Jonathan Glazer’s film ‘Zone of Interest’ caught in Oscar controversy

Jonathan Glazer’s film Zone of Interest, released on streaming platforms even before the Oscars, was at the center of heated discussions in the press and social networks. The trigger was the director’s speech at the Oscar ceremony criticizing Israel. Offers his interpretation of the film about the Holocaust in the light of the scandal that broke out Andrey Plakhov.

At first, everything developed in line with the traditional Oscar canon. High-quality films about the Holocaust have always been a priority for the Academy and often won. This is the fate of the Oscar-winning Italian film “Life is Beautiful” (1997), the Austrian “Counterfeiters” (2006), and the Hungarian “Son of Saul” (2016). Now the hour has come for “Zone of Interest,” which Steven Spielberg himself, not forgetting himself, called the best film about the Holocaust after “Schindler’s List.” Glaser’s painting also had skeptical critics, but their voices were drowned in the chorus of acceptance.

Based on Martin Amis’ novel Zone of Interest, Glaser dramatically changed his method, style, and approach to history. He removed psychology, melodrama and what can be called the manifestation of strong feelings that always resonate in the audience’s hearts. Instead, we are offered a dispassionate anthropological excursion into an artificial paradise – a magical garden laid out on the territory of Auschwitz. This is a true masterpiece of landscape design: there are beds with rosemary and fennel, climbing grapes, and chrysanthemums filled with blood-red juice. This garden of Eden is home to camp commandant Rudolf Hess, his wife Hedwig and five children. A boy plays with soldiers, another looks at the gold teeth his dad brought home from work, a girl sees strange dreams after a bedtime story about Hansel and Gretel was read to her.

The house and garden are separated from the death camp by a high wall, behind which nothing is visible except the smoking chimney of the crematorium (from where the ashes are delivered, which fertilize the garden). But much can be perceived with the help of other senses. For example, with the nose: the commandant’s mother-in-law, who came to visit, leaves ahead of time, never getting used to the smoky and corpse smells. And first of all, with the ear: barking dogs, shots, shouts of guards, groans of prisoners. But a couple of the main characters (played by Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller) don’t give a damn: they are cozy and comfortable here, they have long gotten used to the smells and sounds. And when the top leadership of the Reich entrusts Hess with a responsible mission – the “disposal” of several hundred thousand Jews from Hungary, a reasonable decision is made at the family council. Rudolph will go to his new destination, Hedwig will remain to cultivate his beloved house, garden and raise children. They will unite “when everything is over.” But during a pause between high-level meetings, Hess suddenly becomes ill, and at that moment he seems to look into his real future (the commandant ended his life in 1947 on the gallows next to the same house).

The film contains nothing more plot-wise, and its artistic value lies precisely in its bold rejection of narrative and shifting the center of gravity to a static image interspersed with video art and stunning sound design (another Oscar was deservedly given to Tarn Wheelers and Johnny Byrne for sound). It is interesting to trace the trajectory along which cinema moved, trying to deal with fascism – the main collective trauma of the 20th century. In the 1960s, Mikhail Romm put forward the concept of “ordinary fascism” (close to what Hannah Arendt formulated at almost the same time as the “banality of evil”). Luchino Visconti polemicized with them in “The Death of the Gods”: he endowed his heroes with the infernal energy of an ancient myth. Later, when the “end of history” was experienced and the public did not want cruel spectacles, the Holocaust gave impetus to the appearance of optimistic fairy tales based on this terrible material, Spielberg’s is one of them. Nowadays, when bloody history returns, a Glazer film emerges, where the banal and the infernal coexist within the same images. And such an interpretation most of all corresponds to the nature of modern villainy that has not yet been solved.

This could have been put to rest if not for Glazer’s performance at the Oscars. It immediately went viral, aggravated by an inaccurate translation from English. The director, an ethnic Jew, did not “renounce his Jewishness,” as he has been hastily attributed, but spoke out against “Jewishness and the Holocaust being appropriated by an occupation that led to conflict for so many innocent people.” But even in this form the statement sounded scandalous. The term “occupation” is unacceptable to many and devalues ​​the entire meaning of the film. Glaser, however, continued: “Our film shows what dehumanization at its worst can lead to. It shapes our entire past and present. Whether it is the victims of October 7th in Israel or the victims of the ongoing attack on Gaza: they are all victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist this?”

The participants in the ceremony had different answers to this painful question. Some of the celebrities came with pro-Palestinian badges on their clothes, but there were also those whose paraphernalia was reminiscent of Israeli hostages being held captive by Hamas. Someone has already initiated an anti-Oscar campaign. This is a new reality, which would be too easy to explain only by ignorance and the fashion for leftism. This is the reality the film community will have to live and work with in the coming years. After all, Glaser expressed approximately the same thing as the authors of a letter from film directors recently published in the Libération newspaper. And among them are Aki Kaurismaki, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Radu Jude, Nadav Lapid, Jia Zhangke, Claire Denis, Andre Téchiné, Christian Petzold, Bela Tarr, Victor Erice, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Apichatpong Weerasethakun… Those who determine the weather in modern cinema, at festivals and at the same Oscar.