Glazer and the sound designer where they discuss the masses of research they did into exactly what sounds would've been heard from outside the camp. Right down to how the sound from certain chimneys and machinery would be affected over distance etc.

Bleak as fuck but a remarkable effort nonetheless.

[Jim_MacLaine]

Yes, there's been some good podcast interviews with Glazer and the sound designer where they discuss the masses of research they did into exactly what sounds would've been heard from outside the camp. Right down to how the sound from certain chimneys and machinery would be affected over distance etc.

Bleak as fuck but a remarkable effort nonetheless.

Can you point me in the direction of one of these as the sound design was by far the most impressive thing for me in the film.

[iamcoop]

Can you point me in the direction of one of these as the sound design was by far the most impressive thing for me in the film.

Here's good one:

Quite a few others if you search in the usual podcast apps as well.

[neov1974]

loads of good thoughts in here, and genuinely not to trivialise what was an excellent film, but I thought the dog was very good in its role

[Clownbaby]

I'm going to see this tonight, looking forward to it! Should be a fun romp.

Jonathan Glazer hasn't put a foot wrong with his stuff, in my eyes. The feel of his films really gets under my skin (pun!)

[Jim_MacLaine]

I thought the dog was very good in its role

Have to disagree. Too much energy. There was no light and shade in the performance.

Literally eating the scenery.

[El Unicornio, mang]

"The sort of dog that the Nazis used to chase Steve McQueen. They are trained and they are very right-wing!"

Not sure if it's been mentioned already but it's Sandra Hüller's real life dog

[HMS Beanspiller]

I thought this was hugely powerful - it gave me vivid nightmares the night after watching it; the sounds stay with you and the suggestion of the horror is more impactful than showing it as other holocaust films generally have.

Spoiler alert

The ending shots of the present day camp were deeply unsettling - I couldn't get it out of my head how fucked up it must be to work there and just be in those spaces daily. I guess you get used to it like any other job but still, brrr.

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