I hoped and suspected that The Zone of Interest would be the next film patrons picked for me to cover following its prominence at the Academy Awards in March, where it won much-deserved prizes for Best Sound and Best International Film, as well as the backlash to and praise for director Jonathan Glazer's acceptance speech drawn directly from the film's own themes. The title had appeared in an earlier poll, spurred by last year's podcast on Glazer's earlier Under the Skin; while I missed most of the press around it in 2023 I'd been anticipating this coverage for several months. Nonetheless, I wasn't really prepared for the power of this film, the purity of its aesthetic and especially the emotional devastation of its conclusion. Responding to a post about how the film "must most importantly be 'felt', rather than be 'understood'", I recently commented on Twitter that "The 'felt' and 'understood' were more intertwined than in most films I can think of. So much of its impact relies on what you know rather than see/hear yet it's so visceral. The power of the ending rests in an intellectual concept but [is] as emotional as any ending I've experienced." The Zone of Interest follows several months in the life of the Auschwitz commandant, told entirely on one side of the concentration camp wall - the side on which Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) live in their tidy, well-manicured villa. This episode discusses the film's aggressive, intricate soundtrack, surveillance-style shooting strategy, and differences from the novel Glazer very loosely used as inspiration; I also explore the history of the real Höss, the prisoner-written song "Sunbeam" featured in the film, connections to other famous Nazi- or genocide-themed works like Schindler's List, The Act of Killing, and Dr. Strangelove, what marks the time period as both distinct and resonant, and much more, in one of my longest reviews of a single film.
In addition to that $5/tier feature, for all patrons I've advanced another TWIN PEAKS Character Series entry, in this case one of the most complicated, fascinating characters of the third season (and, in some ways, before that too).
What are the May rewards?
