The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)

[domino harvey]

[Red Screamer]

No music really means intermittent music (with striking, abrupt appearances) and “long takes” isn’t quite right. Indeed, part of what I had trouble understanding about Glazer’s filmmaking here was his mechanical approach to composition and editing, quite distinct from the manicured style of his other features. The fast, exact matches on action when people move from room to room in the house, seen from the exact same camera angles every time, bear the mark of surveillance camera footage, or even reality TV. That seems intentional, especially given the multicam setup on set. But what about the scene of the couple’s separation bargaining on the riverbank? It takes place in shot-reverse shot, edited fairly quickly, but the singles of the actors are filmed from behind at awkward quarter views. Glazer’s choices here don’t underline the drama of the situation or the emotions of the characters, but it’s also not quite different enough from that classical approach for me to call it distanced, ironic, critical, satirical—whatever. Is a scene like this relying on the audience already being halfway to wanting to shout “Who gives a fuck about your promotion” through the screen to arrive at its effects? Or how is it working?

[Mr Sausage]

The trouble with Schrader's critique is his (unconscious?) melding of formal devices with Christian theology: this style is "transcendental" because it forces us to contemplate the mysteries beyond reality, the non-material part of existence that we glimpse through a glass darkly. This is Christian theology applied to film technique. The critique works with religious filmmakers like Bresson and Dreyer who are grasping after religious mysteries, but embarrassingly, he also applies it to Ozu, whom he doesn't seem to know is, like most Japanese, not religious in any sense an American would understand. Whatever Ozu's devices are doing, it isn't transcendence. We are not contemplating mysteries beyond in Ozu. Schader is unable to see film in anything except Catholic terms.

Leaving aside the question of whether we'll ever understand how humans could come to perpetrate something so monumentally grotesque as the Holocaust (the endless psych studies, history books, novels, films, and other art on the subject would suggest this is an evergreen mystery), and sticking with film technique: one function of distancing devices is to render the familiar strange. In this case it renders both domesticity strange and the holocaust itself in the sense that the film does not replicate the styles generally used to film it. The point is not to reveal mysteries under the familiar, but return mystery to familiar things. It reinforces what we don't understand and makes opaque things we might take for granted (to see things, in Wallace Stevens' phrase, more truly and more strange)

Another function of distancing devices is generalization. I said it a post ago, but one thing the movie does is flatten psychology in order to make certain behaviours general. Rather than direct association, which non-distancing forms induce through identification or immersion, distancing devices use intellectual forms like contemplation to encourage, in this case, uncomfortable comparisons. Contemplation is a general intellectual activity with many functions, only one of which is the contemplation of the mysteries under physical reality.

Distancing devices also force a greater attention to the surface of a film, which makes it funny that Schrader would think they were "designed to see the unknown" underneath that very thing. In a movie like The Zone of Interest, the surface--that is, the material texture of the film itself--is everything. This is another point where Schrader's unacknowledged Christianity leads him astray, in this case the reflexive use of Christian metaphors of surface and depth. Christian hermeneutics (and theology and eschatology) are all about the idea of penetrating beyond the material realm into the spiritual truths beyond it (eg. anagogy in the four types of scriptural interpretation). When people talk of surface and depth in art, they're really using Christian interpretive techniques. It can be a useful way to talk about a lot of art, especially from western countries. But The Zone of Interest is closer to something like Battleship Potemkin than to Day of Wrath or Diary of a Country Priest. Its material conditions are not a vehicle to see the significance beyond them, they are the film's significance, and nothing less than a total engagement with its physical and aural textures in and of themselves will work. If you're hoping the film techniques will lead you beyond themselves, you're unconsciously expecting something out of the long cultural legacy of Christianity. The form leads you to itself; the materiality is the entirety. Unless you can abandon the received idea that the material is lesser and must be cast aside for bigger truths underneath it, a movie like this will seem insubstantial the way Schrader claims, and that'll be your loss. (You can find it insubstantial for other reasons, tho'! I'm just taking it to Schrader here).

