“KPK Looks at All Ten BEST PICTURE Nominees for 2023- A Stellar Year For Cinema!”

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> Holy crap! What an embarrassment of riches! You won’t hear me whining that 2023 was a tepid year for movies. Ten titles nominated this year. Two of them are over-rated. 8 of them are a cornucopia of cinematic riches. In the wake of the pandemic and a crippling strike, cinema is back, baby!

AMERICAN FICTION

(directed by Cord Jefferson, 2023)
****+ (out of 5)

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> Director Cord Jefferson is off to a great start with this wise, witty, perceptive debut that has oh-so-much to say about the moment we find ourselves in now.

. This winner of the audience prize at the Toronto Film Festival is just the latest example of a drama (okay- perhaps a “dramady”), masquerading as a comedy. While AMERICAN FICTION may be a potent social satire with savagely funny moments, it’s more of a family drama than the outright comedy the trailers suggest. That’s okay. It’s a very good one.

. The great Jeffrey Wright plays a novelist named Thelonious. Kind of a mouthful, so friends call him “Monk”. He had a bit of success. Wrote a few acclaimed novels of the wonky, heady sort, before falling out of favor with the book buying public. Basing novels on ancient Greek dramas is perhaps not the most lucrative career path. Monk is feeling frustrated by a marketplace in which people who look like him hold none of the power, and the only stories that are told about his community are recycled tropes, hovering between the offensively reductionist and the outright racist. Monk can’t help but notice that it’s a starvation diet for Black people seeking positive reflections of their lives in popular culture- in rap music of course, but most visibly on TV and at the movies. It’s the same depressing drumbeat time after time: Black people’s lives in America summed up as being defined by injustice and victimhood, broken families, profanity, drug use, crime, violence- all that fun stuff! And in AMERICAN FICTION, this holds true in the world of book publishing as well. With the reins of power firmly in the pasty fists of white elites who control what gets printed and what does not, these repetitively offensive tropes get resurrected again and again and again, like an endless echo ringing down through the ages, as though they had more than a passing resemblance to the lives of most Black Americans.

. When Monk sees pandering trash elevated to bestseller status, he plots to extract his revenge by punking the entire publishing world. To prove his point, Monk uses the pseudonym ‘Stagg R. Leigh’ to write his own patently offensive regurgitation of the requisite Black tropes necessary to get published in America. His manuscript is a wry, subversive evisceration of cultural exploitation, that is instantly mistaken for the real thing. Elite publishers miss the joke entirely, absolutely clueless that they are being mercilessly mocked for their lazy thinking. They want to publish. Get that puppy out before Juneteenth! It’s a hit! They want to negotiate the movie rights! Monk is going to be a millionaire. But he knows what others do not: that he is a fraud and the book is one big FUCK YOU to most of the people who would buy such garbage. In order to grasp the silver chalice of success, Monk must allow himself to become part of the machine that so ruthlessly exploits people who look like him.

. Interestingly, there is a parallel here to another big film of 2023: BARBIE, which deals with the way mass media feeds girls back a dehumanizing version of womanhood. AMERICAN FICTION points out that Black citizens too, are more likely to see see badly distorted versions of themselves reflected back in the mirror of mass media than anything approximating the lives they would recognize as their own. These images, are a kind of thoughtless violence.

. By way of counter-programming, Jefferson delivers a story about a family facing the same pressures any family in America might face, regardless of race or ethnicity. Monk has difficult relationships with a sister (Tracee Ellis Ross) and a brother (Sterling K. Brown) that both wring painfully true. They talk to each other with the blunt cruelty only siblings can muster. 70’s TV diva Leslie Uggams plays their mother, gradually slipping into dementia- just one of the family crises Monk is forced to navigate. There is an absolutely heartbreaking moment when she is dancing with oldest son Brown, who is gay, and she abruptly blurts out: “I always knew you were not a queer”. It is a devastating moment for the character. The faultlines in the family are the same that can be found in any modern family, Black, White or Green.

