I managed to get out to the theatre to catch two of the Best Picture nominees which takes me down to a single movie left of the 10 Best Picture nominees that I need to see (American Fiction). Both of these films had unique, almost distracting soundtracks, but added to the overall experience. They are very different, but equally compelling. 

The Zone of Interest: set in the mid 40s, in Poland, this film focuses on a family with five children, and husband and wife. They live in a pleasant a spacious house with a garden and pool in the backyard. Father heads off to work, and ordinary tasks take place with the children heading to school while the mother does laundry, tends to the garden and entertains friends and her own mother after a time. What’s different in this household, is that the father is Rudolf Hoess, and the location is next door to the infamous Auschwitz prison camp where milliomns were killed over the course of the war. Hoess was the longest standing commander at Auschwitz, having worked his way up starting in Dachau and other camps.  The family goes about very ordinary business, including picnics by the lake, and swimming at the pool. There are more unusual activities like when articles of clothing appear and they are shared with the friends. The wife herself, played by Sandra Hueller (also in Anatomy of a Fall) tries on a very nice mink coat, with a lipstick inside. It’s all too normal. When showing her Mother around, who is so very proud of her daughter and the steps to success that she has made, they speak of growing vines to hide the walls of the Camp. No mention is made of anything that goes on behind the walls among the family members, but there is periodic gunshots heard and the ever-present chimneys of the camp that are burning the bodies of the gassed prisoners. 

Often I have wondered just how much the German people knew about the exterminations happening just doors away from them. In a series like Band of Brothers where the first of the concentration camps was found, the local townspeople denied any knowledge of what was happening there. The allied soldiers didn’t believe them, and they put them to work at the camp. I think that the underlying message here is a powerful one, which is that this family who lived right next to the camp were able to forget what was occuring steps from where they played, and ate. The mother and father care more about the flowers that they grow, in the garden and on the property, rather than the human lives that are being taken by the thousands each day. Near the end, the underlying message is again reaffirmed as you see the camp as it stands today, with display cases of shoes, suitcases, and medical assist devices stacked high in display cases that are cleaned daily. The message is clear that each of these belonged to people who came through that camp, with children, families, dreams and wishes that didn’t need to be needlessly ended by a maniac with a “Final Solution”, the extermination of the Jews and others who weren’t worthy of the Reich. You don’t learn the details about Hoess and what becomes of him, but he was tried and then hanged. He was hanged at Auschwitz and is the last public hanging in the country. Although this movie is slowly paced, and seems all to ordinary, that is the point. In 2024, we should still and always remember all the lives that were lost and not become complacent, treating it like the everyday event. It was true to the movie that the operation to execute 400,000 Jews in Hungary was called Operation Hoess. 

Incidentally, there is a documentary on Netflix about the Adolph Eichmann trial, the leader of the efforts to execute the Final Solution. Eichmann like Hoess show that they weren’t monsters, but calculating human beings who did what they were told. Hoess carried out orders in a job that had promotions, responsibilities and benefits like a nice house next to his workplace. 

Poor Things: I had no real idea about what this film was about when I was about to see it. In many ways it is a fable, a Frankensteinian fable, where a “mad scientist” has taken medical science beyond areas that we have today. Set what appears to be in the 1800s, there are elements in the world outside London that shows a far more advanced technology, like the trams in Lisbon and cruise ships. The good doctor, played by Willem Dafoe is scarred badly and teaches at the local university. You learn that he was treated terribly by his doctor/scientist father. At the university he seeks to find a young student to take detailed notes/observations of one of his experiments. Her name is Bella, and we learn that she is a gorwn woman suicide victim who took her life while pregnant. The doctor was called when the body was found and decided to put the baby’s brain into the woman’s body. The rest of the story I will leave to the viewer to watch. 

The movie is set is various locations all showing the ongoing development for Bella. At first Bella with the under-developed baby’s brain carries on as a child. But with different experiences and over time, she develops and grows. The movie speaks to how we as adults gain our sense of ethics, and right and wrong, and how we learn over time what is acceptable behaviour in a civilized society. 

Those who have read my posts know that I am not an Emma Stone fan. But what I can say is that this is a remarkable acting performance. I say this because there is a physical aspect to the role, in addition to the acting itself. Yes, she has some nude scenes that is completely within character, along with showing a greater sense of herself. She embraces the entire role, with the naivete of a child but also the desire to please and pleasure herself first. She meets up with various people who have an impact on her. If she needs something, then she does what she needs to do. Mark Ruffalo plays one of the men that she meets, and he is transformed by her. The story continues to its conclusion which is satisfying. There is also a religious aspect of the film in which the doctor is referred to by Bella as “God”. As a doctor, and with his skills, this doctor certainly has the power to give life.  In some ways there are parallels to David in Prometheus seeking to find his God. 

I will be shocked if Emma Stone doesn’t win the Best Actress Oscar. This performance binds the entire story and without it, the movie would fail miserably. This is a movie worth checking out. I am pleased to have seen it.