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Post by finniussnrub on Feb 21, 2024 1:58:08 GMT
Yeah the notions of "removing the artifice" are utterly ridiculous as the whole thing is crafted like a "Where's Waldo" drawing just done as "Where's the atrocity?" instead. I guess if Glazer really wanted to make it with this idea in mind, it should've been all shot in dirty black and white that resembled real documentary footage Nazis shot or something of that ilk, without any sense of proper cinematography (certainly don't Żal if you are trying to avoid emphasis on the overt filmmaking), and make seem like real home movies. lol, "Where's Waldo" Yeah, besides the shot construction, Glazer's another idea of artifice removal seems to have been instructing his actors/crew what to do, running to a nearby house to observe all of it from a distance (see, so that he wouldn't "participate" in the artificial filmmaking process!), then run back and do the same thing again. I mean... I don't mind the method itself per se, but I just wish Glazer wouldn't then present it as a crusade against artifice in cinema when the whole thing is just one big gimmick. Own that shit! But yeah, owning that shit would probably mean a bit fewer awards nominations. Ugh, I hate to sound so cynical! I actually think Glazer kind of "lies" anyways with this so called conceit, as if that were the case, would he then do a dramatic switch to night vision to depict the one good person in the story (the little girl planting food for the prisoners)...the inclusion of such made me kind of wonder if even he was getting bored of his repeating the same "evil people being dull while horror is going on behind them".
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Post by JangoB on Feb 21, 2024 2:49:25 GMT
lol, "Where's Waldo" Yeah, besides the shot construction, Glazer's another idea of artifice removal seems to have been instructing his actors/crew what to do, running to a nearby house to observe all of it from a distance (see, so that he wouldn't "participate" in the artificial filmmaking process!), then run back and do the same thing again. I mean... I don't mind the method itself per se, but I just wish Glazer wouldn't then present it as a crusade against artifice in cinema when the whole thing is just one big gimmick. Own that shit! But yeah, owning that shit would probably mean a bit fewer awards nominations. Ugh, I hate to sound so cynical! I actually think Glazer kind of "lies" anyways with this so called conceit, as if that were the case, would he then do a dramatic switch to night vision to depict the one good person in the story (the little girl planting food for the prisoners)...the inclusion of such made me kind of wonder if even he was getting bored of his repeating the same "evil people being dull while horror is going on behind them". Apparently he decided to do those switches to night vision because he couldn't figure out how else to allow the audience to see what was going on in those scenes as it was pitch black and in reality there would be no source of light there, so he didn't want to install one to keep up the "no artifice" idea. But of course the resulting transition to infrared was more artificial and dramatic (not a bad thing, Jonathan!) than anything a tiny light source would've done. Glazer also describes the effect like this: “There’s something very beautiful and poetic about the fact that it is heat, and she does glow. It reinforces the idea of her as an energy.” Dude, just embrace that cinema is artifice by definition. It's all right.
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Post by stabcaesar on Feb 22, 2024 19:53:46 GMT
Sorry Society of the Snow. You have been dethroned.
This just left me speechless and breathless. I haven't felt this uncomfortable watching something in a very, very long time. I don't even want to say I love it because I had a really, really terrible time watching it. It's unbearably horrifying from the first second to the credits. Glazer wipes the floor with everything else that came out last year.
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Feb 22, 2024 20:01:22 GMT
I haven't felt this uncomfortable watching something in a very, very long time. I don't even want to say I love it because I had a really, really terrible time watching it. This sounds a lot like my wife's reaction to it. She literally burst into tears and started sobbing when we got in the car to leave the theater... first time I've ever seen her respond to a movie that way.
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Post by stabcaesar on Feb 23, 2024 2:34:12 GMT
I haven't felt this uncomfortable watching something in a very, very long time. I don't even want to say I love it because I had a really, really terrible time watching it. This sounds a lot like my wife's reaction to it. She literally burst into tears and started sobbing when we got in the car to leave the theater... first time I've ever seen her respond to a movie that way. Well I didn’t cry (I almost never cry when I watch a movie), but I was really disturbed during the whole time, and also in awe of how gorgeous the film looks. It should have been nominated for production design, cinematography and of course original score for sure.