. In the funniest scene in the film, Monk sits at his typewriter (old school!) and works out the text of “My Pathology” (make that: “My Pafology”), with two of the stereotyped characters personified in the room. The scene was so incisively funny, I wanted it to linger a lot longer than it did, so we could hear more of the text of Monk’s fractured sendup. I noticed- again- that at first, I was the only one in the audience daring to laugh out loud. As painful as the satire is, it is satire. We are allowed to laugh, even if we are laughing at our own racial foibles. Laughter helps us recognize difficult truths and swallow the bitter pill of recognition. Even sitting in a theatre enjoying the anonymity of the cover of darkness, we have become afraid to laugh at ourselves for fear of triggering the oversensitive. In this, we have gone too far in protecting the “other”. There is no subject that should be taboo to look at through the illuminating mirror of humor. (A film like JOJO RABBIT proves this.)

. Lastly, I would like to examine the issues I had with the with the ending. This film leads the audience right to the point of the satisfaction of closure, then goes a different way we don’t see coming. A moment finally arrived, when it appeared Monk was about to stand up in front of the guilty parties and give them the public reaming they so richly deserved. We seemed to be at the “big moment” we have been trained by storytellers to expect as payoff. I shifted expectantly in my seat and muttered to myself: “Oh boy!” in anticipation. Monk takes the stage, opens his mouth to speak, and then… Well, I’m not tellin’, obviously. But the storyteller goes a different, less satisfying, if perfectly valid way. I had to think about this: about how I have been trained to expect the same old thing by repeated tropes, the same way women and Black filmgoers have, in a way that limits possibilities and shortchanges the viewer. If I were the screenwriter adapting the book, I would have been tempted to take the easy way out. While not the choice we have been conditioned by the marketplace to expect, it is, in its way, just about perfect.

. It’s smart. It’s funny. It’s literate, sophisticated and three-dimensional. AMERICAN FICTION is a terrific movie.

– And it has more to say than most of us would be comfortable hearing, about the distortions of race in America and the way our media makes everything worse.

*

ANATOMY OF A FALL

(directed by Justine Triet, 2023)
*** (out of 5)

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This celebrated French film won the Palm d’or at Cannes- the biggest accolade they bestow. The rarified cineastes who vote on this, must live in an alternate world. While this courtroom drama begins with extreme promise, it swiftly degenerates into a torrent of words that make ANATOMY OF A FALL perhaps the wordiest film I have ever seen. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk! It was frigging exhausting! I would imagine the script was thick enough to stun an ox, if need be. At around the 90-minute mark, I struggled to stay invested. Technically, it’s got a lot to offer. Justine Triet can direct. She’s got skills. It’s very carefully plotted, often tense and mysterious. Crucial info is meted out in a miserly fashion that keeps you guessing. The central question: a man has fallen to his death. Was it an accident or something more intentional and nefarious? There are no witnesses except his son, who we gradually come to understand, is blind- making him a very poor witness indeed. Suspicion immediately falls on his mother, excellently played by German actress Sandra Hüller, who was so good in TONI ERDMANN. Mom was the only person at home when it happened, and her alibi seems flimsy at best. And the forensics don’t seem to add up. But it was just so many spinning wheels without a lot of traction. The film does not reveal its true themes until it is nearly over- at which point, it all gets much more interesting. Too late, unfortunately. As a story about marriage and family, it’s much more potent than the main courtroom mystery. The Big Idea: Despite romantic notions to the contrary, “truth” has a subjective element to it. When we can’t differentiate between fact and fiction, we just have to choose what to believe. That’s an idea that deserves a deeper dive in a better film. This was a film it is easy to admire, but difficult to enjoy. For all its skill and craft, it has still to be the most over-rated film of the year.

*

BARBIE

(directed by Greta Gerwig, 2023)
*** (out of 5)

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> WARNING! Have you seen the movie BARBIE? Millions of men who see this piece of woke propaganda are waking up to find their junk has disappeared! This film will neuter you! It’s all part of a Deep State conspiracy grooming men to question their place in the patriarchy! Subversive! Downright… Pinko!

