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

[El Unicornio, mang]

I've loved all of his films, and they only come out every 5 years or so due to his meticulous pre and post production but I think this will be worth the wait going by festival reviews and this trailer.

I've read the book, although the film has pretty much dispensed with Amis's (mostly) fictional story in favour of telling the story of the real commander of Auschwitz and his family living the high life in a mansion with beautiful garden while thousands suffer and die every day on the other side of the wall. Sadly not a million miles away from current events.

[Mister Six]

Mate of mine queued up for an hour to see it at the New York Film Festival and said it was worth it - superb and uniquely harrowing. There's no (or little) on-screen violence, almost no visual depiction of what's happening in Auschwitz, just a family going about their business, having recognisable human drama to a background of screams of terror and agony, and glimpses of the occasional smokestack.

Definitely going to see it when its theatrical release kicks off.

[Average Comedy Enjoyer]

Thanks for the heads-up, looking forward to that.
For a seemingly similar exploration of the same themes (how much would you ignore to feel comfortable) I really enjoyed The Square (2017). Very tense.

[Minami Minegishi]

This has been doing the Festivals for months now. The final edit was locked a year ago. Why has it been shunted to February and not the November/December pre-awards period?

It's really the only new film I genuinely care about wanting to see other than Marty's new one (and maybe new films from Daddy Coppola and Lynne Ramsay). Release the cunt FFS.

[Mister Six]

Fuuuuck, really? I was looking forward to this. Is it some Israel-Gaza nonsense on the part of the distributor?

EDIT: Oh thank fuck, still coming out in the US in December. Some cheerful Christmas viewing, then.

[El Unicornio, mang]

A24 did the same with Pearl (and presumably some of their other releases). It had already done its cinema run and was out on BluRay in the US ages before it got a UK theatrical release. Seems like a weird way to do things as a lot of people will just download it or get the physical copy imported rather than wait to see it at the cinema.

[Minami Minegishi]

Yeah, exactly. It seems inevitable that this will land online by January. I'm not sure I will be able to hold out for a cinema release. Glazer innit?

[Calistan]

It's brilliant. Saw it last week and it's obviously quite harrowing. Not as good or as unnerving as Under The Skin but not many films are. Fella who does the soundtracks to these films is amazing, another wonderful score.

[CptPorkDouglas]

UK release is Friday, 2nd of February according to the Film Distributor's Association website.

[Jerzy Bondov]

It's brilliant. Saw it last week and it's obviously quite harrowing. Not as good or as unnerving as Under The Skin but not many films are. Fella who does the soundtracks to these films is amazing, another wonderful score.

Mica Levi is non-binary (not having a go just saying). Under the Skin was their first score, can you believe that? Monos was another amazing score. Cannot wait to see this, maybe the only upcoming film I'm looking forward to right now. Apart from Final Destination 6: Bloodlines.

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

goddamn i need to see this miserable movie

utterly glazing for it

[bgmnts]

I read his 'memoir', and I think Hoess could make an interesting subject for a drama.

Can't be arsed with anything harrowing anymore, as I'm one mum death away from a bloody bathtub as it is, but a Glazer film will be well directed and a great watch regardless.

[Garam]

I'm glad there's finally at least one decent Martin Amis adaptation. I know he's an upper class knob and has written some of the worst books ever written, but he did also write a few good ones among them and deserves to have a film that will draw people to check out some of his stuff.

[Mister Six]

Who are these people that eat snacks during arthouse movies? Rudolf Hess puking up on a stairwell while the guy on my right fills his face with popcorn.

Anyway, The Zone of BOREDOM, more like, amirite??? I thought the film was technically impressive - especially the sound work - but seemed to say all it had to say in the first 10 minutes or so. Maybe in the first handful of scenes. After that it just felt like variations on "look at this fucking psycho cunt" over and over. The Hesses being unbothered by genocide in the garden, the Hesses being unbothered by genocide in the bedroom, the Hesses being unbothered by genocide at the dinner table...

