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I had just been reading some reviews like Manohla Dargis' in the NYT and some similar sentiments on Letterboxd that the movie feels a little "hollow". Which seems to be entirely the point, and an excellent example of movie as metaphor. But it got me to thinking about the final scenes.
Specifically, in the final moments the dry heaving coupled with the flash forwards to the museum point to a sort of sterilization of ugliness/evil, which again is the point of the movie. Thematically, it's incredibly strong.
But combined with some of the vague, vignette-like nature of the rest of the movie - did it ever make clear whether the kid being bullied was a younger brother or a house slave; why did Junior Hitler want to gas his own kind - the feeling of disassociation gets punctured a bit.
So when I saw several smart people rejecting the idea that Zone of Interest completely explains itself, I understood/stand. Then I considered how much of it is really just slice of life mundanity - again, THE POINT - that makes for a pretty dull portrayal of an incurably dark scenario.
I love bleak movies - Beau Is Afraid and Synecdoche New York are two of my favorites of the past 20 years, Virginia Woolf one of my favorite classics - but thinking about this reminded of a canonical film I've always hated, Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries. For me, it's similarly dull and hopeless - or as Dargis said about this one, art for art's sake.
With so much time removed, and so many war epics behind us, I was deeply moved by the reminder that much of this genocide was built on the promise of upper middle class quality of life for the chosen people who weren't Chosen People. But that's what you as a viewer have to bring to this movie, because the characters are too self-absorbed to even hint at the dichotomy of their situation.
I'm a massive sucker for sound design, and the immediately famous quote from the lead sound editor about this movie is, paraphrasing, "there's the movie you see on the screen and the movie you hear in the background, which is arguably the real movie." If that doesn't work, well...there's certainly a lot more drama in the background than the foreground, and I can understand why people might confuse austerity for obfuscation.
~~~~~~~~~ "This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517 Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz
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