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Feb 26, 2024 18:39:10 GMT
The first Glazer movie I can respect (generally think of him as a technologically savvy guy drawn to terrible ideas). In Zone he finally has a great subject, and if the movie is no more than an exercise, it’s at least a memorable one.
The digital cameras seem at once to erase the temporal distance from us. When Höss and his children drive through a road at night, laughing, it might as well be now. The work of Lukasz Zal is extraordinary. The very first shot is of a sustained natural idyll—an archetypal German family at one with nature, so when we’re brought to Auschwitz, and we see that Auschwitz has grown a garden, it seems a logical development of the earlier scene. The film bursts with green and bold spring colors, mocking the cliché employed by hacks that says that life under Nazism (or any kind of regime) resembled a sickly brown or bluish tint. This movie is almost always in a state of carefully cultivated spring.
I don't take the film to be about indifference to evil. No one in the film is indifferent, and no one seems to be getting any real sleep. When the grandmother opens the window at night, she knows (as we do) that the end of the world is not just in the camps but inside the house. Sandra Hüller’s character knows it too, the way she moves and walks around the house (and it may be her best performance this year). Hedwig lives inside a bourgeois fantasy of prosperity she has only recently reached, and she’s already decadent. She seems haggard, run-down, and when she asks Höss to bring her chocolate, she’s like a child with no illusions. Her whole will is bound to Auschwitz and her garden. There is almost no mention of the future—the future is more taboo than what goes on inside the camp.
Hannah Arendt wrote that during the war the Germans came to see the gas chambers as a type of humane death, a new form of euthanasia. And the concentration camps themselves came to be seen as symbols of order and rationality where the Nazis could take solace from what seemed like the pointless horror of war. (The film gives us a sense of Hedwig and Höss worshipping Auschwitz: they are certainly compelled to make it beautiful.) Arendt, too, recalled how in 1943-44, the atmosphere of death was total, and Germans began to want gas chambers for themselves. (Which had been a Hitlerian dream way back in the 30s.) Nazism had made a cult of death—it was life, not death, that was unreal and undesirable.
This, I think, is closer to the core of the film. When Höss is told he must leave Auschwitz, he feels as if there’s no longer a point to anything. Maybe he can no longer believe in Nazism as a cause (maybe no one can). Life outside the camps is unintelligible, worse than abstract. We see him walk through the rituals of Nazi society and bureaucracy like a ghost. If he feels anything at all, it’s revulsion. He’s thinking of home—Auschwitz.
How the Germans came to be under the spell of Nazism is another subject entirely (and would require a far more ambitious work), but Glazer successfully captures a moment in time, a hopeless present not too dissimilar from what some 1943 Nazis might have experienced. There are flourishes that don’t work imo. The nocturnal wanderings of the Polish girl leaving food for the prisoners seem too much like a fairy tale, a too-precious idea, and the score tries for “ominous” where the (superb) sound work is ominous enough. I don’t know if it’s a major work, but it’s at least original. Its evocation of the Nazi past seems the opposite of banal--rather terrifying in its inevitability.