I'm glad it exists, but I don't think there's a terribly good reason for anyone to watch it, unless they want to study how it was made.

[sevendaughters]

seeing this tonight in a Glazer double bill (Under the Skin up first)

[sevendaughters]

OK - Under the Skin was fine, just fine, but The Zone of Interest...

Portraying the holocaust or any major genocide, to my mind, should always be divisive and sensitive. It should, in some measure, be provocative because of the subject matter. It may even be that Adorno was right, and that portraying the extent of such suffering in the language of a medium that was used by the barbarians in charge is impossible and only serves commerce.

After seeing the film it is clear - to some this is a brilliant evocation of how we are blind to suffering and choose to screen it out of our lives, even though the guilt tips in (ash fluttering through the window, constant noises in the background) and to others this is the ultimate in white person shit, mirroring the news of our day by not naming or showing the pain and labouring toward pointing out small bourgeois ironies of the situation. I feel, given the time we're in, this is the latter.

Prior to the film, a drone from A24 came out talked a bit about how A24's mission is to distribute different kinds of content to people and I just went 'content?' out loud to no one in particular. Then they did a raffle and cracked some jokes before the film. And that's really how people in charge of cinema see it, no matter Glazer's intent - content for a situation, that situation being the Oscar season, where no one will talk about the genocide in our midst.

OK - so it's clear that politically it got my back up. Is it a well-made film? Well, I'd have to say it isn't that interesting. There are some nice individual shots but I often forget Glazer came from music video and as such there are these moments where it breaks the rigour of European art drama to switch randomly to a very heavily stylised silhouette, or at one point do a long fade through a montage of flowers to bright red for about six seconds before cutting back. None of these moments add anything at all.

I could do some minor grouses - Sandra Huller isn't very interesting in it, the use of music is uneven - but my final big one is the way the film ends. Spoiler time:

Spoiler alert

The commandant/dad figure calls home after being sent away to oversee a different camp to say he's returning and will be overseeing the transportation of Hungarian Jews, as his wife seems a bit distracted and annoyed. He brags a bit and walks away and dry heaves, breaking facade for the first time. The film then cuts to Auschwitz now and some women cleaning the displays there.

[close]

It's such a heavy handed 'reminder' and makes you realise he's come a long way since Sexy Beast just to become another boring moralist.

It's interesting that we're talking about Jerry Lewis' misbegotten holocaust film. I've watched the assembled bit posted and it is clear that there is something in there about moral complicity that is much more powerful because of its connection to the stakes. I even prefer Schindler's List, for all of its manipulative capacity, it becomes indelible. There are also better films that purposefully don't show - Shoah, Jenin Jenin.

[Mister Six]

After seeing the film it is clear - to some this is a brilliant evocation of how we are blind to suffering and choose to screen it out of our lives, even though the guilt tips in (ash fluttering through the window, constant noises in the background) and to others this is the ultimate in white person shit, mirroring the news of our day by not naming or showing the pain and labouring toward pointing out small bourgeois ironies of the situation. I feel, given the time we're in, this is the latter.

I really dislike this line of criticism, or any criticism, really, that says a work of art shouldn't be made because of some external factor such as the precise degree of the political climate. It wouldn't be improved by making it explicitly about whatever you think it is secretly about - in fact it wouldn't exist at all. And I don't think this film not existing is preferable to it existing, even if I wasn't a huge fan of it.

[sevendaughters]

I really dislike this line of criticism, or any criticism, really, that says a work of art shouldn't be made because of some external factor such as the precise degree of the political climate. It wouldn't be improved by making it explicitly about whatever you think it is secretly about - in fact it wouldn't exist at all. And I don't think this film not existing is preferable to it existing, even if I wasn't a huge fan of it.

I didn't say it shouldn't be made.

[Mister Six]

Well the implication is that the film fails because it's not trying to do something it was never intended to do. That it would be better if it openly and directly addressed (modern day thing). But in that case it wouldn't exist in this form. So you sort of are.