Schrader's trouble is he noticed a similar style in a couple of Christian religious filmmakers and generalized based on that (and Ozu was exotic enough to be mistaken for some zen bullshit or whatever). I mean, yeah, because distancing techniques remove you from the material world depicted in the film, it can be a useful vehicle for reorienting the viewer towards the mysteries underneath. But the irony is that this technique also makes you doubly conscious of another materiality, that of the film itself, so the idea that it's designed to alienate the viewer from the conditions of the material is contradictory.

[AidanKing]

It doesn't really make any difference to the points being made, but it's probably worth pointing out that Schrader's form of Christianity is Calvinist rather than Catholic.

[Mr Sausage]

Huh, that was a weird mental lapse. I meant to write Christian again but wrote Catholic instead.

[AidanKing]

I suspected that might be the case!

Of course, Schrader's specific Calvinism has much more significance in his own work and, probably in particular, his films with Scorsese, where different views of salvation come into play.

[Mr Sausage]

I suspected that might be the case!

Of course, Schrader's specific Calvinism has much more significance in his own work and, probably in particular, his films with Scorsese, where different views of salvation come into play.

Schrader's Calvanism and Scorsese's Catholicism mesh perfectly in the issues of guilt and mortification, hence why Taxi Driver and Raging Bull work as well as they do. The two men have an equally intense relationship with sin.

[Matt]

There was a new sound mix done for the home version of the movie. Reading about how some of you didn’t really hear the crematorium noise surprises me. For me (at home), it’s omnipresent in the Auschwitz house scenes, a constant grinding rumble underneath everything. I think there is some ambiguity in the other sounds: hearing dogs barking (is it the family dog or the terrorizing camp dogs), gunshots (is it just a floorboard in the house), screaming (is it just the baby), and so forth. And the woodpeckers in the opening shot which sound an awful lot like machine guns. The only respite you get from the roaring of the ovens is in the scenes by the stream. There are moments like this when the sound stops, I think perhaps to reset your ears so that it’s even more apparent when it starts up again.

I was nauseated through much of the film, especially in the moments that are most subtly infused with horror, such as the women casually sorting through clothes brought from the camp and the boy looking at gold teeth in bed (I mean, Jesus Christ!) The sound certainly contributed to this.

But I was most surprised at my reaction to the museum scene, which revolted me just as much. I think it’s both a gesture at remembrance (how much worse would it be if the camp had simply been allowed to go to ruin and wild [as you see in Night and Fog], allowing us to forget the horrors of the camp in the process) but also an indictment of Auschwitz being turned into a vacationer’s attraction and school field trip destination—a site of atrocity tourism for the spectacle of public grieving like the 9/11 site or the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. These workers (local women just like the servants in the Höss house) calmly cleaning windows that frame huge piles of shoes from prisoners, dusting the crematory ovens (!), and running a vacuum cleaner that sounds not unlike the sounds of the crematorium we’ve been hearing the whole time. This was the most shocking part of the movie for me.

I don’t really know what to make of the placement of this scene, given that it cuts back to Höss in that hellishly labyrinthine building. I think maybe it’s time echoing back and forth, like his deeds still live in our time, but I don’t think it’s any kind of recognition for him of what he’s done. Maybe he’s disturbed by the quiet of the building and his apparent solitude. It will be a while before I watch this again to reach a firmer conclusion.

[therewillbeblus]

I don’t really know what to make of the placement of this scene, given that it cuts back to Höss in that hellishly labyrinthine building. I think maybe it’s time echoing back and forth, like his deeds still live in our time, but I don’t think it’s any kind of recognition for him of what he’s done. Maybe he’s disturbed by the quiet of the building and his apparent solitude. It will be a while before I watch this again to reach a firmer conclusion.

