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2023 Oscars Best Picture Review: The Zone Of Interest

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment
Sandra Huller plays the wife of a top Nazi in Auschwitz in the haunting The Zone Of Interest.

It would be naturally impulsive to dismiss The Zone Of Interest as ‘another Holocaust film.’ If you watch it, you will see it’s about more than just the Holocaust.

Many people will say that Holocaust films have done countless times before. Even if it is true, there are many angles one can see the Holocaust. This is a story of a different kind. There are a lot of things that will remind people of certain overlooked aspects of the Holocaust that will also disgust them further. First is the Höss’ house built just outside the walls of Auschwitz. I don’t know if there were ever houses built just outside the walls of Auschwitz, but having such in the film is very representative of the two worlds of Germany in World War II. There were the Nazis who had their day in the sun at the time and the Jews and other people Hitler deemed inferior being killed, tortured and even made slaves for the high-ranking Nazis.

Second is the Nazis lived very comfortably. What you see in the film is the Hoss family living their daily home life like a common family. You also see General Hoss following his genocidal Nazi orders and planning out methods and arrangements of the deaths of millions as your common “business as usual.” Seeing that in the film will bring back your feelings of disgust seeing people live “the good life” at the cost of human torture. Seeing how the Höss family sleeps comfortably while the sounds of gunshots and screaming coming from the behind the walls shows how close but far apart those two Germanys were. Even seeing how Hoss and the Nazis treat their genocidal plans to look like a simple day at the office shows the insensitivity at the time and how the Nazis felt that’s how it should be. Making all this destruction of a continent and the planning for genocide look like simplicity is all it’ll take to want to infuriate you.

Additional scenes include the train coming in and out of Auschwitz to drop new prisoners off, the smoke coming from the camp’s gas ovens and crematoriums, and the Höss’ ordering the prisoners they use as slaves around will add to your anger. We forget that the Nazis intended for most prisoners to be killed and a small percent to be used as slaves. Even seeing Hedwig threaten one of her servants to have her gassed will remind you of how remorseless they were.

Despite the Höss family representing the comfortable live from the torture of the War, there are signs of humanity still happening. The most notable is the two scenes of the Polish girl sneaking out and giving food for the prisoners to eat. It’s a reminder that even in the times of the worst of human activity, the values of humanity still existed. They were often hidden or done so at the risk of one’s life, but they did make themselves present at that time.

SPOILER PARAGRAPH: Another thing that will make some people made is that the film doesn’t have an ending with the Hoss’ and all the other Nazis get their day of reckoning. That’s frequently the case in Holocaust movies and that’s normally the ending we want in such a movie. Even though the ending of the Nazis getting a brutal defeat, there are signs on Rudolf that their comeuppance is looming. That the separate worlds of the Nazis living the good life and the torture at Auschwitz will collide. The first scene is when Rudolf and the children are swimming in the river. Soon they’re dirtied by the flow of bones and ash thrown from the camp into the river. Another sign comes when Rudolf gets a female prisoner to perform a favor of a fellatio on him. The third being right after Rudolf speaks to Hedwig after a phone call in Berlin and he gets sick in the empty hallways. Then as it fast forwards to the present where the cleaning women in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum clean the gas ovens and the windows of displays, that scene shows the fate Rudolf sealed for himself. A fate of an executed criminal after the war ends and a name that will live in infamy.

Top respect should go to director/writer Jonathan Glazer. The film is based on a 2014 novel of the same title. Interestingly, the novel features the first half of an unnamed Nazi meant to mirror the life of Hoss and his family. In the second half, it’s the aftermath set in 1948. Here it appears the film is based completely on the first half. Nevertheless, it is a telling tale of a Nazi and his family living a normal daily life, making his work look like a typical day at the office and a feud between him and Hedwig about his promotion to Berlin look like a common husband/wife feud. Also raising eyebrows is how it mirrored Hoss’ life well from fathering five children, the last born in 1943, his orchestration in Auschwitz and even the months he was away in Berlin. It’s obvious in doing so, Glazer wanted to send a message about how people, especially the Nazis, can live next door to the evil they’ve created and live comfortably. He does an excellent job in doing that with the story and the various camera effects.