Unless I've misunderstood you completely, which I might well have done.

[sevendaughters]

Well the implication is that the film fails because it's not trying to do something it was never intended to do. That it would be better if it openly and directly addressed (modern day thing). But in that case it wouldn't exist in this form. So you sort of are.

Unless I've misunderstood you completely, which I might well have done.

That isn't the implication - you have inferred it, but I didn't imply it. The paragraph you highlighted says that some people will see this as a strong reminder of how we culturally screen out trauma, and some will see it as a really annoying device that amounts to some kind of dereliction of duty in favour of bourgeois humanisation. Maybe at another time this might have worked better? I am not some insane Marxist or think of myself as the world's main character - I just thought this was a film with a basic concept that, as you said, did its trick early and didn't know how to end and then did so cheaply. If this helps people remember genocide and work to avoid it, great. I just hope they remember that genocides aren't over.

[Minami Minegishi]

I just hope they remember that genocides aren't over.

I haven't seen the film yet but I'm not sure that your disatisfaction with the film and Glazer's aims are aligning here at all. It sounds like an entirely subjective reading of the film which you did not like.

Given that the overly sentimental award winning films such as Schindler's List and The Pianist have not managed to sway people away from the popular pasttime of genocide, I'm not sure what Glazer is expected to do other than to just keep ploughing ahead with his intermittant film projects. Perhaps that is exactly what we need in these 'times.'

[Mister Six]

some kind of dereliction of duty in favour of bourgeois humanisation

Who do you think is being humanised in this film?

[sevendaughters]

I haven't seen the film yet but I'm not sure that your disatisfaction with the film and Glazer's aims are aligning here at all. It sounds like an entirely subjective reading of the film which you did not like.

Given that the overly sentimental award winning films such as Schindler's List and The Pianist have not managed to sway people away from the popular pasttime of genocide, I'm not sure what Glazer is expected to do other than to just keep ploughing ahead with his intermittant film projects. Perhaps that is exactly what we need in these 'times.'

I don't think Glazer's intentions need be part of my interpretation. So of course it's a subjective reading, that's what engaging with art is.

Maybe it is what we need in these times, maybe I am wrong and it will enhance our collective understanding. I think absolute certainty around subjects like this is dangerous.

Who do you think is being humanised in this film?

Hoess.

Given that 'humanisation' doesn't mean 'absolution' and 'forgiveness', it is quite clear that Hoess is being given a psychological depth that belies his stock-still posture and professional role.

We see him reading stories to his children, riding with his sons, cleaning them after he realises they may have got dead person ash on them, bathing by the lake, stopping to pet a dog in the streets of Berlin, having pleasant reminiscences about holidays at a spa in Italy, having extra-marital affairs, attempting to impress his wife with his ability to politic his way up the chain, and attempt to placate her when her fantasy of bourgeois landowner is challenged. He politely side-steps this to allow her chance to remain, and seeks to win her favour on returning.

The final moment, where he dry heaves and half-throws up, shows the moment where the reality is seeping into an illusion he has carefully maintained through his dealings and his physicality. There is a constant battle between his face, which rarely breaks or gives away his feeling, and the way his body carries and develops stress throughout the film. We see this seeded through small moments, such as him pedantically locking all the doors and shutting all the blinds at night, or having to scrub himself thoroughly after sex.

This is contrasted with his wife as a kind of one-note Nazi Hyacinth Bucket figure, who berates the servants and has small talk about dresses and holidays and casually loots Jewish goods and brags to her mother that she has transcended the humble roots. This juxtaposition is deliberate and carefully-maintained through textual mirroring; as her moral descent continues as does his ascent; as her engagement with the world in appearances grows, his interior questioning grows.

