The trailer for the movie "The Area of Interest"/Lev Cinema
One of the prominent competitors at the Oscar ceremony that will take place this Sunday is "Zone of Interest", which takes place against the background of what happened in the Auschwitz extermination camp.
It is nominated in many categories, including best film, and is considered a clear favorite to win the International Film Award.
It has already won numerous decorations, including the second most important prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and recently received another seal of quality - Steven Spielberg declared it the best Holocaust film since "Schindler's List".
Go argue with such a compliment.
Now, ten months after his debut and just before he storms the statuettes, he is finally being released in Israel.
At the time, "Schindler's List" outlined the path that contemporary cinema is taking in dealing with the Holocaust.
Usually, there are two types of films - those that deal with followers of the nations of the world, or those that deal with Nazis.
The Jews mostly remain as supporting characters.
"Area of interest" chooses the second category.
Based on the book by Martin Amis, it presents the story of Rudolf Hess, the commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp, his partner Hedwig and their family.
The film was created by the British-Jewish director Jonathan Glazer.
He visited the archives of the extermination camp, which gave him full access, and discovered a fact there that shocked him: the Hess couple loved living in Auschwitz.
It was the best time of their lives, and when the opportunity arose for relocation, they didn't want to leave.
Go argue with Spielberg.
From "Area of Interest"/Cannes Festival
Rudolph felt satisfaction from his work.
He was an outstanding employee of the Nazi regime, who asked him to kill as many Jews as possible.
He did it at a pace that no one else in the extermination machine could match, and with complete composure - the film describes how he discusses the burning and poisoning of people with the same correctness with which contractors talk about TAMA. For him, it was another project.
Hedwig, for her part, is busy tending the house and especially the garden Adjacent to it, which she turns into the most blooming and heartwarming garden in Eastern Europe. She loves the pastoral place so much for her, that she is furious when her talented partner gets a promotion and refuses to move in with him. The phrase "the neighbor's grass is greener" has never taken on a more chilling meaning , because from the other side of the fence we constantly hear the cries of the Jews, on their way or when they arrive at their death sentence.
Glazer only directs once every few years, and it's always interesting to wait. Each of his previous films, for example "Birth" and "Under the Skin", was a unique masterpiece, and this is also true of the music videos he directed. "Area of Interest" is also a work of extraordinary cinematic thought.
Glaser works well with his partners, including the Polish photographer Lukasz Zal, who has already done a pulsating job in "Ida", another Holocaust film; the composer Mika Levy, as usual, creates unforgettable sounds, as she did in "Under the Skin" and also in films by other directors; and the sound designers, who are also considered favorites to win an Oscar.
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Uses the most banal symbols - babies and dogs.
From "The Area of Interest"/Lev Cinema
Unlike Spielberg, who shot "Schindler's List" in black and white, Glaser shoots in color, and in some colors - the film is so bright, and the image in it is so alive, that the feeling is that we are swimming together with the Hess family in all this green and blue.
The colorfulness of the "area of interest" reminds us that the Holocaust is not a distant past, but a contemporary story, and it creates a contrast between the heaven where the Nazis live and the hell that the Jews go through.
A few months ago I visited a particularly creepy Holocaust museum.
The images that shocked me the most were not necessarily of the horrors of the victims, but of the Nazis, who during the genocide had a pleasant time vacationing at resorts, laughing and dancing, drinking and eating, and relaxing comfortably on chairs.
Glaser emphasizes this contrast with the play between sound and image, what is seen on the screen and what is left outside, and can only be heard - the peaceful pastimes of the Hess family, and on the other hand the inhuman screams of the Jews.
And yes, there are also aromas of misogyny.
From "The Area of Interest"/Lev Cinema
The film has many other qualities, including the acting.
Hedwig is played by Sandra Holler, an actress so versatile and talented that she is nominated for an Oscar for a different role altogether - her appearance in the French "Anatomy of a Fall".
I was also impressed by the film the first time I watched it in Cannes.
But after two more viewings, and despite all its virtues and all the praise it has received, I would like to pause for a moment and think about whether the "area of interest" really deserves to enter the pantheon.
Let's start with a relatively minor matter.
"Schindler's List" brought in over three hundred million dollars at the time, not to mention all the millions who saw it in educational settings.
It could be argued that this is a populist film, and yet he managed to make this story accessible to the general public, as only Spielberg knows how to do.
"The Area of Interest", on the other hand, had trouble finding an audience, both because cinema in general is faltering these days, and also because it is an artistic and challenging film, one that sometimes slips into the limits of video art and seems to belong in a museum, not on the big screen.
On the one hand, Glaser talks about the topicality and relevance of this work, which asks us all to confront what humanity is capable of and shout "never again", but on the other hand she limits this discussion to an audience of cinematographers, at most.
Is this the Holocaust movie we need now?
Worse, the film touched on the most banal subject of all - the banality of evil.
He does this in fairly predictable ways - for example a scene where a Nazi is petting a dog.
Glaser is so spoon-feeding, that the only thing missing is for Hannah Arendt to get hurt and cry out "The Nazis were just gray technocrats who outside of working hours played with Labradors!".
It's intellectual laziness as well as a scripting problem, because the film repeatedly returns to this point.
OK, we get it, those who exterminated six million Jews were civilized people who played the piano and planted roses.
segment.
It exhausts itself after a few minutes and the "area of interest" becomes monotonous, without additional layers and in fact without a plot - and yes, even in a Holocaust movie it is permissible to expect such things.
Is this the Holocaust movie we need now?
From "The Area of Interest"/Lev Cinema
Together with "Schindler's List", "The Area of Interest" presents one of the most common and problematic arguments of our generation - the thought that morally, we are all the same.
No person is better or worse than the other.
We all have the potential to be good, like Schindler, or bad like Hess.
So where are the Jews in this story?
These simplistic theories turn the holocaust into an abstract story because they claim that anyone could have been a Nazi.
But what to do, there are also empirical facts - Nazism came from Germany, and white Christians joined it.
Can anyone be as good as Schindler?
Maybe, it's a fact that there are only about 27 thousand Hasidic nations of the world.
In any case, being the victims, the Jews could not choose between good and evil, so they are not relevant to Glaser in his morality tale.
That's why there are almost no Jewish characters in the film and we don't even see Jews.
Whose holocaust is this anyway?
From "The Area of Interest"/Lev Cinema
The Holocaust, and it is a shame to mention it, is the systematic extermination of two thirds of the European Jewish population.
Glaser, even more than other directors before him, turned it into a general philosophical-universal example.
This erasure continued at the film's official press conference in Cannes - one of the most amazing events I've ever been to.
It was an hour long conversation, about what is considered the most important Holocaust film since "Schindler's List", and the word "Jew" was not uttered there once.
One American journalist used the film to talk about the legislation in Florida, a particularly ridiculous comparison but also not surprising - with the Americans, in the end, everything revolves around themselves, including the Holocaust of the Jews, and for them the Holocaust has long since not belonged to us, but to them.
That's why they love giving her Oscars so much, and next week they'll do it again.
And in answer to your next question - yes, Glazer is to blame for the audience's reactions to his film, even if not actively.
It was the abstraction and simplification of the "area of interest" that led to this and emptied the film of any meaning, and allowed everyone to fill this void in their own way.
You will not be surprised to hear that the network is already talking about this work as an example of what is happening in Gaza - of course.
Film buffs love such banal, lazy, automatic responses almost as much as they love talking about sound design.
More on the same topic:
Auschwitz
Oscar
Steven Spielberg
Schindler's list
holocaust