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The hardest to watch, and the most difficult to forget, Golden Globe nominee for Best Picture is Jonathan Glazer’s inverted Holocaust drama “Zone of Interest.”
WTOP’s Jason Fraley reviews ‘Zone of Interest’ (Part 1)
Did you make it a goal to watch all the Best Picture nominees before Sunday night’s Golden Globes?
I’ve seen them all, but the hardest to watch and the hardest to forget is Jonathan Glazer’s inverted Holocaust drama, Zone of Interest. The film won the Grand Prix and the International Federation of Critics Award at the Cannes Film Festival before winning the Golden Globe Award. Nominated for Best Picture: Drama, Best Non-English Film, and Best Original Music.
Loosely based on the 2014 novel of the same name by British author Martin Amis, this harrowing film is set in German-occupied Poland in 1943, where Auschwitz commander Rudolf Hess and his wife Hedwig , raising five Aryan children in a luxurious house on the opposite shore. Side of the wall of a concentration camp.
In many ways, this film is the antithesis of Steven Spielberg’s moving “Schindler’s List” (1993), which so successfully immersed us in pathos. It also differs from the dreamlike playfulness of Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful (1997) or the satirical comedy of Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit (2019). This is similar to László Nemeth’s Son of Saul (2015), where the atrocities are hidden outside the frame, but it is still set inside a concentration camp.
By design, the “areas of interest” never entered the camps during the actual Holocaust. Instead, we see Commander Hess (Christian Friedel, “13 Minutes”) hosting various Nazi meetings and blithely discussing the “Final Solution” of gassing millions of Jews. I patiently watch them talk. Her wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, who also starred in the Globe-nominated film Anatomy of a Fall) can also be seen cooking meals, hanging laundry and tending the garden. Masu.
At times, the pace of these daily tasks is comparable to Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman (1975) in stretching our attention to observe everyday life. But that’s exactly the point. It contrasts how willfully ignorant people are able to go about their daily business despite the atrocities happening next door. In the distance you can hear faint gunshots, dogs barking, and the horrifying screams of Jews. Hedwig’s mother can’t stand the smell either, and her visit is cut short.
Breaking up the monotony are the repeated infrared sequences of the Polish girl next door sneaking out every night to hide the remains of the food she feeds the prisoners, but sadly that’s the only thing consistently tied to the story. It’s more like a creative interlude. Here, we are visually reminded of Glaser’s bizarre sci-fi thriller “Under the Skin” (2013). There, Scarlett Johansson played some kind of alien creature that lures humans to liquid death.
In “The Zone of Interest,” Glaser’s biggest touch comes at the end with a stunning cut to the present day, where the caretaker is cleaning the camp, which has since become a Holocaust museum. We see them vacuuming the floors and dusting the glass of a display case containing piles of shoes of millions of Jewish victims.
Nothing compares to the actual documentary footage of Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1956) or Claude Lanzmann’s The Shore (1985), but as a narrative film, The Zone of Interest , you can do things that those movies can’t do. Cut back to a guilt-ridden Nazi officer like the genocidal dictator in The Act of Killing (2012). After the war, Höss was convicted by Poland’s Supreme Court of State and hanged on April 16, 1947.
For that strong ending alone, “Zone of Interest” deserves a nomination for Best Picture, Drama at Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards, but it probably beats out Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” and Martin Scorsese’s “Oppenheimer.” “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Celine Song’s “Past Lives”. However, this movie is better than Bradley Cooper’s Maestro and Justin Torrier’s Anatomy of a Fall, so it’s my fourth favorite at the moment.
Anatomy of a Fall (France) has a much better chance of winning in the Best Non-English Language Film category, with forecasters predicting Anatomy of a Fall (France), but I think Past Lives (USA/ We strongly support South Korea. Rounding out this category are Aki Kaurismäki’s romantic comedy “Fallen Leaves” (Finland), Matteo Garrone’s drama “Io capitano” (Italy), and JA Bayona’s survival story “Society of the Snow” (Spain). ) and will premiere on Netflix this weekend. I want to catch up.
WTOP’s Jason Fraley reviews ‘Zone of Interest’ (Part 2)
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