The choice to layer those scenes may have included a kind of validating pathos in, 'Yeah, you can't communicate through time, but if only..' along with a more aggressive, 'Hey, let's not keep repeating history now that we should know better' - I'm not sure. What I make of that juxtaposition is in comparing our complacency with his - not that the cleaners are the people hiring them are 'banal evil' on any level related to the Nazis. The desensitization mat be necessary, but just casually going to work to clean a site that is so disgustingly significant without emotion, because as we keep doing rote activity we lose stimulation and an acute consciousness to the meaning in them.. ugh. There's a strong comparison between this guy just doing his job without emotion and them doing the same. The laxity we use to keep ourselves stable every day is the first symptom of a social disease that will lead downward. Glazer is giving us a wake-up call, and then cutting back to Höss looking down the hall at nothing.. is that Glazer, looking down at us who he knows won't do shit to save this world? Is that us, pausing in a moment of sobriety to realize we should act more and talk or type or think less, only to realize we have to get back to something else? Yeah, Matt, the end demolished me too in ways the earlier parts of the film prepared for and cultivated, but that creative choice elevated it into a novel artistic intent, just ambiguous enough to make us engage with it. If it was clear and didactic, we could just say "I agree!" and then go on to something else and forget about it. Glazer is demanding we don't do that, or if we do, maybe we remember this movie from time to time and feel sick about it. Maybe that's the best tactic he can come up with, when looking at the state of the world right now and where it's heading, to grab our attention.

[Mr Sausage]

I don’t really know what to make of the placement of this scene, given that it cuts back to Höss in that hellishly labyrinthine building. I think maybe it’s time echoing back and forth, like his deeds still live in our time, but I don’t think it’s any kind of recognition for him of what he’s done. Maybe he’s disturbed by the quiet of the building and his apparent solitude. It will be a while before I watch this again to reach a firmer conclusion.

I thought the sudden, unaccountable vomiting right before indicated some kind of moral revelation. The movie seemed to be doing the same thing collocating the negative stock night scenes with the girl's sleepwalking to imply she was having visions of goodness whenever she plunged into her unconscious, but that goodness looked alien to her. This would accord with the book, where a couple characters have explicit moral revelations, albeit more conventionally. I liked it a bit better here: it's as though the universe is intruding on people with sudden metaphysical force, a rejection of the nazis' brute materialism.

Yeah, the woman trying on clothes scene filled me with a loathing I can hardly describe. I don't think I've ever been so physically disgusted by a movie that wasn't killing real animals or something.

[tenia]

I don’t really know what to make of the placement of this scene, given that it cuts back to Höss in that hellishly labyrinthine building. I think maybe it’s time echoing back and forth, like his deeds still live in our time, but I don’t think it’s any kind of recognition for him of what he’s done.

To me, it's 3 things. First, it's some kind of foreshadowing to him, Höss, of its upcoming demise and what will actually happen to what might seem to him like a perfect plan : it'll fail, and this place will become a memorial to the persons he participated in trying to erase while there'll barely be a trace of him in it. Second, I don't think it's any moral recognition for him; at best, it's his subconscious suddenly reaching out or a bodily reaction to all this time spent next to horrific crematoriums suddenly coming back to the surface but if anything, it's nothing that will permanently stop him from keeping on since he's not even able to actually vomit and he'll then keep on going down the stairs to darkness. Third, I think the placement just is where it'll be able to "bookend" the movie. I'm not sure it's questioning us (at least, not the shots of him, unlike possibly the shots of the museum), I think it's reflective of him to himself, acting as a conclusion of the fact he'll keep going no matter what, but in the grander scheme of things, he's going to fail.

But I was most surprised at my reaction to the museum scene, which revolted me just as much. I think it’s both a gesture at remembrance (how much worse would it be if the camp had simply been allowed to go to ruin and wild [as you see in Night and Fog], allowing us to forget the horrors of the camp in the process) but also an indictment of Auschwitz being turned into a vacationer’s attraction and school field trip destination—a site of atrocity tourism for the spectacle of public grieving like the 9/11 site or the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. These workers (local women just like the servants in the Höss house) calmly cleaning windows that frame huge piles of shoes from prisoners, dusting the crematory ovens (!), and running a vacuum cleaner that sounds not unlike the sounds of the crematorium we’ve been hearing the whole time. This was the most shocking part of the movie for me.

I had pretty much the same reaction. At first, you're jumping into the end of the camp as being a place of destruction. For the first time, we're shown inside of it, and it's a memorial, it's for remembrance, and it's taken care of. And then, you realise it's repeating what you were shown earlier, looking like a well-oiled machine with its workers cleaning it and sweeping it for others (possibly wealthier) to enjoy (and possibly feel good about themselves).
I'm not sure it's that big of a "museum industry" criticism as I've read here and there (some even said that the glass of the displays work like the walls of the camp, which seems like vast overanalysis to me), but I do believe it isn't just remembrance.

