The Best Film of 2023?
Added 2024-02-24 18:00:08 +0000 UTCI finally got around to watching THE ZONE OF INTEREST. Wow, loved it. I am thinking I will try and do a review for it. But not sure yet. Would love to hear everyone's thoughts who has seen it. I have many of my own.
Comments
exactly
Deepfocuslens
2024-02-25 19:03:04 +0000 UTCIt made me put-to-grill my own conscience.
Dean Imperial
2024-02-25 00:20:32 +0000 UTCThe thing that held me scene to scene was the uncomfortable dawning of what I myself and the people in my life might be complicit in without realizing it. It was so effective because it made me confront potential blind spots in my own life. So the different mundane scenarios were opening different personal associations. It’s why in my opinion it’s so brilliant.
Dean Imperial
2024-02-25 00:18:02 +0000 UTCMy issues with “Anatomy of the Fall” were: 1. It makes very little sense to me that someone would attempt to leap to their death from a three story house. That’s between 45 to 50ft. He’s have to count on banging his head into the shed. It just didn’t sell to me. 2. There’s not even ever a question of a possible murder weapon. It’s essential to address it and conveniently left out which is lazy writing. 3. I just don’t buy the blind son/aspirin/dog scenario. It’s too convenient and not believable. 4. It’s too long. It would have been a better film at 2 hours than 2 hours and 32 min. However — it was an intriguing setup and had some excellent scenes. And wonderful performances. The script was reaching for something great and that desire gave it some juice. So, I give Justine Triet a lot of credit.
Dean Imperial
2024-02-25 00:13:21 +0000 UTCYes. Lol. I agree. “abomination” is too much. Good call out. I personally give “Anatomy of a Fall” the film three stars. I just personally feel it doesn’t come remotely close to “The Zone of Interest.” But I will deescalate and say I personally feel that within the context of the Cannes film festival, it was unjust.
Dean Imperial
2024-02-25 00:01:23 +0000 UTCEasily the best film of the year. My girlfriend asked “what other filmmaker is doing movies like that” because she wanted to see them… can’t think of anyone. The biggest testament to its quality is you can know exactly what it’s about and what happens but it’s still so entrancing. Phenomenal piece of art.
Arthur Augustyn
2024-02-24 21:55:49 +0000 UTCI just saw it... amazing... I just hope people can actually see the message and look at what is happening around the world right now. This film is about the Holocaust but the theme is about the complicity or silence when we're on the other side ....and I feel it's extremely relevant... and important right now.
Sutil
2024-02-24 20:25:23 +0000 UTCI completely disagree with you that it’s a “heady conceptual piece”. I think the point of the film was rather simplistic and established early on when the Nazi’s were going through the Holocaust victims clothes. Everything after that was just way too repetitive in my opinion
Henri J. Mertens
2024-02-24 20:15:52 +0000 UTCNormally I’d be in agreement with you. I don’t usually go for heady conceptual pieces like this, something that makes more sense playing as an installation at a visual arts gallery than at a movie theater. But I thought this film was so brilliantly rendered and said so much about the Holocaust and the Nazi mentality in so minimalist a fashion that I carried away by it. The Holocaust is a subject that is well-trod in fiction and documentary, and this film had a very original and compelling new angle from which to look at it. And with a running time of 95 minutes or so without credits, I don’t think it goes on for too long. I know what you mean when you say it should be a short film (doesn’t the image of a happy family enjoying a party with the death camp right over the wall say everything?), but I think it uses its feature-length runtime to expand and deepen its central thesis without ever repeating itself.
Bennett Oliver
2024-02-24 19:55:43 +0000 UTClol an “abomination” is overly dramatic. I think Anatomy of a Fall is brilliant
Henri J. Mertens
2024-02-24 19:29:04 +0000 UTCProbably the worst movie I’ve seen in a while, but I definitely respect Glazer’s intent. It’s just that I think the main conceit would’ve worked better as a short film. Plus the style of filmmaking itself is just not for me. An emotionally detached Holocaust movie filmed in a quasi voyeuristic/surveillance footage style infuriated me. But maybe that was the point? Zone of Interest also reminds me of “EO” which I also really disliked
Henri J. Mertens
2024-02-24 19:26:55 +0000 UTCThat’s my favorite film of 2023, even more so than Oppenheimer. I love the conceptual daring of it, portraying this Nazi family as a chillingly ordinary middle class nuclear family, with Dad going off to work for the big corporation that is the Nazi regime while Mom tends to the house she loves so much. Just the way Jonathan Glazer lays out the world is brilliant, one of the more memorable settings in recent film history. It’s an idyllic slice of paradise nestled up to the infernal charnel house that is Auschwitz. Heaven and Hell right next to each other, one making the other possible. I love how Glazer never sets foot in the camp, only alluding to what’s going on through wide shots and great sound design. This is one of the most disturbing Holocaust films, and we don’t see a single moment of slaughter. The whole movie is shot like Chantal Akerman with a sense of underlying dread and horror. There are no close-ups; the whole thing is shot as if with elegant surveillance. I think what the film is ultimately about though is the dissociations we make and have from dark atrocities in the world. Glazer takes pains to show that the Höss family is not all that different from any other family (though their proximity to genocide is very clearly eating away at whatever humanity they have, if they had any to begin with), how they build a domestic bubble to shield themselves from any outside horrors and allow them to focus on their own concerns. That can be said of any family, whether or not they’re directly responsible for evil in the world. But what’s more, the film is making a statement about the Holocaust itself, how a monumental event like that and its horror will forever be outside the comprehension and fathoming of people who didn’t experience it. Even today, as shown in the third act, it is out of reach for us. It’s a vague abstraction, a pile of shoes behind a glass display. Whether we industrialize slaughter in a concentration camp or memorialize it in a museum, we’re forever on the outside looking in. It’s what allows us, for better and worse, to continue carrying on. So yes, I think The Zone of Interest is the best film of the year. It says so much with so little shown.
Bennett Oliver
2024-02-24 19:03:32 +0000 UTCThat is, AOAF beating ZOI for the Palm D’Or.
Dean Imperial
2024-02-24 18:41:47 +0000 UTCAn astonishing piece of work. Not only the best film of 2023, but one of the best and most important films in many years. The idea that “Anatomy of a Fall” beat “The Zone of Interest” is an abomination. That was pure politics and Ruben Östlund’s insecurity. Anyway — YES — “The Zone of Interest” is a masterpiece.
Dean Imperial
2024-02-24 18:41:02 +0000 UTCThe Zone of Interest is phenomenal, that's definitely in my top 5ish of 2023. I think my personal pick would be All of Us Strangers, but that's more for how emotionally visceral I found the entire movie. I think a very slept on pick is Afire. That should've gotten way more attention than it did.
vince2k
2024-02-24 18:05:41 +0000 UTC
