The Zone Of Interest | Review (Is Evil Ordinary?)
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- Опубліковано 11 лис 2024
- Jonathan Glazer's fourth feature looks into the "Banality of Evil" and shows us the evil in the ordinary.
5/5
Companion Films:
Under the Skin - Jonathan Glazer
Shoah - Claude Lanzmann
Twitter: / harrisonferger
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You can tell what attracted glazer to the film and location becuase of how this house is the perfect metaphor for planet earth. Life and death happening at once. Heaven and hell happening at once. The garden of Eden and gates of hell next door to each other. A greenhouse on one side of wall that promotes growth of life while another building across the wall promotes death and carnage . The sounds of birds chirping clashing with sounds of screaming and crying, images of children playing while children being separated on other side of wall. Look at the flowers look at your man made pool, play with the dog. What’s that over the wall? Nothing… why do you care? It’s their fault not yours according to your family. Sorry to be so graphic but glazer just puts it all out there. People always ask how people sit around all day and not doing anything to stop atrocities … this family was RIGHT NEXT DOOR FOR A LONG TIME and their mind did not change… will we? I also love how after seeing the film 4 times I notice that hoss might have had the 0.00001 percent of knowledge or self denial about what he is doing. The first scene shows him in bed looking into distance as if something is not right, him not wanting his children to see any bones from his work, and his inner soul rejecting his body as he tries to throw up any of the evil in his body but he cant
Absolutely true on the dichotomy
Of the garden and the camp (love the biblical allusion.) I know that before writing it, the entire story was made in his head while walking around the real house. Incredible insight. Thanks for your thoughts!
Yeah I thought it seemed significant that he was unable to really expel anything after all that retching
i felt that was his soul rejecting his body as well! but also maybe sickness from living so close to the smoke
well said - two times viewing for I , so far
I don’t know about the high minded stuff about him ignoring this when he should have acted, Höss was a committed Nazi since their foundation. He murdered for them even before they came to power. He wasn’t a cog, he was a fanatical instigator.
Great video.
I loved the movie and it is important. That ending was great, where it does a few things at once, it show's (in my interpretation) the Höss's unconcious humanity bubbling up and causing a physical reaction. Him almost looking into the void at what his work accomplished & how it's preserved. While at the same time reminding the audience, "this happened" and almost poking us and asking, "what atrocities are happening in your backyard?"
Great, slow, layered, and masterfully crafted. It's my favorite film of the year and I hope it upsets Oppenheimer for Best Picture or at the bare minimum wins best sound.
Thanks, and I love your take on the ending! I would be cool with it upsetting Oppenheimer and it for sure deserves sound!
I am so glad I watched this film. It makes me introspective.
01:25 "Glazer attacks our apathy" SO accurate.
Thank you for the insight about the beginning of the film... a long passage of darkness and only sound... signaling this film is going to draw on atmosphere, on listening and hearing. Listen closely. I'm glad I went to a theater with good acoustics - it made a great impact.
Glad you enjoyed it!
He did a similar thing in his film Under The Skin. It is a great film too. Scarlett Johansen is in it. She is such an underrated actress . She is fantastic in Jo Jo Rabbit too. A film by. the director who created What we do in the shadows. Taika Watiti.
I felt like I was still in the film several hours after it ended. brilliant film.
Nice commentary and information. I’d like to add that while the girl plays the song she found from the prisoner; their voiceless lyrics play out across the bottom of the screen as subtitles. Once again, in a new context, Glazer finds a way to devastate us with what we’re denied, not what we’re presented with.
Thanks! Love that detail.
Loved your take on this, and I agree. Spoilers here, but I almost saw this also a death of hope, the poem where they talk about the flags of freedom coming in one day, the grandmother leaving (which you hope would make Hedwig see her life for what it is, but she just burns the note), the llitle girl leaving the apples in ashes, I kept hoping that one of the family would break through and show some humanity, but then Hoss can't even vomit when he realises what he's doing, he just can't muster up that empathy, that paralleled with his son locking his little brother in the greenhouse, making the hissing sound of the gas in the camp to torment him shows how the poison drips through, and the impact that this seemingly 'ordinary' life actually has on all of them, and the death of hope.
Thanks! Great read on the older brother’s actions against his brother.