Of course, some of the 'humanising' is made a good deal more complex by what we are hearing, and sometimes seeing within the margins of the frame. But on a character level, it is clear that Hoess is being given a great deal of psychological characteristics that make just reading him as a cold Teutonic architect of slaughter difficult to maintain, and that that complexifying rubs against the simplification of the wife character as an unrepentant harridan whose own mother becomes ashamed of.

Schindler's List's characterisation of Goeth may be cornier and a good deal less complex. But, I think, in terms of transmitting and distilling the relevant characteristics of the holocaust into a cinematic agent or 'antagonist' if you like, I can get on board with it much more easily.

The film is in part based on Martin Amis' novel but it is clear that Hoess' own hastily written and comically penitent memoir has informed some aspects of the film.

[Minami Minegishi]

I don't think Glazer's intentions need be part of my interpretation.

Who on earth suggested it should be?

So of course it's a subjective reading, that's what engaging with art is.

.....

Maybe it is what we need in these times, maybe I am wrong and it will enhance our collective understanding. I think absolute certainty around subjects like this is dangerous.

I have no idea, and I don't care. Hopefully Glazer will also not care.

[twosclues]

Thought this was phenomenal. Completely locks you in. Can't remember the last film with sound design this good (and this horrifying).

[GoblinAhFuckScary]

yup. banger. best sound design. left me utterly wretched

[madhair60]

oh, I don't know why she's leaving
or where she's gonna go
i guess she's got her reasons
but I just don't want to know
cos for twenty-four years
i've been living next door to auschwitz

[thugler]

Managed to get to a preview screening of this.

As others have said, incredible sound design. But had some issues with it overall. A bit one note, very fine actors not given much to do. I completely understand what Glazer was going for, but the film is a little bit slight. The scenes of present day auschwitz were a bit on the nose. Still worth seeing and the odd scene with stunning visual flair, such as the girl dropping off fruit in night vision, which is a bit closer to what I expected from Glazer.
I did come out of this feeling quite nauseous, but has turned out to be actual stomach flu/vomiting disease rather than any lasting impact of the film. Not sure how it really adds much to the many quality films about the Holocaust.

[iamcoop]

I don't think Glazer's intentions need be part of my interpretation. So of course it's a subjective reading, that's what engaging with art is.

Maybe it is what we need in these times, maybe I am wrong and it will enhance our collective understanding. I think absolute certainty around subjects like this is dangerous.

Hoess.

Given that 'humanisation' doesn't mean 'absolution' and 'forgiveness', it is quite clear that Hoess is being given a psychological depth that belies his stock-still posture and professional role.

We see him reading stories to his children, riding with his sons, cleaning them after he realises they may have got dead person ash on them, bathing by the lake, stopping to pet a dog in the streets of Berlin, having pleasant reminiscences about holidays at a spa in Italy, having extra-marital affairs, attempting to impress his wife with his ability to politic his way up the chain, and attempt to placate her when her fantasy of bourgeois landowner is challenged. He politely side-steps this to allow her chance to remain, and seeks to win her favour on returning.

The final moment, where he dry heaves and half-throws up, shows the moment where the reality is seeping into an illusion he has carefully maintained through his dealings and his physicality. There is a constant battle between his face, which rarely breaks or gives away his feeling, and the way his body carries and develops stress throughout the film. We see this seeded through small moments, such as him pedantically locking all the doors and shutting all the blinds at night, or having to scrub himself thoroughly after sex.

This is contrasted with his wife as a kind of one-note Nazi Hyacinth Bucket figure, who berates the servants and has small talk about dresses and holidays and casually loots Jewish goods and brags to her mother that she has transcended the humble roots. This juxtaposition is deliberate and carefully-maintained through textual mirroring; as her moral descent continues as does his ascent; as her engagement with the world in appearances grows, his interior questioning grows.

Of course, some of the 'humanising' is made a good deal more complex by what we are hearing, and sometimes seeing within the margins of the frame. But on a character level, it is clear that Hoess is being given a great deal of psychological characteristics that make just reading him as a cold Teutonic architect of slaughter difficult to maintain, and that that complexifying rubs against the simplification of the wife character as an unrepentant harridan whose own mother becomes ashamed of.