[Mr Sausage]

Second, I don't think it's any moral recognition for him; at best, it's his subconscious suddenly reaching out or a bodily reaction to all this time spent next to horrific crematoriums suddenly coming back to the surface but if anything, it's nothing that will permanently stop him from keeping on since he's not even able to actually vomit and he'll then keep on going down the stairs to darkness.

That's a good point. He doesn't come to a personal realization, he has a moral vision thrust on him. He's free to ignore it or rationalize it however he wants, and indeed he straightens up and continues on rather than collapsing to the floor to ponder what just happened.

[tenia]

I think he simply goes on doing exactly like he did during all the movie. He keeps going on, being a good little employee.

[therewillbeblus]

I mean, the guy doesn't even react much to repeated sudden illness as he descends the stairs. Just keeps going in the direction he's been told to, and the only direction he really knows how to go in, like the workers. It's an indictment on complacency.

[Mr Sausage]

I mean, the guy doesn't even react much to repeated sudden illness as he descends the stairs. Just keeps going in the direction he's been told to, and the only direction he really knows how to go in, like the workers. It's an indictment on complacency.

Normalization, too. What do you do with such unaccountable events? Carry on as if all were normal.

[The Curious Sofa]

No music really means intermittent music (with striking, abrupt appearances) and “long takes” isn’t quite right. Indeed, part of what I had trouble understanding about Glazer’s filmmaking here was his mechanical approach to composition and editing, quite distinct from the manicured style of his other features. The fast, exact matches on action when people move from room to room in the house, seen from the exact same camera angles every time, bear the mark of surveillance camera footage, or even reality TV. That seems intentional, especially given the multicam setup on set. But what about the scene of the couple’s separation bargaining on the riverbank? It takes place in shot-reverse shot, edited fairly quickly, but the singles of the actors are filmed from behind at awkward quarter views. Glazer’s choices here don’t underline the drama of the situation or the emotions of the characters, but it’s also not quite different enough from that classical approach for me to call it distanced, ironic, critical, satirical—whatever. Is a scene like this relying on the audience already being halfway to wanting to shout “Who gives a fuck about your promotion” through the screen to arrive at its effects? Or how is it working?

I think that's one of the things Glazer gets exactly right and formally each of his films has been a progression from the previous one. Here he puts the surveillance camera aesthetic, he used in the cruising sections of Under the Skin at the centre. The Zone of Interest is distanced without being too self-consciously formal, so that it doesn't become a mere exercise in representation (or, more accurately, non-representation) the way Son of Saul was. That film was far too preoccupied with its visual gimmick of shooting everything in extremely shallow focus so that we couldn't really see the horrors unfolding in the background. This visual conceit was more central to the film than the horrors of the Holocaust, which I thought ended up defeating the purpose.

The fact that the cinematography and editing neither underline emotions nor are so formally rigorous as to draw all the attention to themselves, is the right middle ground that the film finds and none of it distracts from what the film has to say about ordinary monsters. Much has been been about its sound design but The Zone of Interest looks extraordinary. It's crisp, bright, almost hyper-real wide-angle imagery and its saturated colour palette, which is a close approximation of German colour photography of the time (there are photos of the Höss family and their Auschwitz home in exactly those colours), is the opposite of the B&W or muted, muddy look that has been the standard for Holocaust movies. That in itself has been a rather manipulative cliche of Holocaust movies, but for Hedwig Höss the world isn't drained of colour, she lives in a paradise.

[ex-cowboy]

I can appreciate where Schrader is coming from and agree to some extent, but I think he is a little harsh in his conclusion. I was reminded a little of Angelopoulos' films when watching ZoI and for what it's worth I think the film's detached style lends itself better to a reading focused on 'history' as a metaphysical concept. I think this finds its most obvious realisation in the cutting at the end from Höss to the modern day and back again, as articulated by several people above, as well as the scene of the girl playing the piano. I would also agree that Schrader's focus on a spiritual/religious conception of this style obscures a more materialist reading - he sees this detached style as focused on the ineffable, whereas here (as in Ozu and Angelopoulos, although to different effect) it is about the material, the passage of time (day-to-day or on a grander scale) and peoples' places within physical spaces and histories.