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Post by stabcaesar on Feb 27, 2024 5:00:54 GMT
The first Glazer movie I can respect (generally think of him as a technologically savvy guy drawn to terrible ideas). In Zone he finally has a great subject, and if the movie is no more than an exercise, it’s at least a memorable one. The digital cameras seem at once to erase the temporal distance from us. When Höss and his children drive through a road at night, laughing, it might as well be now. The work of Lukasz Zal is extraordinary. The very first shot is of a sustained natural idyll—an archetypal German family at one with nature, so when we’re brought to Auschwitz, and we see that Auschwitz has grown a garden, it seems a logical development of the earlier scene. The film bursts with green and bold spring colors, mocking the cliché employed by hacks that says that life under Nazism (or any kind of regime) resembled a sickly brown or bluish tint. This movie is almost always in a state of carefully cultivated spring. I don't take the film to be about indifference to evil. No one in the film is indifferent, and no one seems to be getting any real sleep. When the grandmother opens the window at night, she knows (as we do) that the end of the world is not just in the camps but inside the house. Sandra Hüller’s character knows it too, the way she moves and walks around the house (and it may be her best performance this year). Hedwig lives inside a bourgeois fantasy of prosperity she has only recently reached, and she’s already decadent. She seems haggard, run-down, and when she asks Höss to bring her chocolate, she’s like a child with no illusions. Her whole will is bound to Auschwitz and her garden. There is almost no mention of the future—the future is more taboo than what goes on inside the camp. Hannah Arendt wrote that during the war the Germans came to see the gas chambers as a type of humane death, a new form of euthanasia. And the concentration camps themselves came to be seen as symbols of order and rationality where the Nazis could take solace from what seemed like the pointless horror of war. (The film gives us a sense of Hedwig and Höss worshipping Auschwitz: they are certainly compelled to make it beautiful.) Arendt, too, recalled how in 1943-44, the atmosphere of death was total, and Germans began to want gas chambers for themselves. (Which had been a Hitlerian dream way back in the 30s.) Nazism had made a cult of death—it was life, not death, that was unreal and undesirable. This, I think, is closer to the core of the film. When Höss is told he must leave Auschwitz, he feels as if there’s no longer a point to anything. Maybe he can no longer believe in Nazism as a cause (maybe no one can). Life outside the camps is unintelligible, worse than abstract. We see him walk through the rituals of Nazi society and bureaucracy like a ghost. If he feels anything at all, it’s revulsion. He’s thinking of home—Auschwitz. How the Germans came to be under the spell of Nazism is another subject entirely (and would require a far more ambitious work), but Glazer successfully captures a moment in time, a hopeless present not too dissimilar from what some 1943 Nazis might have experienced. There are flourishes that don’t work imo. The nocturnal wanderings of the Polish girl leaving food for the prisoners seem too much like a fairy tale, a too-precious idea, and the score tries for “ominous” where the (superb) sound work is ominous enough. I don’t know if it’s a major work, but it’s at least original. Its evocation of the Nazi past seems the opposite of banal--rather terrifying in its inevitability. I have a real problem with everyone calling this a showcase of the "banality of evil" too, though for a completely different reason than yours. Even putting aside the fact that Arendt's view over Eichmann has been highly contested, as there was nothing banal about Eichmann's fanatic antisemitism, the Hoesses were not banal in their evil. They were just pure evil. From the very beginning of the film when Hedwig talked about finding a diamond in the tooth paste and nonchanlantly said "they are very smart" to how Rudolf washed his dick after raping a Jewish prisoner (I read that this is a true story, except the woman he raped was a political prisoner who got pregnant, which was the alleged reason why they relocated him), it was 100% clear to me that they were both fanatics. The only character that can be argued as representing the banality of evil is Hedwig's mother. I can interpret her reaction to the smokes as finally grasping the horror of Auschwitz, and that when she talked about their Jewish neighbour with Hedwig she really thought they were simply getting "re-educated" in the camps like how the Nazis advertised (akin to what the Chinese Communist Party is doing with the Uyghurs, and nobody gives a fuck about them now just like nobody gave a fuck about the Jews back then).
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Feb 27, 2024 6:59:35 GMT
I don't take the film to be about indifference to evil. No one in the film is indifferent I didn’t quite mean to suggest in my post that the film is about indifference to evil, but rather the blindness to the horror of evil’s normalization... though perhaps indifference was not the right word when I think I meant something closer to moral nescience.
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Post by PromNightCarrie on Mar 3, 2024 17:08:27 GMT
This film has the ending of the year, for sure.
