The Zone of Interest is an Exquisite Failure - Video Essay
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- Опубликовано: 11 июн 2024
- After putting this video together, I'm more ambivalent about the film than ever. I may just refute everything I've said here in another video. The filmmaking is too good!
"The Zone of Interest is an Exquisite Failure"
Written and Edited by L. Corbett
The Zone of Interest (dir, Jonathan Glazer 2023)
Music in the Public Domain: musopen.org/music/18-piano-so... 
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Not understanding by the viewer isn't the same as a failure by the artist.
There’s constant images of smoke and ashes throughout the films, there’s even talk of thousands of people being burned all at the same time, i don’t think is that hard to understand that the frtilizer could be dead people’s ashes.
Thanks for an interesting take. I think I agree with you that the movie places too much emphasis on moral attention, as though awareness alone could have stopped the Hösses. Still, for me, the movie is a success just because it is such a perfect and thought-provoking melding of form and message. Anyway, well done on formulating what I'm guessing might be a controversial opinion!
i cant hear
Very interesting.
Why would you assume that revealing evil as stemming from human psychology or personality would provide a greater truth or understanding of the Holocaust's atrocities? Metatextually, this movie is a deserved and extreme reaction against Hollywood's portrayal of the Holocaust and its many awful tropes. Although it suffers from its own art house tropes, this context is key to understanding many of the movie's themes.
Near the end of the video, you imply that a neutral viewer would not gain much clarity or understanding from it. This viewer does not exist. The real audience for this movie has seen the historical facts and seen the characters of the Holocaust cartoonishly twisted or have been painfully asked to sympathize with or excuse the “good Nazi.”
In a deeper way, the revulsion at the film's formalist treatment is connected to the revulsion at the banality of evil. This is intentional. The refusal to see, built into the film's form, does not hinder the theme but creates even greater clarity and connection to it.
More importantly, I don’t see how a deeper understanding of the characters would provide insight into the banality of evil. Showing more characterization than the movie already does would not enhance this theme. I actually think a bit too much characterization of a unnecessary kind is included. Much of our lives (as unromanticized as possible) consist of inane moments that don’t offer insight into our character or motivations to the uninvested observer. Here, the superficial is all there really is.
To me, the banality of evil includes a inability to see on the perpetrator's part, as you noted - a key aspect of the film, but also a sense that you could have been situated in the same world and found yourself doing the same things (not Hess specifically jesus). Many of the men and women in the Nazi party lived unremarkable lives and participated in an atrocity of enormous scale in ways they could never understand. Now, the view of these people as “avatars of history” is all we really have. Pretending to greater understanding, especially through the seemingly inappropriate form of film, partially reflects the motivation of the Hollywoodization tropes mentioned above. We do not need to intimately understand the Hesses to grasp the potential of evil in banality; their awful lives can serve as examples.
As you say, the banality of evil fully encompasses the characters' minds, “so that there is nothing to see.” The true experience of this banality includes this flat, equal cinematographic treatment (as expressed by the camera). Here the formalism reflects the themes. I would also question your assumption that this formalism represents the implicit evil of humanity. Our flat spectatorship brings us closer to the characters than any more exaggerated characterization could. While many might reject empathy with any Nazi, this movie does not entirely ask that of the viewer. Even when flatly disgusted, viewing this film places you closer to the reality and banality of evil than any dubious explanation from psyche or nature. I think the form fits the message well.
As an aside, the vision of the future does not imply or assume that the Hess family had any idea of the measure of the atrocity they were part of. I see the sickness we see unfold before that shot as what might be the last human spark of revulsion from the Hess patriarch, not some clairvoyant moment of cosmic justice.
In short, the movie’s refusal to see “what makes up man” is not a failure on its part.
However, I do agree with some your criticisms of some of the formalist aspects and art house cliches. I tried to make that coherent. what do you think about the above?
why so quiet
I wish I could hear this but the volume is so low I can't :/ I've set it to MAX on three different devices with the same results. Liked anyway though :)
Apologies! Will reupload with better volume over the weekend :)
@@lexiescineobscura Keep an eye on the db levels, maybe you do, but if not, voice always between -12 and -6 when on a solo track, and music peaking at -18 is a decent rule of thumb
@@iTzKneecap Thank you! I overcompensated because all my other videos seem extremely loud to me but apparently those were the right volume 😅
just put on captions!
@@lexiescineobscura That's the nature of it haha. A good subjective sound test is to make sure your computer volume is at 70 % - 80%. If it's clear at that level, you're probably alright as well. Good luck!
Couldn't disagree more.