Though interpretations of what makes him ill can differ, for me this scene's bookending of the 'flash forward' (for want of a better term) does lend itself to a reading of the psychological corruption manifesting itself as physical illness. This reminded me that apparently the SS began adopting arguments, originating in zen buddhism and utilised by the Japanese during the war, that the person/people committing these horrific acts were not actually consciously acting and were the physical manifestations of forces that were always and already doing the killing. In other words, for example, the knife being plunged into someone was always going to end up that way and no conscious action could change the flow of time/material. I remember Zizek mentioning this in a debate/talk, but I can't find the link at the moment. I wouldn't argue that the film explicitly conveys this, but as an aside it does fit with Schrader's interest in the spiritual.

[Blip Martindale]

Real interesting film, and finally a disturbing and moving one as well.

Glazer, like a lot of commercial/video directors who moved into film (Scott, Fincher, even Jonze [though I find him the best of the bunch]) has a tendency to use kind of bluntly obvious "understated" or minimal techniques in such a way as to draw attention to what he's doing, instead of trying to perfectly express an idea in a novel way - or the best way, novel or otherwise. None of these guys is dumb (except Scott, who probably has the dramatic IQ of an equine) so these techniques are mostly well deployed but not as effective as they think they are. Juxtaposing beautiful images of flora with the horrifying sounds of torture is pretty basic, art school stuff, but it is effective here, if only because of the mastery of Glazer's method. I just can't imagine directors as brilliantly intelligent as Kubrick or Tarkovsky or Malick doing such a thing - perhaps they did, and I just don't remember it? - maybe Full Metal Jacket's nightmarish midnight march to the Mickey Mouse Club song counts? - but I can't help thinking they would keep ruminating about it, keep rehearsing and experimenting, find some other solution (no pun intended) to the aesthetic problem. In Kubrick's case, it's well known that he could find no answer, at least not in totality, and it's to his credit that he gave up on his Holocaust flick, much as I wanted to see it. That's both despair and modesty, and I find it very telling that one of the greatest artists of the 20th century (and whose wife's family helped produce anti-Semitic propaganda) could not come to grips with the subject. Still, that doesn't mean films like this shouldn't be made, and it's a fine film and I'm glad it exists.

Having read about the "gimmick" of leaving all the atrocities off screen, I was initially disinterested. It brought to mind stunts like Ernest Vincent Wright's Gadsby, the novel written without the use of the letter "E". But unlike that novel, Glazer's choice does seem related to our interpretation of and relation to the historical events in the film. It's no less a formal stunt than Hitchcock might have done, or the shower-not-gas trick in Schindler's List, but it's a choice that ultimately works, because frankly most people just don't want to see the real shit on the screen, understandably. I won't say the film works in a sub-conscious or hypnotic manner, but I think it tries to. And any work of art that buries itself in your brain, especially if you're not quite aware of it, has the most chance of lingering and altering your thinking.

That choice - to avoid showing the horrors - and his means of doing that, led me to some interesting associations with other films. Strangely enough, the director that came to mind most frequently was Tati, not just in the essential precision of the mise en scène, sound design and choreography, but also a few specific references. First, the reflection of the billowing smokestacks in the night time window can't help but recall the reflection of the Eiffel Tower in Playtime - obviously to different ends, but nonetheless similar. Then, the Hoss's house itself, the yard, and how they were situated within the frame - all I could think of was Villa Arpel, the modern, alienating house Hulot visits in Mon Oncle. Even the repetitive and sometimes pointless movement of occupants and servants within the dwelling echoed the same movements in Tati's film.

There were other elements and situations that made me think of Tati, if not specific recollections. I think Zone had more than a few moments of what would be termed "physical comedy" if in the context of a different film. The Commandant mounting and riding his horse right out his front yard and all of thirty meager feet to the gate of the death camp is a hilarious example of grandiose pomposity. Why not walk? Why kill Jews to begin with? And what's the resale value on this property? Is it on Zillow? Little bits like that take my mind places. When Hoss is lost and sickened in the recursive MC Escher staircase at the film's end - that could have easily been a scene in Playtime, as much as Kafka or Gilliam's Brazil.