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Post by mikediastavrone96 on Mar 3, 2024 23:44:00 GMT
Couldn't help but think a bit of Skinamarink and This House Has People in It while watching this. All are exercises in drawing unease out of perverting the mundane, usually through a sense of detached observation to trap the viewers within it - we can see what's happening but we're helpless to it. Usually this kind of cinema is used to put the audience at an inherent disadvantage in finding narrative ground as the filmmaker slowly unveils horrors and escalations in dread at them. We don't know what is happening or why, so anything can. Glazer somewhat did this in Under the Skin (one of the best films of the 2010s) as far as obfuscating the core premise and backgrounds of our characters from the jump, using visual language to invite the audience to get up to speed. For The Zone of Interest, however, he takes a different approach to start. If people somehow don't know going in that the movie is about Rudolf Höss and his family living just beside the concentration camp at Auschwitz, it's established very early. The tricks in upending the audience are not here; the movie is plain in its ambitions of having us observe the Höss family as they go through their day-to-days while we the audience know what is happening just on the other side of their well-kept garden (the Jaws principle of not seeing the monster is scarier than seeing it). It isn't just the perversion of mundanity (the children playing in the backyard with the walls of the camp behind them) but the mundanity of perverse acts (the middle management talk about the design of the new crematoriums) that makes the "banality of evil" the chief operating phrase this movie is coming to be known by. For while Höss and his family are steadfast in not just their complicity but their moral approval of Hitler's Final Solution, that doesn't mean they're frothing at the mouth at all times in their antisemitism. In between all the casual things they do, they also commit evil acts that are for them equally as casual. The homestead they build is part and parcel of their evil; as Hedwig says, they're living exactly as the Führer wants. While I greatly admire the way in which Glazer illustrates all this, I'd be lying if I said I do find something a bit underwhelming in its execution. The tradeoff in being nakedly transparent in this kind of cinema from the jump is that it limits where you can go. I am very familiar with the monster (the movie wouldn't function otherwise) and the juxtaposition the film rests on is in our face immediately. Glazer does find a narrative to develop, but not so much an effect - everything is that same note with very slight variations (the piano scene especially), resulting in the slow deadening of that effect for me. Where Skinamarink engrossed me further in its tantalizing developments and furthering of its atmosphere, The Zone of Interest leaves me at the same stop I was at with the conclusion of its first day-night cycle. Glazer then pulls out a haymaker of an ending, the kind of bold, context-redefining choice that fully encapsulates the piece. It feels pithy to say "too little, too late" but I do wish such boldness were allowed for earlier on. I understand why - he reasonably could've worried about being in bad taste for wringing out additional drama or formal exercise for a Holocaust film - but that's I feel holds this back from greatness.
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Post by Pavan on Mar 10, 2024 19:15:25 GMT
This is a bold film. Glazer shows the other side of the coin and lures us into these people's spaces and their indifference and their mundane lives but he also did not do much with the brilliant setting he carefully constructed, perhaps out of fear that he may overdo things and in that process the film felt repetitive and stagnated at some point. That said he succeeded in bringing out that unsettling feeling.
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Barbie
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Post by Barbie on Mar 15, 2024 1:01:05 GMT
Haven’t watched the movie yet but we’re seeing it play out with settlers in occupied Palestine
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Post by Lord_Buscemi on Mar 15, 2024 3:14:36 GMT
Haven’t watched the movie yet but we’re seeing it play out with settlers in occupied Palestine I don't disagree with you, but honestly, why even comment in this thread if you haven't seen the film?
