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Wow! Your take is
bewildering to me!
I left the theater completely in shambles, cried in my car for several minutes and carried about my day feeling heavy in heart.
It is generally accepted
that what makes scary movies, well, scary, is the buildup and
concealment of the monster itself. The ick that lurks is that which
makes our hair stand on end... It's the shadowy imaginings and personal fears
you attribute to the thing that makes it all the more terrifying. When the
monster is finally revealed, the jig is up, you're faced with whatever the
villain may be, fangs et al, and by way of exposure, fear fades because it can
be dealt with. I thought it was quite compelling that was all flipped on
its head, in The Zone of Interest.
What I found impeccably
horrifying about the film is knowing the absolute terror that is going on just
off set, beyond the barbed wire. The auteur assumes we all understand just
how unequivocally despicable the Holocaust was. We know this truth as
self-evident; we feel it’s reverb to this very day. Therefore, we need
not see the literal suffering of Jews on screen, one might even argue it would
be retraumatizing and exploitative of the Jewish victim identity, the boy
in the striped pajamas is burned into our brains, already. I thought it
was highly strategic to design a film from this new perspective, and I disagree
with your sentiment that it is a sanitation. The director is a Jewish man who
spent 10 years making a movie about the Holocaust. It is his ability to portray
the villains as basically relatable by way of homelife simplicity that makes
for such an earth-shattering story - its thesis is about the capacity for
violence and the lengths people will go to preserve their own family stability.
When the wife puts on
the coat and wears the lipstick found in the pocket, my stomach
immediately curdled - I can't remember the last time a scene in a
movie made me so physically ill. The coat itself is a character - just as the
mail delivered clothes are - dumped on the kitchen table to be plucked apart by
Nazi wives and their maids. It is precisely the missing owners of these clothes
that we are left to think on, to mourn. The real main characters are those that
are obfuscated, by design. Their belongings are what ties us to them, which is
later mirrored as we look upon the thousands of real, preserved shoes of those
killed in the Holocaust, towards the end of the film.
The identity of the wife
as a caretaker and mother, who plays with her baby in the garden, while priding
herself on being called the "Queen of Auschwitz," cements her as one
of the more sinister and blood chilling female villains in film, for me. We
bear witness to the rearing of a Nazi, the corruption of innocence by way of
racist ideology, all the while in this serene and idyllic setting that she is
determined to never leave. A kind of ethical pathetic fallacy if you will. It
is a reminder of the insidiousness of life, when it carries on despite the
inflicted horrors that occur right in your own backyard - a cognitive
dissonance that allows for the perpetration of violence, so long as your own
abode is tended to, and the flowers still bloom in your rose beds.
The film is also a
depiction of psychopathic ambition by whatever means necessary. Confronted by
the almost boring mundanity of this evil task makes it all the more scary. I'm
thinking of the scene where the husband is calculating how much gas would
be required to take out the audience in the third act, noting how tall the
ceilings were - analysis at its most cruel. It is reiterated on several
occasions throughout the film, how to make killing Jews more efficient, by way
of differently architected chambers, capacity of trains, etc. The clerical
nature implies the total dehumanization that occurred, which again
reinforces just how treacherous these characters are, devoid of empathy,
or a true moral North.
The contemporary scenes
injected towards the final act, in which we are inundated by sounds of vacuum
cleaners amidst custodial workers tidying the Holocaust museum felt similar to
the theme of the film itself - an act of preservation of the past, a sort of
mirror, with history reflecting upon us these grave injustices as a commandment
to never return there. I thought the level of detail in costume design and
setting were without flaw, it was highly transportive, which only added to this
harrowing sentiment.
I also find it
stimulating to think about what it must be like for German actors to muster up
whatever ancestral zeitgeist for these roles. I'm sure there is much internal
discomfort, similar to what I can only assume it must be like for white actors
playing plantation / slave owners, shouting the "N word" at their
Black acting counterparts. I'd imagine there must be some emotional
confrontation you'd have to have with yourself, as a vessel for history
telling, by way of your own comparative lineage... Who knows.
I'm sorry you did not
like my recommendation, I really felt transformed by this movie and would have
loved to digest it in person with you over stale popcorn.
Different strokes, I
guess!
After I wrote this I
googled Johnathan Glazer to read up a bit on his process, I found this article
in the Guardian, which admittedly aligns with a lot of what I said already, but
there is some interesting stuff towards the end about Sandra Huller's initial
reaction to being asked to play the role. Linked here.
Looking forward to
watching Origin. :)
Love you.
G
What can I say? Proud grandpa.
Barney Rosenzweig
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