The zone of interest

gmisk

Don't see a thread on this one.

Saw this morning still trying to digest it all to be honest, some scenes felt like an art installation rather than a film but it was certainly arresting and the sound design was utterly brilliant, Mica Levi should be the oscar front runner if not already. Sandra Huller is also terrific between this and anatomy of a fall what a year she is having!

Oh just black screen and some sound when film first starts don't walk out to complain as a few people did in my screening, it's part of film.

sterz

I must be missing something when it comes to all the praise Levi is getting. Big fan of hers but a lot of what she produced for the film didn't make the final cut.

Not my favourite Glazer film but still great nonetheless. I wish he was more prolific - ten years is a long old time to wait!

johnny_ultimate

It’s a fierce, haunting piece of work - quite unlike anything else that gets released in the relative mainstream, but extremely effective and memorable. Just a group of talented creatives completely in control of tone and form, and using it to give a disturbing, unsettling portrayal of an impossibly dark, horrifying chapter of history. The surreal little interludes only add to the film’s power IMO.

As for Levi, her compositions are sparsely used but all the more effective for it. I saw it last year at a festival screening, and the droning score escaping the auditorium at the end of the film and reverberating throughout the building’s halls as the audience exited was one of the more eerie cinema going experiences I’ve had in recent years - like even as the credits rolled, you couldn’t quite escape the film’s sinister grasp.

p to the e

I saw this is rated as 12A. Not what I expected at all.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121733224#Comment_121733224

There's very little shown in the film to warrant a higher rating - the atrocities are largely heard as muffled sounds in the background or merely implied. It's a foreboding, disturbing film but not in the traditional way cinema has portrayed the Holocaust.

El Duda

The Zone of Interest - 5/10

I appreciate what Glazer was trying to do here and I get it, but I think that if you're going to have so much happen off-screen, then you need to give an audience more on-screen stuff to get invested in.

The decision to avoid close-ups and stick almost exclusively to wide shots meant that I struggled to get invested in the few characters we focus on.

The sound design is phenomenal, but the rest of it just didn't gel with me. The final half hour was strong but everything that came before was a little too mundane.

Tempted to give it another go. I made the mistake of sitting right at the very back, whereas a seat closer to the screen could have changed the whole experience.

phelixoflaherty

You already know the "off screen stuff". You were watching their mundane lives.

That was the scary thing,

The Nal

Watched it. An absolute snoozefest.

iffandonlyif

Spoilers

That was a chilling, nauseating watch that’s left me reeling.

Sandra Huller is brilliant. The way the unseen crimes behind the wall make their presence felt in every scene is incredible. I don’t think I can stomach another watch.

But the scenes with the negative effect left me perplexed. The fact that the Nazi’s daughter said something incomprehensible about having to ‘give them sugar’ (or something like that) and that the scene played out with the Nazi’s voice in the background reading the story made me think it was some kind of supernatural turn; that in some way the child was interacting with spirits of the dead. But according to someone on Reddit that was simply a local Jewish girl hiding fruit after dark for the Jewish inmates to find as they worked. Maybe I’m an idiot for not understanding it, but I would have thought the most dramatic sequences of the film should be made clearer to the viewer. I also wonder what role it served. I think the film would have been better served by the relentless evil of the other characters.

The end scene showing a concentration camp of today being cleaned, while powerful in itself, left me confused about whether it was trying to make a point about how such museums trivialise the Holocaust. I don’t think it was. The tension lifted for me and when we returned to the Nazi for the last few seconds, I felt insulated from him by time, which is surely the last thing Glazer intended.

The Black Oil

A grim and haunting film. It's hard not to notice the contrasts from the initial peaceful setting, birds tweeting and pristine garden, to the horrors unfolding next door. We hear gunshots, we see smoke, ash and we know, we know. There is a lot of indifference. It's there in the matter of fact discussion of expanding the gas chambers, the scale, the meeting with senior Nazi offers and the family setting. It is so normalised in their minds, beliefs and intent. The river scene with a clear "ew, we've touched the dirty Jews."

The ending is extraordinary. I find it hard to put into words what it feels like, it's such a profound stain on human history. Under no circumstances can we let anything like this happen again.

phelixoflaherty

His resction at the end was probably to the fact that they were caring for the memory of the dead rather than his celebbrated efficiency in disposing of them.

Unnerving film

Homelander

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121812790#Comment_121812790

I really struggle to see how anyone could take this viewpoint unless one had no interest in history and the reality of said history.

Thought it was superb, horrifyingly effective.

one armed dwarf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121734402#Comment_121734402

The way I saw it, mundanity was the point ('banality of evil'). It's about a family trying to drown out the noise, smell and appearance of the horrific crime they are partaking in by dressing it up with the mundanity of daily frivolities. So to be honest, the boring bits are by design, they're about how a lot of things are being psychologically suppressed, figuratively drowned and otherised as something that doesn't matter (even something to be proud of, the mundane life they live the reward for implementing the evil designs of Hitler's will). There's no character you're supposed to be invested in here, you should be revolted instead. It's more an experiment in form where a threadbare narrative moves people along, but isn't the focal point of the film at all. The soundscape and juxtaposition between it and the film's visuals, and character performance, are moreso the point

What it reminded me of was The Act of Killing, which has an eerily close match for the finale scene where Hoss is dry heaving, it's a documentary about a group of people who murdered communists in Indonesia and it has the exact same final scene, except it's with an actual murderer and not an actor. Like the evil is coming up but can't be excised, chilling.

murpho999

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121812790#Comment_121812790

Finally got to see this last night and deeply impacted by it and still processing the meaning behind it.

The above post is totally ridiculous and typical of the type of movie goer today who wants Marvel action, exposition and fast pace.

I think this is a film that warrants a second viewing as I found there was a lot to take in.

I didn't expect it to jump to present day Auschwitz and back again and still trying to work out what that meant but I suppose its about how our history is important and has an impact today. I was in those very rooms and corridors about 7 years ago and it's an extraordinarily poignant and sad place.

buried

Absolutely brilliant piece of work. The absolute air of complete and utter horror intertwined with all these colourfull scenes of high living, well to do-ness.

The single take shot aspect with the sequential editing is absolutely brilliant, and adds to the jarring effect, very interesting approach in how to shoot this sort of horror.

And make no mistake, this is a horror film, and that wife is one of the greatest cinematic horror characters ever depicted anywhere.

Will have to try go see it on a big screen somewhere soon before it leaves.

Merrion

An amazing film - and one of those things that could only be done as cinema.