This movie resonated a lot with me since much of my family lived in Germany during the Hitler regime and in Japanese-occupied Philippines. The thermal camera shots of the Polish girl hit me since total darkness was a time of security and freedom for oppressed civilians during the war.
I just saw Zone of Interest and couldn't agree more with your excellent take. The more I think about it, the more I realize there were almost two movies at play...the one on the screen, and the one happening in my own mind. The only film I can compare the type of deep rooted, deadening impact to this one is Come and See.
Thanks! Definitely an interesting comparison with Come and See.
It was quite the atmospheric film. Something I have never seen before.
Same. I felt wrong for breathing because it might be distracting 😂
@@viewsfromtheloge Haha you would have probably died! Man I feel like I have to watch this movie again!
I really liked that they included the story of Hans and Grethe - a fairy tale where two children gets lured by a witch, but they end up burning the witch (a jew) in an oven and steal the witch's treasure (invasion of countries) in order to fight "the evil" and they live happily ever after. It's a nazi's narrative and can be applied to the characters in the story who wants to vision themself living an utopian luxury life, but their fantasy will remain only a fairy tale after all.
Definitely something to look for on 2nd watch. Great read!
What a chilling movie. It's somber and we should be deadly serious about the holocaust and any horrorrs of human cruelty, with no need to see them enacted (which i personally find voyaristic) . Yes we need to see cruelty as acts that happen within a context that deems them necessary and normal (the engineers discuss the incinerators as any machine to improve a process, this time we know the process is about killing people)
It's chilling because we don't see the people but remains of their lives, being repossessed by others, like something normal (a bag with personal irems being distributed like new pieces of lingerie- take only one!)
The style of the movie is a work of art , those scenes of the girl living fruits are both haunting , just like a fairy tale told to children, and contrast the indifference of the hoss family. The girl was a real person, died recently, and so was the piece of music that she found, and the man who reads the poem, who survived the camp.
The ending took my breath away.
This movie to me is so incredibly touching and so sadly human. It looks straight back at the viewer, saying that we could be , and maybe are, that happy family, to the detriment of others. Only history will judge eventually
Thanks for reviewing the movie
I am suggesting it only to a few friends.
Thanks for your thoughts
The outstanding book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” reveals the banality of evil. Ditto the book Hoss wrote before he was executed.
Great review video. Very well said. It has been 24 hours since I saw this film and I cannot stop thinking about it. This video shed some light on some aspects of the film that I didn't think about.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
I saw Shoah decades ago in Canada…. Has always stayed with me…. Absolutely must be seen. Thanks for giving it a mention.
Wish I could see it in a theater! Glad I could recommend it!
Really a masterpiece of cinema, I was really Impressed. It’s not a traditional film people think of, that’s why most people won’t understand this.
Absolutely! Already seen some wild takes. Asks a lot of the viewer for a movie that many people will see because of the Oscar nom.
The worst part was for me realising the behavior of other people who pass by after watching this film. they didnt show any sign of irritation or nerves, somebody even smile! i was speechless for a moment and crying without any control...
Thank you (and by the way your background of "normality" with the cat walking around, is quite interesting). I think Spielberg with "Schindler's List" tried to touch a specific audience: the mainstream Americans (who do not know much about the Holocaust and do not feel it as we do in Europe where it did happen in our backyard.) So for that he did indeed create a masterpiece of its kind. Claude Lanzmann's Shoah is the best documentary ever done on the topic. He is very dry and keeps asking embarrassing questions with details that sometimes the interpreters have a hard time translating. The eyewitnesses are so touching (particularly the Israeli barber in Tel Aviv who was cutting the hair of women in Auschwitz before they went to the gas chamber, and one day recognized his aunts (if I remember well) and took, therefore, a few seconds more to cut their hair because he was not allowed to talk to them... and started to cry while telling Lanzmann the story. I wrote a few comments in a chat online about some impressions about details in The Zone Of Interest I would like to share with you... Let me know if you would be interested and if you want me to post them here.
One could say that Greta 🐈⬛ and Dougie 🐈 help expose my own normalcy. lol. Absolutely agree on your Schindler’s List take as well as Shoah. I always love to hear what others have to say about movies so always feel free to share. The benefit of UA-cam is the open forum!
