Notes From The Program Director | Week of February 2nd, 2024

“ The Zone of Interest, nominated last week for five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International Film, and Best Sound, centers on one of the most devastating of subjects: the Holocaust. Director Jonathan Glazer, however, who has made four feature films that have proved him to be a true artist and visionary, does not approach the subject in the usual way. He does not show any overt violence or horror. It is all in the background -- and therein lies the true horror: that a genocide can be happening "offscreen," as it were, as people are going about their ordinary lives--caring for children, making food, tending a garden, swimming in a pool--and they can seem, on the surface, to be nice ordinary people. They are, in fact, ordinary people, ordinary people capable of the worst of all horrors. The film is a devastating illustration of Hannah Arendt's now famous phrase, "the banality of evil," and the film has all kinds of resonances for today. 

“Film critic Tim Grierson, at the L.A. Film Critics Society Awards, as he presented the Best Director award to Jonathan Glazer, offered what I think is one of the best descriptions of why, exactly, the film is so powerful and so important for us, right now, in 2024, and I'll leave you with his words: 

“‘Good Evening.

‘Much has been made of the fact that writer-director Jonathan Glazer spent 10 years working on The Zone of Interest. But I would argue that it feels like a lifetime has been poured into this astonishing film. A lifetime of artistic growth and soul searching. A lifetime of witnessing the horrors of history repeat. Glazer’s drama is set during the Holocaust, but it speaks to the present -- it is an achievement that required every part of him. 

“‘Over the span of four monumental films, Glazer has forged a career that defies easy categorization. But after The Zone of Interest, what is clear is that what connects these films is a man who wants us to see beyond what we are accustomed -- to marvel or be terrified by the world that exists just below the surface. To look, unblinking at what’s been there the whole time. 

“‘In The Zone of Interest, Glazer presents fascism as a family affair, complete with the idyllic home, the wife and kids, the prestigious job. We don’t simply watch Rudolf and Hedwig -- we inspect them, their focus on status a nightmare mirror of our own petty cravings for comfort and security at the expense of others. Evil is not extraordinary, Glazer tells us -- in fact, it’s frighteningly common, and we are all susceptible to the virus. 

“‘That’s why he agonized over his masterpiece. The preciseness of tone, the rejection of cliches, the formulation of an ingenious shooting style that indicts rather than glamorizes: It took sensitivity and anger and sorrow and courage. The Zone of Interest is a work of profound moral seriousness. It is also a work of art. It took him a lifetime -- may we not take that long to heed its warnings or fully absorb its terrible power.’”