The Zone Of Interest Director's Oscar Speech Finally Said The Quiet Part Out Loud
At the 96th Academy Awards, Jonathan Glazer's "The Zone of Interest" was nominated for both Best Picture and Best International Picture. It won the latter at the time of publication, with Glazer himself accepting the award. "The Zone of Interest" is an English picture, but it's set in Poland and Germany. The titular "Zone" is the Auschwitz concentration camp. "The Zone of Interest" follows the Höss family, the real-life Nazis living in a villa outside the camp; the patriarch Rudolf was the camp's commander and bizarrely, real life had the happier ending here: we don't see it in the film, but Höss was hung for his atrocities in 1947.
A common question asked about the Holocaust is how people who were there could have let an industrial-scale pogrom happen. "The Zone of Interest" answers that by showing the Nazis' point of view, and its answer? It happened like all other evil does — the Nazis put the violence out of sight because people are masters at compartmentalizing so long as they have their own creature comforts. The film's sound mix includes faint screams and echoes of the camp's furnace, as if daring you to tune out the murder after murder as the Höss family has.
/Film's Witney Siebold, in writing about the movie, noted the motif of cleaning in "Zone"; the thesis is that it's impossible to wipe away the stain that the Nazis' crimes have left. In fact (as shown by a flashforward to the modern Auschwitz museum being cleaned by janitors), we have to remember what happened — but we're falling short.
You see, "The Zone of Interest" is not just about the Holocaust, and Glazer's acceptance speech confirmed what many have been reading into the film's subtext.
The Zone of Interest is relevant today
You may have noticed that the Oscars started late this year. Why? Reports suggest it was because of disruption by protestors, who are courageously calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. As of publication, Glazer has been the ceremony's only attendee to mention that the Palestinians are suffering outside of pins wore by some of the nominees and speakers. As he said:
"All our choices, we made to reflect and confront it in the present, not to say 'Look what they did then,' rather, 'Look what we do now.' Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst, it shaped all of our past and present. Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all of the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?"
Glazer (who is Jewish himself) is arguing against the ongoing massacre in Gaza by the Israeli government (without forgetting about the reportedly 1200 or so Israelis who were killed in a Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023). The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza keeps growing, but was reported to be around 30,000 in late February. The International Criminal Court ruled in January 2024 that there is a "plausible" case that the Israeli military is committing genocide. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just ordered an invasion of the Gazan city of Rafah this very night.
Some critics have argued that "The Zone of Interest" reflects the current lives of Israelis and Americans; their leaders are carrying out barbarity but they're either remaining ignorant or cheering it on. While the realities of film production mean Glazer couldn't have intended "Zone" to specifically be about this conflict, his speech reminds us all that "Never Again" only means something if you put principle into practice.