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

[Quadrospazzed]

I thought Hoess was supposed to be having a sudden vision of the future, From Hell-style, at a moment when, very possibly, his own doubts and fears are bubbling up within him. Suddenly he sees all his meticulous calculations and plans for what they are: a hideously brutal, yet ultimately futile act. He's traumatised his kids, alienated his wife, and stained his soul completely by participating in the mass murders of millions of people - all for nothing. The Jews survive. The Nazis fail. His grand plan is reduced to, essentially, a memorial to his monstrosity and failure visited by tourists and cleaned up by staff as disinterested in his psychopathic vision as he was in the horrors inflicted on the camp's victims.

Also fits when you factor in that by the time they had arranged for the Hungarian Jews to be sent to Auschwitz in 1944 it would've been fairly obvious that they were going to lose the war.

[Noodle Lizard]

The dry heave scene at the end was reminiscent of that film The Act of Killing (2012). The dude finally realised the heinous shit he did and starts retching.

Yeah, that was my first thought too. Took me out of it a bit since it seems to be an almost intentional lift.

[Cuellar]

Just seen this and I'm sympathetic to @sevendaughters reservations, having the same thoughts about the possible humanising of Höss and family, which the film did do to some extent and which was part of the point I think.

I didn't really feel that the film 'humanised' Höss himself though. I thought he was more or less a blank, impassive statue. Even when pillow talking with his wife, when she remembers the man in Italy playing his accordion to the cows, and Höss says the cows loved the man, "they looked at him like this" and then to my eyes at least didn't change his expression at all, didn't pull a funny face, didn't do anything. It was as if he was having human experiences but not engaging with them at all.

And then at the end when his wife asks him who was at the party and he says he

Spoiler alert

doesn't really know, all he could think about was how, logistically, he'd gas them all in the ballroom

[close]

He'd read to his kids (about heroic germanic children putting evil people into ovens) but he wasn't particularly affectionate or attentive.

I think you could just about counter the accusations that it hides or erases the victims by pointing to the relentless sound design - the horror is always there

[Mister Six]

Yeah, the idea that it erases the victims is bizarre. Yes, it very pointedly shoots around them, but their presence, and the atrocity of what is being done to them is there. And it serves a very specific storytelling purpose.

[Memorex MP3]

Saw this, didn't really feel like it worked but also not sure I think it could work any better than Glazer managed. Paul Schrader's description of it resonated a fair bit.


Something about Sandra Huller in this really rubbed me the wrong way. Would have preferred unknowns

[Minami Minegishi]

It seems to me you think it to mean so
I'd argue that the 'humanisation' of a character means we see elements of their behaviour or actions that lead us to sympathise with that character in some way. Perhaps to feel sorry for them, or to put us, as the audience, in a position that makes us feel uncomfortable because there's a part of us that thinks "Ok, maybe I can see why they're behaving this way. Perhaps I'd behave that way too, if I was in a similar situation".

This film does nothing of the sort.

Yes, it shows us Hoess being a human. But that's the point. They were all humans. That's what makes their crimes all the more terrifying.

I'm not trying to be flippant or insulting but I genuinely don't understand what you mean by this at all. Again, it seems like you would like any film that portrays genocide, or the periphery of it (so to speak) to be some relentless slog that exposes the sheer horror of what took place.
Well in my opinion any art that exposes the horrific mundanity of the lives of the people that facilitated horrendous chapters of history (which is largely the case, unfortunately) only goes to hammer home the grotesque capabilities of human beings.

This was pretty much my take from the whole thing. It's an incredible film - mature and sophisticated even compared with Under the Skin. The use of music and editing at points are almost clunky, the film grammar being wilfully broken at points which I found unsettling consciously and unconsciously. There is very little of the people/audience pleasing elements of Holocaust cinema that you find in even hard-going films such as Son of Saul.

I don't know if I liked all the decisions ('liked' as opposed to the snootily judgemental 'agreed with'). In particular, the aforementioned final section. But at the same time, there was an impressive beauty to the cycle of invisible, working-class women soundlessly cleaning around the horrors of humans.

The retching I thought was about everything apart from his horror at the daunting moral crimes for which he is, and will be, complicit. It seemed to be more about the pressures of his job, his family, and the fear of what will come if those blueprints are put into action. It reminded me obviously of the end of The Act of Killing, but in that case I found it disingenuously bogus.

Really quite insane timing to see this film, and I found myself completely incapable of not reflecting on current horrors. In the end that's what broke me in the cinema, I think.

What is Glazer going to do next?

[popcorn]

What is Glazer going to do next?

Rumour has it he's going to do a film about the creation of the atom bomb that doesn't even show the Japanese.

[Minami Minegishi]

Rumour has it he's going to do a film about the creation of the atom bomb that doesn't even show the Japanese.

