The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)

[Blip Martindale]

Can you chill? You’re being unnecessarily combative and aggressive with these posts. If you can’t handle a little bit of pushback on your strongly expressed opinions, this is perhaps not the right forum for them.

The Reader is notable for having a very good-looking cast, toplined by Kate Winslet as a Nazi guard.

Aggressive towards whom? The Nazis in question?

If I was uglier would it make my posts less combative and more relatable? "Banality of Evil" and all that rote jazz?

[swo17]

I'm just gonna sit here and pretend this discussion isn't happening right next to where I live

[The Curious Sofa]

Considering how this is going I should have recommend Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS instead.

[therewillbeblus]

Or The Night Porter

[copen]

i'll break my rule of not posting on forums by saying that: i'm a big fan of Glazer's sexy beast and Under the Skin, (but not Birth).
i found The Zone of Interest to be absolutely disgusting.
i can't believe he wasted like 5 years of his life making this crap.

[furbicide]

What disgusted you about it?

I had some issues with the film (articulated earlier in the thread), but I will say that I found it conceptually unimpeachable – I mean, sure, if there had never been a film about the camps before and this was the first one, you might justifiably ask, “Seriously? You chose to focus on this?” But the film doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and I think Glazer (reasonably) expects viewers to be coming in with a certain degree of literacy about this. Here, he’s showing us another side of the polyhedron, and that helps complete the picture.

We can’t fully understand atrocity without having some insight into the psychology of the people who perpetrate it, and that’s a perfectly worthwhile subject of exclusive cinematic exploration in my view.

I guess I’d be interested to hear if you agree with all of that in theory but had a problem with the execution.

[copen]

i think jewish people probably have a different aspect of looking at something like this. it's like watching Shoah for 24 hours straight.
i was really looking forward to his next film; then became very doubtful when hearing that it's about nazis. do we need this film to exist? is it an interesting film? i think the answer to both is a definite 'no'.
for some reason, in retrospect, this thing reminds me of pasolini's 120 salo/sodom.

[therewillbeblus]

I wouldn't generalize that to being Jewish though, since one's specific social context plays a key role. My experience is (also!) anecdotal and shouldn't be generalized, but this is the first negative reaction I've heard from someone I know who does identify as Jewish! I saw this in a city known for (and at a theatre frequented by) its predominately Jewish population, with my Jewish and Israeli friend whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors, and I come from a town where every single person I associated with beyond some immediate family members were Jewish until I entered high school (most with familial ties to the Holocaust, an incredibly sensitive subject matter permeating my life growing up, that I couldn't fully grasp - and still, obviously, can't) - and I continue to live in that neighboring community. Not a single reaction has not been 'positive' (read: affecting, with admiration) by friends, family, or clients who've approached me in therapy sessions. I've initiated none of these communications, and have urged nobody to go see this, for a variety of reasons - but mostly because I wasn't enamored with it and have other recs that feel safer and I'm prioritizing. So, at least from my sample in the Boston area, that doesn't hold water.

Also, IFF Boston partnered with the Boston Jewish Film Festival to put it on here for an advanced free festival screening, and I believe they were the group organizing the screening (and it may have been part of their festival, or 'series'). The rows in front of my were volunteers of that festival group, and a few (most likely Jewish, considering this was a section for volunteer positions in a dominant Jewish community) nodded off and began snoring. So, a couple different reactions other than disgusted anger. Your response is equally valid, of course, just not necessarily a representative one.

But the Pasolini comparison gives a good sense of where you're coming from and what you're looking to get (or, not get) out of cinema, perhaps? That film wasn't made to just shock on a surface level, it was made with urgency to shock, like a trauma response sublimated into a sociopolitical ethos against the experience of fascist oppression. I totally get the reaction of, "I don't care, because the surface level is so repulsive" but that reaction should be owned as subjective to personal taste and triggers beyond demographic membership.

[erok910]

Don't want to talk about it much, but I'm Jewish. Don't know about disgusting, but also don't feel the same as some do about Shoah. I think some people take the word 'gimmick' the wrong way. But movies generally use gimmicks, or narrative through lines, story, etc. It was trying to be provocative, whether or not it was, 'it said something,' and I thought it was fine how he felt serious about it. But when it comes to discourse, it might be more advantageous to talk to someone like Haneke about this. (In film terms, of course) I mean, in cinema terms, like Schindler's List or Downfall or whatever holocaust based films: I like to imagine they were trying to get at something more than a history lesson. Even Shoah, where Lanzmann insists on it being very clear his specific intent, I like to think I have agency.

But like Haneke, sometimes I feel there's a waste when trying to understand certain figures or atrocities. Either way, I don't see the interest in being disgusted by films, definitely not this one. Having said that, there are a few films I get a bit 'disgusted' by. So.. What are ya gonna do? "Do we need this to exist?"... I mean, "Do we need art?" I'd say it's a resounding yes to the latter. But can't see a problem with saying the same to former, honestly. I guess I just don't get it. Love the discussion though.

[copen]

ok, putting most things aside. isn't this just 2 hours of a guy's home life, with several brief detours into nazi-land.
is that supposed to be interesting? i watch movies to be entertained by a good story, and this one is far from fitting into that criteria.
another thing this reminds me of is tarantino/death proof. where you're kind of wondering why a director that you like, would waste 'years' of his life, and 2 hours of yours to bring you this uninteresting piece of cinema.
and no, i don't need to see what the nazis mindset was. i think we can pretty much gather that info without ever having seen this movie. it's like sitting in a room listening to a crazy person for 2 hours. no thanks.