@@viewsfromtheloge i have also a 🐈⬛. Guizmo. A Russian blue. I can relate haha. I will send you my comment about the movie here
Here are my reflections about some details of the movie: "The presence of the dog in almost all the scenes is quite noticeable. (I am a painter so the visual effect was important to me). It is like a black shadow walking around and rarely interacting with the people. I believe Hoss intentionally touches the dog only once in the movie, around the beginning. The contrast of this black "shadow' walking around is so obvious with the people dressed often in light or white clothes. (I was always following the moves of the dog) The dog is nervous too (at one point he tries to enter a room and quickly turns around and leaves). He was always walking around confused like he did not know what to do. This dog may symbolize their darkest thoughts, their past "conscience" trying to remind them of the horror of the context they are living in, but they had chosen to ignore it to ease their daily routine. I did think about that particularly when, close to the end of the movie, Hoss met this lady walking her dog and he had a little dialogue with her. He just mentioned that the lady's dog reminds him of the dog he had in his childhood, but he never mentioned the dog of the camp. (He even did pet the lady's dog with affection) It was safe for him to refer to the past when he was still living in a state of innocence. Also, dogs have better hearing than humans, and for him gunshots, screaming, the sound of the trains, and else, were not just in the background. He was constantly aware of what was happening behind that wall. At the same time, the people (including the audience in the theater) had to really listen to the audio of the background (pretty much like the grandmother visiting and trying to figure out what was happening on the other side while her daughter was describing the plants in the garden.) The Hoss family just turned off their ears to those sounds. Their "new" conscience" became callous...Of course, I believe that was intentional by the director to have this dog walking around in almost all scenes and give this impression of confusion. For a movie of that nature, I think all the details were carefully chosen: all the men in black bathing suits at the swimming scene increasing the whiteness of their skin, the nervousness of the grandmother right from the beginning of her visit (in what bed should I sleep? Is that the camp wall?) The people at the Nazis party at one point in an overcrowded corridor, confused as to where to go: left or right, and older characters looking a bit lost (when just after that Hoss thought about how to gas so many people in one room with such a high ceiling), the children screams in the pool mixed with the screams in the background camp, the wife upset at the husband and trying to follow him, exiting the garden and walking along the walls of the camp to join him at the river (an amazing visual scene), the pair of shoes left on the pier that Hoss picks up after the conversation he had with his wife near the river (after the story of the man drowned because of an argument for an apple), the very long "tunnel" Hoss takes to go to some kind of underground bathroom to wash his penis after his had sex with this camp prisoner, etc, etc
The cat! Besides the magnificent review the cat is beyond adorable, Which is absolutely needed for this specific movie analysis! The constant dread throughout the film for 1:43 can only be eased by a peaceful cat!
The Cat transcends space and time to comfort. ❤️
I absolutely loved your review on this movie, and recommendation for under the skin. I agreed 200% what you said. Thank you for making this video
Thanks so much!
Good review. Birth is also terrific from Glazer.
Thanks! I watched both his short film, The Fall and Birth recently!
good review. best of luck with your channel.
Thanks!
Not to make light but your cat is so cute in the background.
Greta is the best. ❤️
there is no evil, there is only fear
Personally I felt that this movie could have gone a little more 'under the skin', I missed some of the tension, on the other hand it definitely keeps you thinking about it. I wanted to see even more how they lived in true denial, by showing only glimpses of the reality next door it appears as if they weren't making a big effort to cancel all the obvious information they received through their senses. Or maybe that is the point, they were seamingly oblivious to the suffering all these people had to endure, because they felt entitled to their realm of happiness.
Spoiler alert:
I liked in the end how the modern day cleaners are also living in their own zone of interest. They do the job, cleaning the remnants of the victims' lives, but don't pay much attention to the environment they are working in. Also, as tourists we have the privilege of visiting these spaces, briefly experiencing the horror, but can return to our comfortable lives soon after. In addition, it's as if Rudolf Höss becomes aware of his terrible legacy in that moment, as if he has a vision of the future, but takes a deep breath to continue his mission.