One thing about the acting is it’s very low-key compared to most of the acting in the other Best Picture nominees. The standout of this film is the storytelling. Nevertheless, the acting in the film is still very good. Christian Friedel did a very good portrayal of Rudolf Hoss. Despite his performance not being too showy, his acting added to the storytelling. Also great is Sandra Huller as Hedwig. Although her performance pales in comparison to that of Anatomy Of A Fall, she also does a good job in making a hateful Nazi seem like an everyday person and even a common wife. She’s even able to get you thinking at times the film is more about Hedwig than about Rudolf.

The technical elements of the film also add to the story and the message to get across. The cinematography from Lukasz Zal really added to the theme of the film. He features many scenes with unorthodox imagery in the film. Most noteworthy, the scenes of the Polish girl giving prisoners food done looking like a film negative added to the statement Glazer intended to make. The music from Mica Levi helps create the atmosphere for this dark subject matter. The sound crew have to have delivered possibly the most profound contribution to the film. The mixing of sounds like the gunshots and screaming mixed with scenes of the Hoss’ living the comfortable life serve as a reminder of the hidden things that are happening.

This film has had a lot of awards buzz in 2023. It first gained notice at the Cannes Film Festival. Although Anatomy Of A Fall won, this film was a nominee and director Glazer won the Grand Prix and the FIPRESCI Prize. How about that? Two films starring Sandra Huller at the 2023 Cannes Film Fest and both were the most lauded! Interestingly, this film is the UK’s third Oscar nomination in the Best International Feature Film award. It does seem odd for the UK to even have a submission, but Jonathan Glazer being British and the film being in German, Yiddish and Polish, the UK can submit I as their entry. Those other two nominations were back in the 1990’s and were for Welsh-language films. At the time, entries had to be in a language native to the nation. Not anymore. It’s now more about the citizenship of the director. Oscar rules are interesting, aren’t they?

The Zone Of Interest is not the Holocaust film you expect it to be. It’s a film about the Holocaust which Glazer has something to say and is often told through sights and sounds.

And there you go! That’s the last of my reviews of the ten Best Pictures nominees. My blog of my predictions for the Oscar wins coming soon!

2023 Oscars Best Picture Review: Poor Things

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment
Emma Stone plays a woman whom, thanks to a transplanted brain, is able to rid herself of the nasty men in her life in Poor Things.

There have been oddball romances before but Poor Things is something else. It’s interesting how some weird science can change a woman’s life for the better.

If you’ve seen Yorgos Lanthimos’ past films, you’ll know he doesn’t shy away from bizarre stories or an eccentric way of storytelling. Here, we have the story of a pregnant woman in Victorian England Dr. Godwin Baxter finds in the river dead from a suicide jump. Dr. Baxter brings her back to life, thanks to the transplant of the brain of her deceased unborn child and names her Bella. Soon his assistant Max McCandless falls in love with her. Unfortunately as Max is about to marry her, she is pursued by a swindler named Duncan Wedderburn who knows the story and wants to take full advantage of her naivety by being the one who marries her. He taker on travels to Lisbon, Alexandria and France with her but she’s too much for him to handle from giving away all his gambling money to the poor of Alexandria to living in a brothel in Paris. It’s through the women in the Paris brothel that she develops her empowerment and Duncan’s engagement with Bella falls apart. Just as she’s ready to marry Max, Duncan has a revenge plan. He reunites her with her former husband: a General named Alfie Blessington. It’s as he reminds her of her past as a woman named Victoria that she falls for him again. it’s of his controlling abusive nature that she’s reminded why she did her suicide jump from a bridge. Alfie things he’s got her, but Bella isn’t Victoria anymore and things change.

