OMG, a Zone of Interest and Jojo Rabbit double feature. I’m not even sure if I’m horrified or delighted.
This movie is unsettling to say the least. Gave me some chills.
The scene that got me was just a cut to an up angled shot of Rudolf Höss’s face just looking. You only see his face, but hear everything else.
Opinion: ‘The Zone of Interest’ — a Holocaust movie without Jews | CNN
“The Zone of Interest” will certainly appeal to those who admire the aesthetics of Nazism: the striking uniforms, the distinctive “fashy” (short for fascist) haircuts, the nice animals. It will also appeal to people who like gardening.
Huh, wonder why CNN waited four months after release to run an incredibly petty negative review.
I’m guessing that’s an editorial about Glazer’s comments more than a review of the movie, but I’m not interested enough to click on it. :)
I’m struggling with this whole issue, in that I’m not sure if I admire Glazer more for his comments during the Oscars or for the brilliant Zone of Interest, which I couldn’t stand. Real horns of dilemma here!
It’s anger over the comments but expressed entirely through embarrassing film criticism
“The Zone of Interest” is rather tedious as a film. It barely has a plot, and the conversations and daily routines are repetitious. Several scenes will leave viewers confused, such as the one where Höss finds a jawbone while fishing in the river and drags his kids out of the water. I would not have known what was happening except I had previously read in a review that there are supposedly human remains being dumped in the river.
Lol, having read nothing about the film, other than it was about the family of a concentration camp officer, I knew exactly what was happening when he found the jawbone and screamed at his kids to get out of the water. If they are dumping bodies in the water, it could be contaminated with all sorts of diseases, so he got the kids home, and they had a scene where they were being vigorously scrubbed and cleaned to the point of tears.
Like, people aren’t dumb. Context clues.
As for Glazer’s comments at the Oscars, people taking those negatively need to get their head checked. His comments are “killing people is bad, no matter what justification you put in your head about it being “ok””, the movie was about that.
Media literacy is dead.
How did the human bones get in the river? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the concentration camp literally next door have something to do with it? Did they really need a scene explicitly showing the dumping to understand that?
It’s not often that I use “this person did not understand the movie” as a rebuttal to a critic, but I think it’s appropriate here.
Well, I think we are part of the backlash timeline where people come in and decide that this universally well liked movie was, in fact, actually bad. Couple that with people that will go in with bad faith interpretations of the movie based on the “controversial” comments that Glazer made at the Oscars that “dehumanizing people is bad”, you get stuff that is just dumb.
Glazer was fairly courageous saying what he said, and fairly smart for not talking to anyone about his comments afterwards. People can react however they want, when they die down, the movie will stand on its own merits, and history will be the judge of the current conflict in Gaza.
It’s not that Glazer was talking about dehumanizing conflict or whatever–he did it by qualifying it by his rejection of being a Jew. If he had just talked about a cessation of hostilities and a release of hostages, that would have gone over quite a bit better. But by saying, “Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an [occupation]”, he corners the blame for the conflict solely resting in Israel’s corner. You don’t see Palestinians doing the same for October 7, or any other of the hundreds of terrorist attacks over the years.
— Alan
“Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza — all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”
You have a lot of people, in bad faith, pushing an agenda that twist his words, and forget that he also blames Hamas for the dehumanization of Jewish civilians as part of the Oct 7th attacks.
Tony Kushner (Angels in America playwright) has made a statement, that I pretty much think is bang on
“What he was saying is so, is so simple, He’s saying Jewishness, Jewish identity, Jewish history, the history of the Holocaust, the history of Jewish suffering, must not be used as an excuse for a project of dehumanizing or slaughtering other people. This is a misappropriation of what it means to be a Jew, what the Holocaust meant, and he rejects that.”
He added, “Who doesn’t agree with that? What kind of person thinks that what’s going on now in Gaza is acceptable?”
I haven’t clicked any of those stories, but my guess is that the misquoting is people who claim Glazer refuted his Jewishness. He did no such thing. He refuted a “hijacking”, not his or anyone else’s “Jewishness”.
More info on the subject of those night vision scenes.
Glazer, who met Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk before her death in 2016, carefully modeled the film’s character on her, going as far as to use her actual bicycle and dress for the actress on screen.
Pretty incredible, that those artifacts from her heroic acts were used in the film.
They took their sweet time, but here’s the backlash to the backlash:
The statement they signed:
I know it’s been discussed in P&R, but the latest atrocity with the aid workers has really pulled some weight in public opinion.
Ah, I bet you’re right! I hadn’t made the connection, but that does explain a new willingness to say things critical about Israel.
My god. The sound design of this film.
Absolutely terrifying.
Yeah, read about how they did the background noise too, meticulously researched to sound as accurate as possible. Like right down to guard reports and known incidents in the camp.
It will be a long time before I’ll be able to stop thinking about this.
I know it. This movie is so haunting. It continues to follow you long after you’ve watched it.
I’m willing to bet Chuck Norris only had one nightmare, and it was after he watched The Zone of Interest.