Schindler's List's characterisation of Goeth may be cornier and a good deal less complex. But, I think, in terms of transmitting and distilling the relevant characteristics of the holocaust into a cinematic agent or 'antagonist' if you like, I can get on board with it much more easily.

The film is in part based on Martin Amis' novel but it is clear that Hoess' own hastily written and comically penitent memoir has informed some aspects of the film.

With the greatest of respect I really don't understand your positioning on this at all.

Hoess isn't 'humanised' in the sense that we, as the audience, sympathise with him, or see some extra layer of his persona that makes us understand his drive or motivations.

The fact of the matter is he lived his existence in the shadow of a genocide machine that he was running, whilst ostensibly maintaining the trappings of a 'normal' nuclear family and all that comes with that. This isn't speculative or a flight of fancy, it's what he did.

I also think it encapsulates perfectly the "the holocaust into a cinematic agent or 'antagonist'" (as you put it), as it very accurately portrays the main architects of the holocaust for what they were - cowardly men who were perfectly happy to finely tune the mechanisms of a genocide whilst forcing themselves to turn the other cheek, safe in their little worlds of privilege, that afforded them to avoid the horrific implications of what they were doing.

You clearly had a strong reaction to the film and that's legitimate and valid, but I think your positioning of this as being some sort of failure on Glazer's part seems slightly absurd.

[Mister Six]

Hoess.

Given that 'humanisation' doesn't mean 'absolution' and 'forgiveness', it is quite clear that Hoess is being given a psychological depth that belies his stock-still posture and professional role.

We see him reading stories to his children, riding with his sons, cleaning them after he realises they may have got dead person ash on them, bathing by the lake, stopping to pet a dog in the streets of Berlin, having pleasant reminiscences about holidays at a spa in Italy, having extra-marital affairs, attempting to impress his wife with his ability to politic his way up the chain, and attempt to placate her when her fantasy of bourgeois landowner is challenged. He politely side-steps this to allow her chance to remain, and seeks to win her favour on returning.

The final moment, where he dry heaves and half-throws up, shows the moment where the reality is seeping into an illusion he has carefully maintained through his dealings and his physicality. There is a constant battle between his face, which rarely breaks or gives away his feeling, and the way his body carries and develops stress throughout the film. We see this seeded through small moments, such as him pedantically locking all the doors and shutting all the blinds at night, or having to scrub himself thoroughly after sex.

This is contrasted with his wife as a kind of one-note Nazi Hyacinth Bucket figure, who berates the servants and has small talk about dresses and holidays and casually loots Jewish goods and brags to her mother that she has transcended the humble roots. This juxtaposition is deliberate and carefully-maintained through textual mirroring; as her moral descent continues as does his ascent; as her engagement with the world in appearances grows, his interior questioning grows.

Of course, some of the 'humanising' is made a good deal more complex by what we are hearing, and sometimes seeing within the margins of the frame. But on a character level, it is clear that Hoess is being given a great deal of psychological characteristics that make just reading him as a cold Teutonic architect of slaughter difficult to maintain, and that that complexifying rubs against the simplification of the wife character as an unrepentant harridan whose own mother becomes ashamed of.

Sorry, I totally missed this at the time. As @iamcoop says, a lot of this stuff is simply what happened: he had kids, he did raise them in that house, he was - according to his own daughter - "the nicest father in the world".

I understand why you might not want to see that level of complexity, but as iamcoop says, that's not Glazer's failing. And as noted in the article I linked to there, per the man who interviewed Hoess's daughter (and whose own grand-uncle captured Hoess): "What I found is that a single person can be both [a man and a monster], and that's frightening. It could happen again, and that's why we need to be vigilant."

I don't think pretending that the Nazis - or their modern-day ideological descendants - were/are all dead-eyed psycho killers is at all helpful in any way.