It’s funny how there are two films with the theme of female empowerment nominated for an Oscar. The first is Barbie and the messages of trying to achieve empowerment when you’re seen as the exact opposite was found very entertaining by the summer movie crowd. This film is not exactly a film that would win huge crowds. The film, nevertheless, is oddly charming. It is a surprise how a doctor who appears to be a Victorian Dr. Frankenstein is able to bring back the life of a wife who committed suicide through her unborn child’s brain, have her develop, and then find her empowerment though her bumpy road to recovering her thought. In her recovery, there were many opportunities for her to become prey again from Duncan to Alfie, but she always won in the end. Her naivety makes her give Duncan’s money winnings away in Alexandria, causing him to find her too much. Her time with the prostitutes in Paris gives her a great education with love and herself. Her new-found empowerment helped her see Alfie Farrington as the brute husband he was and why she jumped in the first place. This time, she knows how to deal with the man that drove her to kill herself in the first place.

Another funny thing is this film is not only the story of Bella but also the story about the men in her life. At first, you want to think that Dr. Baxter is the controlling one. He took her when he found her dead, removed the deceased unborn child, and performed the lobotomy. When you see all of his creations and all the living creatures of half-and-half animals, you think Bella is the latest subject for him to toy with. You also want to think Max McCandless is just a man who sheepishly does whatever Dr. Baxter tells him to do. That is until you learn of the other men that come into her life. Just as the two try to raise her, Duncan tries to take her into being his own toy, only to lose big-time. Just as McCandless tries to marry Bella, Duncan “reunites” her with Alfie and reminds her of her life as Victoria and of his brutish controlling nature which never changed. In the end, it’s Dr. Baxter and Max who end up being the best men in her life. Dr. Baxter performed the lobotomy that helped her forget herself as Victoria and become Bella. Max is the one who truly loved her and cared about her. It’s no wonder the two are happy to continue Dr. Baxter’s works post mortem.

Top respect should go to Yorgos Lanthimos. Hard to believe this is his first feature since The Favourite. Lanthimos is known for creating absurd situations and somehow make them understandable and watchable. Here, he does it again. He takes a case of a Frankenstein-like experiment and it succeeds in creating a story a woman stronger than she was before her suicide jump. And through her unborn infant’s brain! He knows how to make the odd entertaining and make it work. Also worth acknowledging is scriptwriter Tony McNamara. This story, which he adapts from an Alastair Gray novel, makes the bizarreness of it all understandable, oddly intelligent, and enjoyable. A story like this is one of the least likely places you’ll see a story of female empowerment, but it happens here!

Also excellent is the acting from Emma Stone as Bella/Victoria. Just as this film is Lanthimos’ comeback film, he reunites with Stone to do it! Doing a role of a woman with a transplanted infant brain and having to rapidly mature from and infant’s thinking to an adult’s thinking is a hard task to do even if this were a dramatic film. This role could have been a joke, but Emma knew how to make it work for the story. She makes Bella/Victoria into a believable character from her infant-like ways to her child-like naivety to her sexual maturity to her new-found empowerment. And to make the comedy of it all work to boot! An excellent accomplishment.

The film also has a lot of great supporting performances like Mark Ruffalo as the swindling Duncan Wedderburn who loses in the end. Also great is Willem Dafoe as Dr. Godwin Baxter. He is great in convincing you he’s less of a controlling mad scientist and more the best father figure Bella could have. Ramy Youssef is also great as Max McCandless. He does great work playing the man you think has the least chance of winning Bella’s heart, but does.

Where do I start with the technical accomplishments? I never anticipated a science fiction love story to come from Yorgos Lanthimos The costuming from Holly Waddington, the makeup and hairstyling team, the set design team, they all did a great job of taking the audience back to the past and mixing in futurism to fit the times. The cinematography from Robbie Ryan and the  music from Jerskin Hendrix add to the film’s enjoyment. The visual effects also did a great job in creating the mad science of Dr. Baxter. Especially the half-and-half animals. The effects were both funny and amazing.

Poor Things is a delightful mix of science fiction, romance and comedy. It first seems like the type of film you would not go out to see, but you’ll be glad you did.