The Zone of Interest
Watching this film was annoying, but part of the discourse surrounding it is even more hollow. There's no such thing as an "unethical" way to portray a tragedy, unless a filmmaker CLEARLY misrepresents factual events to deny the harm that was done to the victims, or in order to attack them in any way, shape or form. Cinema is a lie that tells the truth. Whether you see a particular film as "entertainment", it is still part of the postmodern desert we inhabit as viewers where we consume ourselves in media through which our history, desires, identity, thoughts are replicated and sold to us as products. These filmmakers want your money and adulation just like anyone else selling you a commodity. So to scoff at Schindler's List in your praise for this film is silly. 133
This movie's supposed metatextuality doesn't make it any less exploitative. If one were to make the argument that this is yet another film in the profitable, Oscar-reaping enterprise that Hollywood has manufactured through its commodification of the Holocaust, it'd be valid.
Now onto the movie...
My gripe with this film is that it doesn't justify its runtime. Once you realize that there's no real plot, the juxtaposition of quotidian nazi life at the forefront and the steady thrum of the Auschwitz massacre in the background gets old pretty quickly. Lots of people have described this movie as a chilling, frightening watch but, I mainly felt boredom, especially past the halfway mark.
There's no shortage of great films depicting the banality of evil. The difference is that they do it through much more engaging narratives. One of my all-time favorite films is <PERSON>'s The Conformist. Just like The Zone of Interest, it's a movie showing the banality in which a bureaucrat/duty-bound soldier engages in fascist ideologies but it's more subtle and less monotone in its approach. 269