[Mister Six]

the film grammar being wilfully broken at points which I found unsettling consciously and unconsciously. There is very little of the people/audience pleasing elements of Holocaust cinema that you find in even hard-going films

This connected two dangling synapses in my brain, and I wonder if this was also a reason not to show the Holocaust victims in detail. Not just that the film is trying to represent Hoess's family's dismissal of the reality of what they're participating in (again, to point to the ballroom scene, he distances himself from individual human identity so he can view the crowd as mere numbers to fit into a gas chamber), but also that since the film isn't about specific individual prisoners in the camp or people even interacting with them, it might have felt exploitative to have these Jewish prisoners there as human props, as a kind of checkbox reminder, "Look, it's like Schindler's List." Like it would be in some way like "people pleasing", meeting audience expectations and desires for an explicit performance of human misery.

Does this make sense? I've caught a cold and my brain is mush.

[popcorn]

Can we get back to serious film discussion please? I mentioned before that the title card reminded me of Resident Evil, but I don't think it matches any of the logos that well.





It's somehow extremely PS2 to me. What am I thinking of?? Glazer what have you done to me ???

[Mister Six]

?

[WhoMe]

I'm not an art-house cinema person particularly, but felt an urge to see this. Amazing film. Not much to add to the discussion already had here. It puts you in this deeply uncomfortable position of having to reduce the drone of mechanized hell to background noise in order to engage with the domestic 'storyline', such as it is, just as the characters do. The reassuring thing is that the horror of the full context of their daily lives sort of washed over me again and again.

Did anyone here interpret those guttural tones that cut through the score as audible representations of Hoss's mind in some way? A flicker of degraded conscience almost
 

[popcorn]

?

I wondered about that option too, and it's almost there, but the capitals make it all wrong. Hmm.

[popcorn]

Did anyone here interpret those guttural tones that cut through the score as audible representations of Hoss's mind in some way? A flicker of degraded conscience almost 

Som of the sounds are sort of belch-like, which I connected to Hoss's retching later on, some ghastly "digestive" or "ingesting" process. Also connected to the "belching" smoke towers...

[Memorex MP3]

Can we get back to serious film discussion please? I mentioned before that the title card reminded me of Resident Evil, but I don't think it matches any of the logos that well.





It's somehow extremely PS2 to me. What am I thinking of?? Glazer what have you done to me ???

I feel like Glazer's 90s aesthetics would have had a big impact on early 00s Sony Computer Entertainment so maybe it might be that?

[Inspector Norse]

I watched The Zone of Interest (2023) - new Jonathan Glazer/A24 film and a few days later still haven't made my mind up about it.

The subject matter and theme is important and something that bears repeating - but is this film just preaching to the converted? Who among the film's likely audience is not already aware of the theme? Does that matter, when it is something so historically significant and when it's something so relevant? Is something like Schindler's List "better" because it communicates to a wider public, or is there a film that can communicate all the ideas and provoke all the questions that this does, while having any wider appeal?

It's technically very good and I especially liked the way it used blunt, blaring music cues and screen blanks to jolt us occasionally. But it's by design quite dull and slow at times and on the very basic, essential level, can it be a good film if it's boring, however deliberate? Eye of the beholder there, Clive.

Quite a few things that raised interesting questions about what Glazer wanted to say or what he wanted us to think and I think in general, in the best Lynchian tradition, there perhaps isn't a definite answer, or there are several possible, intended interpretations. For example the cleaning scene. Are we to think about how we too are desensitised to the subject matter? Are we to see Höss as looking into this empty future of failure?

The film does "humanise" the Höss family, which is the point of course, but I'm not sure it ever really goes more than skin-deep. We never really know the motivations or inner thoughts of the wife or children (maybe a couple of brief glimpses like when the younger son peeks out from the curtains, or when the older son locks him in the greenhouse) and that I think is possibly a weakness. If you're reading the point of the film as being the way these ordinary, middle-class people could do monstrous things, or could support or at best turn a blind eye to them, then the people arguably need to be fleshed out more and not quite so robotic and vague. As with much else about the film, though, I'm not 100% sure I agree with myself on this one.

Generally I think my conclusion is that Glazer in many ways gets this right, making a provocative and significant film about a subject that should never be ignored or forgotten, and he does so by trying to have his art serve the idea rather than the other way round, which is key.

[madhair60]

this is "available" now

[selectivememory]

Ooh, cheers for the heads up. Didn't show this anywhere near me, which I was pretty annoyed about.

[hermitical]

It is still doing the rounds. Turning up on Thursday at our local provincial one screen cinema, for one night only.