The night vision scenes with the apples, surely they were meant to evoke the solarized apple dream in Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood, however different the mood or meanings.

I felt emotionally distant from the film until the brilliant ending, when we are vaulted to the present day. First I thought he was pulling a Spielberg, with a coda of survivors, etc. but when I realized what he was really showing us - the quotidian reduction of a nightmare to a commodified daily chore, I lost it, man. Very similar to the "which cities do we bomb" scene in Oppenheimer, which was the only scene in that film that moved me (and very much so). This was a Herzogian moment of absurdity while caught in the jaws of the abyss.

Friedel was fine as Hoss, but as others have noted, it was really Hüller's show. I assume this was Glazer's intention, but one thing in particular, regarding Hüller - I found her exaggerated, bowlegged loping everywhere she went quite amusing. I can't remember if her other fine performances (Toni Erdmann, etc.) utilized this same odd stride, but all I could think of the whole time was Gary Cooper's famous waddle - supposedly due to hemorrhoids! Anyway, I love her, great actress.

Another note on casting. Most biopics feature players who are inherently more attractive than their subjects, because, hey, it's the movies, and even the harshest and most truthful films also serve as escape mechanisms and wish fulfillment. That is what it is, very few films are otherwise. But frankly, the actual Hosses were more good looking than the actors portraying them, and that was an interesting choice by Glazer. On the one hand, there's long been a tradition of cartoonish grotesquerie when representing Nazis in paintings, films, whatever visual media. Many of the later scenes at the Nazi ball utilize actors and gestures that might as well be lifted from George Grosz, and they successfully convey a sense of indulgent dissipation. I wonder, though, how much more or less troubling the film would have been if the two leads were more beautiful, more dignified? Hell, one of their daughters, Inge-Brigitt Hoss, was a Balenciaga fashion model who claimed the Nazis got "bad press"!

[The Curious Sofa]

I think one is on shakey ground here when assessing the perceived attractiveness of actors against the characters they portray and maybe you are a little too swayed by the curious factoid that Inge-Brigitt Höss briefly worked as a house model for Balenciaga.

One can cherry-pick photos where the Höss couple or the actors who portray them are more conventionally attractive. There is that photo of Rudolf Höss in uniform smiling, where he looks quite dashing, but in photos of him looking solemn in court it's noticeable that Christian Friedel bears a striking resemblance to Höss. Sandra Hüller is of a similar type to the character she portrays, and in the only clear photo I can find of Hedwig Höss online, she is considerably younger than she was during the events of the film.

As for Hüller's performances, I'd highly recommend checking out Requiem (2006), the first movie that got her critical attention and in which she gives one of the most heartbreaking performances I've ever seen. She'd be my pick for the Best Actress Oscar this year. She deserves it for her nuanced work in Anatomy of a Fall alone, but I can't help but take into account that she gave two outstanding and very different lead performances in films released last year.

[Cipater]

Saw the film yesterday, and I have yet to unlock that cutaway to contemporary Auschwitz. I think I'm on a similar path as the one therewillbeblus and others articulated (and that more eloquently than I could): there's something about the unfathomable, distanced approach the German protagonists are capable of adopting to the atrocities carried out just outside their front door and the unfathomable, distanced approach we too are kinda sorta capable of adopting when we put the annihilated victims' remnants in museums and (seemingly) desensitized even stomach cleaning the window-panes like it's daily business similar to any other. Which is to say a condemnation (or simply observation?) of humanity's capability/tendency to move on, find ways to exist, etc. But if that is the point -- and again, I don't know that my reading is correct or as nuanced as Glazer's intent -- I wonder if the film isn't emblematic of the very same "issue" that it points out? Isn't the fact that Glazer can make an austere and cold film that aspires to high art -- shot on-location, no less! -- kind of fucked up, too? I'm not sure, I think I liked the film (possibly even quite a bit), and now I'm rambling but films on the Holocaust always invariably give rise to these questions: "What is the purpose of yet another depiction of this historical trauma?", "Is this particular film's aesthetic and intellectual endeavor worth-while?" and so on, and so on…

[Blip Martindale]

I think one is on shakey ground here when assessing the perceived attractiveness of actors against the characters they portray and maybe you are a little too swayed by the curious factoid that Inge-Brigitt Höss briefly worked as a house model for Balenciaga.