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Barbie
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Post by Barbie on Mar 15, 2024 5:57:50 GMT
I don't disagree with you, but honestly, why even comment in this thread if you haven't seen the film? Bc I’ve seen clips of it online especially about use of sound and how people on the other side of the slaughter just go about their day. Coupled with the still continuing criticism Glazer is getting for his speech, this was on my mind bc the parallels are undeniable People make preliminary comments on here often. I don’t think my comment is a big deal 🤷♀️
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Post by Lord_Buscemi on Mar 21, 2024 10:14:37 GMT
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Post by Martin Stett on Apr 1, 2024 0:03:03 GMT
An endless walk through Hell, with the denizens slowly realizing that this is indeed Hell, despite what they convinced themselves when they began. But there is no redemption or repentance, just an acceptance of what they are - indeed, even a relish in it. "Yes, I'm a monster, but I'm damn good at it."
The very composed cinematography really sells this (the artificiality is pushed to such an extreme that nobody can ignore it), the on-the-nose sound design and score do not (they seem to be reaching the audience more than the characters, and this is a character driven piece).
In short, I liked it. This isn't anything special - it is indeed one-note - but as a torture chamber for the characters themselves, it is pretty interesting.
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Post by Barbie on Apr 27, 2024 19:41:45 GMT
countjohn I had the same reaction, in terms of learning nothing, that I didn't already know by reading the brief synopsis of the movie. The gravitas of the film, hit me, though, as I was waking up, the next day. DON'T BE ALONE! What do you mean?
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Post by PromNightCarrie on Apr 29, 2024 12:08:34 GMT
Let's start stating the obvious and rely on other critics to point out the obvious. You don't think this "aesthetic" appeals to those people when they see the constant Holocaust films that give us direct access to the camps where the Nazis stand upright, costumed, and speak as if they are cosplaying and we see everything? Also, no need to reference Susan Sontag for your bad take when you have no idea what that unpredictable woman's response to this would be. What? How could that moment leave you confused as to what is happening? Maybe if you are going to do a "professional" review, especially as an expert, be a little more observant.
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Post by Pasquale on Apr 29, 2024 18:01:04 GMT
countjohn I had the same reaction, in terms of learning nothing, that I didn't already know by reading the brief synopsis of the movie. The gravitas of the film, hit me, though, as I was waking up, the next day. DON'T BE ALONE! What do you mean? I was just being psychotic. I had the feeling the protagonists' greatest sin, in the movie(-situation), was choosing not to hold on to each other.
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Post by Barbie on May 2, 2024 15:21:28 GMT
It's been a few days since I watched it, and I don't know what to make of it. I liked it, but I was also let down. Something about it is not sophisticated like I expected it to be.
I think doing a movie about the Holocaust from the Nazi perspective is bold and ambitious. Major props to Glazer for that because I've seen bad faith criticism about that decision which has made me defensive of the movie. I also think it's important to show people how humans can be monstrous and just go about their day living next to a literal death camp listening to and smelling daily horrors. It might seem obvious, but I think people often have this idea of Nazis being like these alien creatures who look like demons out of dark tales when really they were flesh and blood humans like the rest of us. They were a reflection of how dark humans can get, and of course we're living through this right now with the genocide of Palestinians
While I think the premise is interesting, the execution of this movie just didn't do it for me. I didn't find it compelling. Intellectually, I understood it, but I wasn't affected emotionally. Cinematography was really good and of course the sound design, but other than that, I was unimpressed. Sanda Huller was MVP though!
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Post by Barbie on May 2, 2024 15:44:08 GMT
Wow the author is offensively dumb and also looking at it in the most bad faith way. Jesus Christ.
Oh here we go, the depiction = endorsement take LOL
And this is a bad thing how????????????
But the Holocaust happened to the Jews, at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators
It's becoming a pet peeve of mine when people ignore hundreds of thousands of people from other groups who are also rounded up by Nazis like Jewish people were. Romanis for example were targeted. They've been being persecuted for centuries and still are to this day. They were victimized in the Holocaust and were victimized by chattel slavery for 500 years. They're rarely remembered. They're even erased by some Holocaust museums including the Auschwitz Memorial. How is this dude going to criticize Glazer for supposed Holocaust revisionism and do the same? Not even close
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