Thumper said it best in Bambi: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.”

I try to avoid writing lengthy pieces about material that I do not enjoy. If it wasn’t fun or interesting the first time around, revisiting it for another hour or two while I ruminate on all of the intricacies isn’t exactly an attractive premise; the lack of a statement is usually a statement on its own. However, when that movie is nominated for five Academy Awards (Best Picture among them) and has a hefty momentum going into the season, it’s hard to simply say nothing.

It has long been my mantra that just because you or I don’t like a piece of art, it does not mean that the piece of art is, in and of itself, bad. Not everything is for everyone. A far more meaningful (and interesting) question beyond if you merely liked something, then, is why you did or didn’t enjoy it. It puts the conversation back into criticism and creates an invitation.

All of this being said, I am simply baffled by The Zone of Interest.

Finally receiving a wide release from A24, the premise behind this film is borrowed from a 2014 book of the same title by Martin Amis: a Nazi commander in charge of the Auschwitz concentration camp lives with his family next door to the site of unspeakable horrors and atrocities. The trouble I run into with giving a brief synopsis is that that’s about it – nothing much else happens in this movie. The idea is startling on the surface, but when most of the movie is long takes of mundane day-to-day actions, I find that the startling nature of the idea is somewhat diluted by how stagnant the action is. There is much to be said about the impartiality with which the characters go about their lives even as thousands are being tortured and murdered just yards away – the “banality of evil” conversation is a heavily-trod path in discussions about this movie.

I certainly applaud the conceit of disturbing the audience with telling two different stories, one visual and one audible. Through every scene of the family having conversations about going to school, or getting the groceries, the background noise is permeated by gunshots, shouts, and screams. The characters sometimes even need to raise their voices to hear one another over the charnel sounds coming from Auschwitz, and yet never acknowledge what is going on next door. At night, a warm glow illuminates the rooms of the family home – a glow that comes from the fires bursting out of the chimneys next door. The strongest points here are when we most poignantly experience the contrast between evil and ordinary.

Despite having a really strong concept, this movie’s monotony of plot (or lack thereof) makes it a tough sell for general audiences. It has been polarizing, and will absolutely continue to be no matter the results of the Academy Awards in March. Most of the film is shot at a distance, making us experience the entire thing at a remove. This leads to the characters becoming inaccessible. With nary a plot point in sight, and characters that we can’t connect with, what could have been devastating ends up more provocative in concept than in practice. Though perhaps this indifference is intentional, to mirror the way in which this family treats the horrors just over the garden wall. And as Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel reminds us:

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.

– U.S. News and World Report (October 27, 1986)

This is a very weird movie, but not by its content. Hard to tell whether it was worth watching.

Visually it's nice, extremely clean and ordered. But 90% of what happens has absolutely no interest. Family picnic. Wife showing the garden to her mother. Some random conversations. Dictation of work letters. Administrative work. It is very boring, soporific even.

The only interest comes from knowing who those people are and the whole context, and the contrast with the banality of their lives, with the clinical simplicity of administrative decisions.

The whole camp is hidden behind a wall. There is just a background noise, far away, muffled, some cries, some gunshots. And the chimneys smoke.

Among what is banal but extremely shocking by the context:
- The mother complaining she could not get her neighbour's curtains.
- The commander getting a new post, but her wife complaining about losing her garden
- The sales pitch of the new generation crematorium
- Being so happy that the plan is named after him that he calls his wife in the middle of the night
- Ashes used as fertilizer in the garden

The only small moments that acknowledge the violence are:
- the wife, upset, threatening the maid that she could have her incinerated just like that
- the commander having [spoiler]a young girl sent to his office[/spoiler]
- in the commanders meeting, the word "extermination" is said once, but all the rest is just logistics and quotas

At the end, a cutscene shows people cleaning the camp, and it takes a while to realize they are cleaning [spoiler]the current day Auschwitz museum[/spoiler], I guess showing the continuity of mundane tasks in all circumstances.