' Passenger ' an unfinished film by the Polish director Munk equally works on the edges of ultimate horror; the scene of a small girl patting the head of an Alsation dog on the way to the gas chamber. The guard looks ' lovingly ' at her. It is all Hannah Arendt had to say in a few seconds.
I’ve never heard of this work but I certainly will look into it. Thank you.
I much prefer this to under the skin but i think maybe i could give under the skin another shot
Great review, also your cats are amazing and distracting 😂
One might say that Greta 🐈⬛ and Dougie 🐈 help break the artifice of the video
the acting was incredible too but no one talks about it. the director was clear the star but none of it succeeds without those performances
Yeah, it can be hard to talk about acting in films like this. So much of the performance is physical and quiet. The moment the married couple spends together talking is very unnerving (especially Huller.)
interesting film, so slow but yes the contrast with nearby concentration camp is clear, was lacking something for us tho....
I was considering adding a small pool in our backyard to have fun with the kids…..this movie ended that for me. How can I have that level of fun when I know people all over the world are enduring horrors. This movie changed me.
I think he was retching because the enormity of the job,the pressure he would be under, dawned on him. Not because of the task itself
Man I love this video , great work. What background music did you use for the first few minutes?
Thanks! Just some stock sounds I had access to.
It makes me furious that this film is NOT AVAILABLE for everyone to watch. It should be released to every damn theater in the US and the world !!! Not to just a few theaters. I live in Monroe Louisiana & it is not coming here 😡😡😡
The recent strategies of film distribution is absolutely maddening. As someone who is lucky enough to have a great local art house, I feel for anyone who doesn’t have access to great movies like this.
oOo...a kitty
: Me every time I see my own cat
Lanzmann is not a reference in himself. He was a fervent promoter of bullfighting. Either we are against all forms of barbarism, or we are not. Moreover, his friends such as Simone de Beauvoir and her friend Sartre adored Stalin. Part of things must therefore be done. This too is the banality of evil and is to be reminded as well
While I Don’t know a ton about Lanzmann. I only promoted his film “Shoah.” Along side this piece. Art is not solely representative of the artist and I believe that “Shoah” is a powerful documentary film.
dude can someone please tell me what that weird bass sound was during the thermal scenes?
*Johnnie Burns and Mica Levi*
i like it, keep up :)
Thanks!
My question is this: If the film is not intended as 'entertainment' (and I certainly don't think a subject as serious as the Holocaust should ever be 'entertaining'), then why not just watch a documentary or read a book about it? What is the purpose of turning the Holocaust into a piece of art? Doesn't that automatically diminish its importance?
Great question!
The way I see it, Film is Art. Art is not solely for entertainment. Art explores the philosophical, morality, the spiritual, the physical world and the artistic world, etc. Most of the time we are told that “movies are just entertainment” and I think this diminishing the medium and the extent to which it goes.
Also Glazer is not turning the Holocaust into art. He is looking at those who enacted it. He (wisely in my opinion,) chooses to not show the horrors of the camps visually to avoid both the impossibility of replicating the horrors but also focusing on what he sees as the basis in which this genocide (and in modern society) can occur.
Art is not a replication. It can never fulfill the reality we live in. Art that solely acts as replication is worthless because it can never replicate it. No form of art can ever allow you to experience the reality of Auschwitz. I think this is partly what Glazer is doing in the footage of modern day at the end of the film.
Hope that answers your question
Arte não é só entretenimento, é questionamento, é provocacão.
I watched this film last weekend. And haven't stopped thinking about it for 4 days now.
On an unrelated note.. To the person sitting next to me in the cinema, who brought popcorn. I hope something had happened to him on the way home.
Certainly not a “snack” movie
I can understand you. Your cinema neighbour ruined the sound of the movie.
@@zanechi I didn't know it then.. But yeah, the sound is probably twice as important as the image of the film.
And it's not a Popsy McMarvel film when there will be 5 minutes of mindless robots punching each other... Shame.. I'm sure i'll watch it again.
Ngl I had the cinema to myself when I watched the film and it was great being able to noisily eat popcorn in that scenario.
Let's face it that we are all evil and we are proud of it. When we are confronted by vegans, we respond by eating meat in front of them. We won't care about the suffering of animals.