[tenia]

I never looked once at my watch during The Zone of Interest.
As for "it's boring and pointless" : I think there are enough analytic posts here (and elsewhere) showing how this movie can be intellectually and emotionnally stimulating.
If you didn't like it (though I'm unsure you watched it), fine, but it looks like you're trying to make it a way more general reaction than you should because again, this topic alone provides plenty of answers about how is the movie interesting.

And as for the whole "Jewish people and this movie", isn't Glazer Jewish to begin with ?

[The Curious Sofa]

Glazer is indeed Jewish, just the name should be a hint. This reasoning along the lines of "what would Jewish people think" is always reductive, as if the opinion of a member of an ethnic or persecuted group speaks for all of them and is determined by nothing but them belonging to that group. Arguing that a film isn't worthwhile simply because it's about Nazis argues for not keeping history alive and "brief detours into nazi-land" is a weird misreading of the film. As if the home that Hedwig Höss treasures so much wasn't in "nazi-land", the entire point is that in "nazi-land" this mundane idyl could exist next door to hell.

[furbicide]

Yep.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2024/ ... interview/

Glazer’s ancestors came to the UK in the 1900s, from what was then Bessarabia, to escape the Kish­i­nev pogroms, and his upbringing in the north London suburb of Hadley Wood was Reform Jewish, “syn­a­gogue three times a year, and Friday-night dinners every week”. Thanks to his father’s beloved VHS rec­order, film was a constant presence. “Sydney Pollack, Sidney Lumet, Billy Wilder, they were all absorbed, cross-legged on the floor beside his armchair,” he says. But he was left to discover the Holocaust on his own, through articles in his parents’ copies of National Geographic and Time. “Some Jewish families talk about it openly and go and visit the sites; and others stay away, because it’s just too painful. For my family, it was the second of those,” says Glazer. “And that was that.”

Growing up, did he feel vulner­able because of his heritage? “I mean, it was the 1970s, so there were a lot of skinheads about. When you left school, you’d put your blazer and your tie in your bag before getting on the bus home. So, not overwhelmingly. But you’re conscious of it. You’re aware that you’re thought of as different.”

I can imagine the film could have been perceived as a little more controversial if that hadn't been the case. But I also think standpoint epistemology only goes so far and, while I'd of course be interested in a Jewish critic's thoughts on the film through that frame of reference, I also take it as a given that there's going to be a broad diversity of reactions in any given sample. I can't imagine this film being as divisive as Schindler's List, for instance.

(Edit: sorry, wrote this before seeing The Curious Sofa's response above!)

[therewillbeblus]

Speaking of demographic assumptions and comparisons to Schindler's List, Spielberg reportedly declared Zone of Interest as “the best Holocaust movie I’ve witnessed since my own.”

[pistolwink]

That's a weird quote in a number of ways.

[therewillbeblus]

I’m surprised it took someone three days to say so!

[furbicide]

Sounds like he’s just really proud of Schindler’s List and still rates it to this day. I guess false modesty isn’t Spielberg’s thing!

[therewillbeblus]

At the same time, I imagine he feels like he has to list an asterisk that it’s the best next to a film that tracks Jewish experience first, but yeah, he could’ve listed any number of those better than his own. Though I imagine it was probably framed as a joke

[colinr0380]

There I was thinking he was talking about Indiana Jones.

[swo17]

I imagine it was probably framed as a joke

He's often called Schindler's List the best film he's ever made. I assume he was being sincere

[therewillbeblus]

I imagine it was probably framed as a joke

He's often called Schindler's List the best film he's ever made. I assume he was being sincere

Me too, but knowing Spielberg he probably phrased it as a joke, even if it's really a strategy to safely deprecate his ego while flaunting it. I can't imagine him saying that to an interviewer with a straight face.

[Maltic]

Speaking of demographic assumptions and comparisons to Schindler's List, Spielberg reportedly declared Zone of Interest as “the best Holocaust movie I’ve witnessed since my own.”

I would've thought you could "witness" only films, not movies, in Spielberg parlance.

[beamish14]

Sounds like he’s just really proud of Schindler’s List and still rates it to this day. I guess false modesty isn’t Spielberg’s thing!

He submitted a copy of the film to Cal State Long Beach in order to procure the BA degree he abandoned in the 60’s

[hearthesilence]

It's not really a surprise - Spielberg has never been shy about his ego. Don't forget he had a camera crew ready to film the Oscar nominations for 1975 and he didn't hide his feelings when he thought the Academy gave his deserving nomination to Fellini. Years later (probably after he finally won) he was on Oprah to promote another film and she asked him if he was angry that he was overlooked for The Color Purple - without hesitation, he immediately said "I was PISSED." It's not flattering but then again most Hollywood directors would likely be that way when they've had his massive success.

[beamish14]

It's not really a surprise - Spielberg has never been shy about his ego. Don't forget he had a camera crew ready to film the Oscar nominations for 1975 and he didn't hide his feelings when he thought the Academy gave his deserving nomination to Fellini. Years later (probably after he finally won) he was on Oprah to promote another film and she asked him if he was angry that he was overlooked for The Color Purple - without hesitation, he immediately said "I was PISSED." It's not flattering but then again most Hollywood directors would likely be that way when they've had his massive success.

“I can’t believe they gave it to Fellini” should become a meme. He actually sent Fellini a sweet letter after it was announced that he was getting an Honorary Oscar that is in a biography on him.

Spielberg is also infamous for making his name on the films he’s produced larger than that of the directors, which actually lead to a fine from the DGA.