So in the end, this is definitely a work of art that succeeds in what it's trying to achieve. However the boringness is what makes it special, and you can't avoid the fact that it **is** mostly boring. Not to watch when sleepy or tired.

A very interesting portrayal of the banality of evil. The horror is not in what’s shown, but what isn’t. The compartmentalization, the routine. While gunshots and screams echo and smoke billows, they have their idyllic little life, better than they dreamed. Anything that brings too much attention to the other side of their life is an intrusion, an annoyance, like the mother who can’t stand the flames. The droning score and the bright colors underscore this, banging at the door to be let in and acknowledged and shut out by this family. Most striking of these was Rudolf under a blindingly white sky while a soundscape of death paints the picture, and a close up of the flowers of their happy garden while the ashes of the people they’ve murdered rest in the soil.

The revulsion the film inspires with Rudolf sharing how the only thing he could think about at a party was the logistics of how to gas them all, as if it’s a fun thought experiment and anecdote, is impressive. As is Hedwig’s entitlement towards her idea of a perfect life and her lashing out at the Jewish servants when it’s threatened. Or the eldest son playing a cruel trick on his younger brother, licking him in a greenhouse door and imitating a gas chamber.

It’s all so innocuous to them. Just background noise of their life. The repetition is as droning as the score, leaving you desperate to escape this mindset and terrified of the ways that we too suffer from it.

Some movies just have to be seen, even if they make for a difficult watch, and writer-director Jonathan Glazer’s latest is one of those pictures. While this offering is at times a bit uneven, when it’s on, it’s on, leaving a powerfully indelible mark on viewers, one that you feel in your gut and your heart and can’t get out of your mind. The film tells the unnerving story of the family of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel). They reside directly next door to the infamous Nazi concentration camp, somehow managing to live seemingly “normal” lives in the shadow of this horrendously notorious facility. What’s most chilling, however, is that the family seems largely oblivious to the atrocities taking place on their doorstep, focusing more on their social activities and material possessions instead, even with the routine sounds of gunfire and the sight of billowing smoke from mass crematoriums filling the surrounding skies. In portraying this, the filmmaker doesn’t need to resort to graphic, gratuitous imagery to make his point about the unspeakable acts unfolding so close to home; comparatively simpler depictions of these events (and their aftermath) speak volumes instead, creating some of the most implicitly unsettling sights ever captured on film. As a consequence, this approach really makes one wonder how anybody could be so wantonly callous and unfeeling, making for truly troubling viewing. Yet it’s also the kind of imagery that has to be seen for its full impact to sink in. This Oscar nominee for best picture – and the recipient of numerous other competition and film festival accolades throughout awards season – richly deserves the attention it has garnered, even if it’s an inherently disturbing watch (sensitive viewers take note). To be sure, there are some pacing issues that could stand to be rectified, and a few story threads could use better clarity, but the picture’s superb cinematography and fine performances by its excellent ensemble cast (especially Sandra Hüller as the commandant’s self-absorbed wife) are undeniably noteworthy. This might be a film that no one wants to screen – but that everybody nevertheless should.

Christian Friedel is quite effective in his portrayal of the Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss here. He and wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) offer us one of the most stark contradictions I think I've ever seen on screen. The beautifully manicured garden of a delightful family home with an unique next door neighbour. That would be the Auschwitz concentration camp of which he was in control. We follow his selection to run the place, his increasing role in implementing the extermination processes and then gradually, as he is promoted again, their realisation that the idyllic life they want for themselves is doomed. It's the brutal comparisons that work best here. We don't really see anything graphic on screen, that's all left to our already well enough developed imagination. The blissful ignorance of their children, the ample supply of food and the prevailing attitudes that nothing at all is amiss compares frighteningly with the real life ghastliness of those just a few feet across a large concrete wall. I suppose it could have more meat on it's bones - maybe just a little too much is left to our own interpretation and it can be a little slow at times, but it still delivers well as a template for just how many people thought the mass killings was hardly more important than whether or not they'd run out of eggs. It's not an history lesson - there are corners cut and licence is certainly taken with some of the timelines, but it's still a poignant look at human behaviour that's well worth a watch.