I don't consider The Zone of Interest to be about apathy because Höss is anything but apathetic. He is an active and enthusiastic participant in the Holocaust and he is responsible for running a camp that slaughtered over a million people. I also don't see anything modern about the film - nothing today can even remotely compare to the scale and brutality of the Holocaust, what's happening in Ukraine and Gaza are nothing in comparison. I think this film focuses on the contrast between the everyday life in the Höss home and the brutalities occuring on the other side of the wall to show, first of all, how unimaginably evil the Nazis were, and at the same time, that this kind of evil can exist in humans who on a very surface level, otherwise seem to live normal lives. It is a testament to true evil as a feature of humanity, as something that can be normalized.
ap·a·thy
noun
lack of interest
Glazer is attacking our apathy. Certainly Hoss and all of these people were responsible and active participants. No one is saying otherwise. It’s just work to him. It’s just everyday life for his family. That is the particular evil that the film is looking at. How they normalize this atrocity. They build a wall and put a garden next to it to normalize it.
This is not about the system of the Holocaust. This is about the life just outside the camp and the people who perpetuate the genocide. We are aware of the evils that occur in our world through 24/7 news and social media yet we build a “wall” of APATHY to block out the images and the noise of what is all too obvious. That is what is modern about the film. If the movie was just, “Nazi bad” then it would be a pretty shit movie. To read it as just that would diminish the work of art that this is. The world of Fascism is still effecting our daily lives. To ignore it is to do the same as the Hoss family. People are not numbers and evil is evil.
@@viewsfromtheloge I respect your point of view and it's a fair reading of the film but I disagree. Evil is evil, but harassment is not r@pe and manslaughter is not murder. It's not just numbers. What struck me the most about the film was how alien and different the Nazis were from us, rather than how similar they are to us. What's the message of Shoah if not a form of "Nazis bad?" The Zone of Interest found a bone-chilling and revolutionary way to bring the horrors of the Holocaust to life. Höss didn't build a wall with Auschwitz because he was uncomfortable with his actions and wanted to block out his conscience - he was very comfortable with his actions, and that's part of what him the epitome of evil. I don't think the only point of the film is to show the evil of the Nazis in a new way, but it is a very important point. A message that says everything is the Holocaust might feel more relevant, and it's easy to do, but it's wrong. I think The Zone of Interest is a film that responsibly depicts the true scale and depravity of the Holocaust rather than equating it with whatever happens to be topping the headlines in a particular year.
Thanks for considering over 10,000 children and almost 30,000 civilians murdered in a few months “nothing”. Self reflect on that.
If you don’t see the parallel. Think again. Even worse, it’s being done in the name of Judaism.
Wonderfully said 👏
This movie was so boring. It started out cool, and interesting to watch. Then I realized that this was just like watching a simulator.
Tried to watch. Alas the editing was so jarring, I have to stop.
Part of what I hope to do with the videos I make is express my feelings through my writing and also sound and editing.
zis this about Gaza?
I enjoyed your analysis very much, but the constant editing cuts throughout are incredibly distracting. Is it an intentional style? Finally had to stop watching and listened to it as if it were a podcast.
I try to use all of my tools given to me to express the feelings and thoughts I had on the film. Next time I’ll put a warning if I use flashing effects.
I don't agree. People saying this film is more horrifying than actual depictions of the horror don't make sense to me. The scenes in Schindler's List were way more horrifying than watching a family living their life.
How one depicts trauma and horrific events is always up for debate. I think both are powerful looks at the horrors of the Holocaust. Spielberg uses classic Hollywood style and techniques to pull out drama. Glazer removes his own voice visually and relies on the drama between you and the screen and the sounds. He’s playing on your knowledge and showing you the callous nature in which these people lived. Both are doing two different things. Both are completely effective. I just found the atmosphere much more unnerving. I think it’s impossible to fully experience what others go through (particularly in something as horrific as genocide.) Glazer instead focuses on what he sees as the foundation of the evil. A family who is just doing “their jobs” and trying to live an easy and rich life.
I thought this movie was more horrific imo. . There is one scene where hoss is on horse inside the camp. Its only a few seconds but my god🤢
This is the point of the movie, it doesn’t want to show you the horror, but rather the horror of the perpetrators. The film doesn’t care if you find it horrific or not.
This is a horrible take.
👍🏻