One can cherry-pick photos where the Höss couple or the actors who portray them are more conventionally attractive. There is that photo of Rudolf Höss in uniform smiling, where he looks quite dashing, but in photos of him looking solemn in court it's noticeable that Christian Friedel bears a striking resemblance to Höss. Sandra Hüller is of a similar type to the character she portrays, and in the only clear photo I can find of Hedwig Höss online, she is considerably younger than she was during the events of the film.

As for Hüller's performances, I'd highly recommend checking out Requiem (2006), the first movie that got her critical attention and in which she gives one of the most heartbreaking performances I've ever seen. She'd be my pick for the Best Actress Oscar this year. She deserves it for her nuanced work in Anatomy of a Fall alone, but I can't help but take into account that she gave two outstanding and very different lead performances in films released last year.

And I think "one" is on shakey ground willfully ignoring a basic tenet of narrative visual art that has existed since the damn Renaissance: the choice an artist makes between accurate observation and representation, vs idealization. It's a tool artists have used for centuries, for the reasons I outlined above. Accurate and unflattering (or, like Grosz, insulting caricature) can have one effect, classic Greek and Roman forms will have another. These two approaches can even be combined in one work, and even in one figure or character, depending on intentions.

Someone like Malick uses both approaches in his casting, and often creates scenarios where the beauty - or the beautiful way in which they are filmed - of characters says something much more transportive and tragic than an ugly character in the same situation might. Yes yes, I know, it's not "nice" to judge humans or actors (not much of an overlap there) on their appearance, but it's fucking foolish to think they aren't cast and utilized with these intentions in mind. Is Cavani on "shakey" ground for casting Bogarde and Rampling in Night Porter? Or, just maybe, is she using the seductiveness of those actors to make a point or subvert the audience's expectations, or make us uncomfortable? Kenneth Anger, Antonioni, Todd Haynes, Douglas Sirk, John Waters, PTA, on and on - they choose actors for their appearances as much as their skills, and that's a fact. And they cater their storytelling to those appearances and preconceptions.

The adaptation from book to film - from word to image - has to contend with this all the time, Dick's protagonist in Minority Report is described as a schlubby nebbish, not an athletic fuck machine like Tom Cruise. That was a choice Spielberg made. Does it work? Does it change the meaning of the story? Well, no critics even bother to write about it, because they are generally unread morons and know nothing about visual idioms. In some ways, having the protagonist be so conventionally handsome and confident is more subversive than in Dick's original story, but I doubt that was Spielberg's intention.

I maintain that Zone would have been more disturbing or complex had Glazer cast more beautiful actors, that is all. And if you think I'm "swayed" or basing my entire argument on one line about Hoss's daughter being a model, you deliberately miss my point, especially when that line was paired with her wretched quote. The fact is, the actors in question are portrayed in constant unflattering states, for example Rudolph's bad posture and gut when swimming, Hedwig's ridiculous gait (as I mentioned) and so on. Yes, this humanizes them, but it also meets audience expectations of "gross" Nazis, so it's not very challenging or subversive

[The Curious Sofa]

In that case "The Reader" with Kate Winslet is probably the perfect Holocaust movie for you.

[Mr Sausage]

Yeah, the look of the actors fits the theme of bare mundanity. Their depiction is only unflattering in the sense that there is no movie glamour applied. Filming them in a more attractive way would violate the movie’s aesthetic, and more conventionally attractive actors would be a contrivance rather something with real significance.

I also googled the actual people, and the actors resemble them pretty closely.

[Blip Martindale]

In that case "The Reader" with Kate Winslet is probably the perfect Holocaust movie for you.

Haven't seen it, know nothing about it. Care to elucidate in an actual response, or is this the CF.ORG version of the perennial online classic "Well, if you don't like Nolan why don't you just go watch some Kevin James films"?

[Matt]

Can you chill? You’re being unnecessarily combative and aggressive with these posts. If you can’t handle a little bit of pushback on your strongly expressed opinions, this is perhaps not the right forum for them.

The Reader is notable for having a very good-looking cast, toplined by Kate Winslet as a Nazi guard.