A Masterpiece from a TV Commercial Director
Friend, please do something for me. Put
this article aside and find the nearest theater showing The Zone of
Interest. Walk into the theater knowing as little as possible about it. Then
return to this article so we can exchange notes. I need to talk about this
movie with others.
The Zone of Interest is going to generate a great deal of
talk. There will be debates and podcasts. There will be university courses and
peer-reviewed scholarly articles. There will be a backlash industry
pooh-poohing every accolade the film receives. If you wait too long, your
chance to have your own experience of the film may slip out of your hands. You
may feel, "The Zone of Interest is its own industry. Seeing it
would be too much like homework. I'd prefer the latest superhero movie."
You may be thinking, "Another
Holocaust film. They're just are fishing for an Academy Award! Why can't we
have movies about other atrocities? And I don't like watching people being
tortured."
First, there is no torture, and almost
no violence, in this movie. I cry at movies and I didn't cry while watching Zone.
Days later, while merely thinking about it, I cried. I had nightmares. Even
in my nightmares, there was no blood. There were merely well-groomed, clean
people behaving in accord with their value system, their character, and their
mental defenses. And we need Holocaust movies because the Holocaust was a big
deal. And we can have movies about other atrocities, too, like Twelve Years
a Slave and Killers of the Flower Moon.
Zone is universal and timeless, like W. H. Auden's poem "Shield
of Achilles," which uses Jesus' crucifixion and Achilles' shield to
discuss twentieth-century atrocity. Both Auden's poem and Zone say as
much about slavery or the Cambodian Killing Fields or the Gulag as films
directly addressing those topics.
I recommend Zone to every
thinking adult. I say "thinking" because a subset of viewers
are not getting this movie. There are some negative fan reviews online. These
say that the film is "boring." "Nothing happens," they
complain. "There is no plot." Bless their hearts.
Thinking adults are capable of
observing. "To observe" implies an increase in cognitive activity
from "to watch." If you know how to observe, you will get Zone.
Filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron, winner of four
Academy Awards, said, that Zone is "probably the most important
film of this century, both from the standpoint of his cinematic approach and
the complexity of its theme." And if you are thinking, "Oh, this
movie sounds too artsy-fartsy. I like more direct fare," don't let that
stop you. Glazer got his start in that most democratic of forms, the TV
commercial, where he depicted drinking a Guiness beer as tantamount to being a white
stallion emerging from ocean surf. Glazer knows how to create images that
penetrate to your lizard brain. He wields that magic here, not to sell beer,
but to bring you closer to yourself, your own lowest fears and highest prayers.
In the article, below, I will summarize the plot, and then discuss the filmmaker, his approach, and the history he addresses.