I fear I may get in the spirit of things a bit too much, strong chance I get a bit fashy if there are talkers/eaters in the cinema

[El Unicornio, mang]

I already spent £30 (!) for two tickets to see it with a friend tonight. Hopefully she'll refrain from rustling a bag of Haribo and getting us chastised by the people behind us like last time...

[lipsink]

It is still doing the rounds. Turning up on Thursday at our local provincial one screen cinema, for one night only.

I fear I may get in the spirit of things a bit too much, strong chance I get a bit fashy if there are talkers/eaters in the cinema

I went to see this (the second time) on Valentines Day at a Vue cinema. My God, that was a mistake. Sat next to a teenage couple who were obviously out on their Valentines date. She had a helium heart-shaped balloon tied to her armchair and they talked through the first 10 minutes ("Is this in German?") I got up and sat away from them but was baffled they stayed through the entire film. I have been pretty grumpy in the past telling people to shut up in the cinema but now I just tend to move seats. Thankfully you don't get this in the more trendy arthouse cinemas. Though you still do get some psychopath who decides they'll spend the quieter parts of the film slowly unwrapping their sweets.

[lazyhour]

Saw this tonight, found it gripping.

Poss spoiler:

Surely the cleaning women at the end were a very deliberate, essential even, decision by Glazer. Without them it would have just been a "this is the sad bit where we really show the horror of what happened". Instead, their dispassionate cleaning, hoiking the vacuum around etc, shows that even *now* people who are that close to Holocaust stuff have to compartmentalise and become detuned to it or there's no way they'd be able to do this work. The evil of the Holocaust *requires* blocking out if you want to function. It did then, and it still does now.

[lazyhour]

Oh, and are you thinking of the in-game typeface?

[selectivememory]

I just watched this and found it utterly mesmerising. Maybe a late entry for best film of 2023 for me. Will have a proper read of the thread, as it's clearly generated a lot of discussion.

[checkoutgirl]

I've gotten over it now but for about a week after seeing this film the sounds from the other side of the high wall stayed with me. Haunting and very effective. I dare say the beefy sound system in the cinema was a help in that regard.

Kind of plays with your mind as you're forced to wonder what's going on over there and how bad it is. Weirdly chilling.

[Mister Six]

Definitely think this is a film that benefits from being seen in a cinema, more than most I've seen over the past few years.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I thought Hoess was supposed to be having a sudden vision of the future, From Hell-style, at a moment when, very possibly, his own doubts and fears are bubbling up within him. Suddenly he sees all his meticulous calculations and plans for what they are: a hideously brutal, yet ultimately futile act. He's traumatised his kids, alienated his wife, and stained his soul completely by participating in the mass murders of millions of people - all for nothing. The Jews survive. The Nazis fail. His grand plan is reduced to, essentially, a memorial to his monstrosity and failure visited by tourists and cleaned up by staff as disinterested in his psychopathic vision as he was in the horrors inflicted on the camp's victims.

This was my thought. I might have seen it wrong but it seemed to be an alternate reality because after the modern day Auschwitz cleaning scenes (which I think were absolutely vital) it kind of reverts back to before that point on the stairwell.

Anyway, I've never had a quieter cinema experience. At times felt like people were holding their breaths and not moving at all. The only disruption was the sound of the nearby Metro going past every so often, but it could easily have been part of the soundtrack anyway (and at times I couldn't tell if it was).

I liked the infrared scenes. Apparently they had to be shot in very low def and then used AI to upscale them. The girl is wearing the same dress as the woman the scenes are based on (she was a consultant in the early stages of the film and gave them some items from that time) A very unique look. Discussed in this making of:

Kind of plays with your mind as you're forced to wonder what's going on over there and how bad it is. Weirdly chilling.

Having read a lot about the subject, it's clear that you literally couldn't show some of the things that were being done to the victims, (and particularly the babies and children). The sounds are the closest you can get.

[paddy72]

It is still doing the rounds. Turning up on Thursday at our local provincial one screen cinema, for one night only.

I fear I may get in the spirit of things a bit too much, strong chance I get a bit fashy if there are talkers/eaters in the cinema

Saw this in the cinema on Friday and had to do some shushing.

Small room at The Light in Bradford, only a smattering of people there – lovely. Then three girls walked in with an enormous bucket of popcorn, sat right behind us, and proceeded to giggle and 'whisper' well into the main feature. I simply couldn't have that. I'm convinced they must have just picked a film at random in the foyer and hoped for the best.

I mean, who brings popcorn to this film? As my daughter subsequently pointed out, 'it's not a solemn enough snack'.

Anyway, I thought it was excellent.

[popcorn]

I mean, who brings popcorn to this film?

I'll have you know I brought myself. and I was perfectly solemn throughout.

[paddy72]

I'll have you know I brought myself. and I was perfectly solemn throughout.

Ha, fair enough!