. Greta Gerwig’s long-anticipated bright, colorful, silly send-up of corporate toymaker Mattel is here, and it’s all it’s cracked up to be- and more. But also, less…

. The rightwing outrage machine kicked into overdrive for this cultural phenom, (co-penned by Gerwig’s filmmaker partner Noah Baumbach), and after seeing it- it’s no wonder! Never in my life have I seen a film that more gleefully and effectively skewers the presiding patriarchy of this world. Not that that’s a hard target to hit, and this film’s about as subtle as a black eye. Gerwig forgoes scalpel for sledgehammer.

. Margot Robbie is perfectly cast as the iconic doll, living a Barbie life in a Barbie world. The alternate universe created here is a candy-coated hoot. It comes in every possible shade of pink you can imagine, and it’s built on the imaginations of girls everywhere. “Barbieland” is an alternate universe where the patriarchy never intruded. It is an absolute matriarchy where gender roles are reversed: women fill all the power roles. Ken? He’s only an accoutrement- like a designer handbag or a fruffy hat. It’s a perfectly ordered utopia, where every day is the Best Day Ever… Until Barbie starts having (gasp!) thoughts of death. From that moment on- nothing is quite the same for “stereotypical Barbie”.

. Because Mattel released many iterations of the iconic doll, there are many Barbies- and many Kens too. There is President Barbie, Writer Barbie, Physicist Barbie, Doctor Barbie, Lawyer Barbie, Judge Barbie, Journalist Barbie, Diplomat Barbie- even Mermaid Barbie, played in a brief cameo by Dua Lipa- her male counterpart “Kenmaid” played by John Cena. The main Ken is Beach Ken- played like an insecure child by a bleached-haired Ryan Gosling. Tourist Ken (Simu Liu), is his rival for Barbie’s affections, but also a guy he admires and wants to impress. (When Barbie refers to Tourist Ken as not cool, Ken objects in a way that reveals how much he cares about what this Ken thinks.) Also passing time on the waterless beach: Basketball Ken, Artist Ken, Sugar Daddy Ken, and even Earring Magic Ken- all models that were at one time, available as part of Mattel’s Barbie world.

. The bummer of mortality has thrown a monkey wrench in her life, so our confused heroine goes to see “Weird Barbie”- the Barbie that has been operatically twisted and defaced with matches and colored markers and scissor mutilated hair, for advice and council (a flat, wasted Kate McKinnon). She is told she will have to make a journey into the Real World to find the child who is putting those dark thoughts in her head. So, Barbie hits the road in her pink Barbie convertible sports car. But there is a stowaway in the back seat. It’s Beach Ken, eager to pursue a romance with the doll of his dreams- even though he has no idea of what to do with her. Sex doesn’t exist in Barbieland. “I have no vagina!” she chirps merrily, “And Ken has no penis!” To get to the Real World, they must use every mode of transportation ever marketed for the big-breasted plastic icon, from boat to snowmobile, tandem bicycle to rocket ship.

. Gosling is 10 years older than Robbie, and he looks it. For my money, this Canadian leading man was just too old to believably play Ken. Still, at times, (as in his delightful musical number), he threatens to steal the movie. In a way, his is the more interesting story-arch. Robbie’s Barbie discovers that she lives a mirror-opposite life to girls and women in the Real World, and that she is far better off living in the fantasy world of Barbieland. Gosling’s Ken discovers the opposite: that he had no agency and a very limited role in Barbieland, but that in the Real World, as a man (penis or no penis), he holds all the power denied him in Barbieland. No wonder Ken is eager to return home and “enlighten” his fellow Kens- an act that brings predictable calamity to Barbieland.

. Michael Cera is here as perpetual outlier Allan, a doll created to give Ken someone to hang with. Will Farrell is also here as the craven suit running Mattel, who is horrified to hear of a Barbie running rampant in the real world, and eager to put her back in a box, where she belongs- in more ways than one, and he is also terrible. The great comic goof is absolutely wasted in a nothing part that goes nowhere- and doesn’t even have much fun going there. Rhea Perlman, looking very cute at 75, plays gray haired Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie, who appears as a ghost to dispense folksy wisdom and provide a meta view of Barbieworld. Her final scene is egregiously cloying- too precious and overwrought by a factor of 10. It is a bummer of a way to end her cameo.

. Turns out, the child putting those disruptive thoughts in her head was not a child at all, but the mother of a growing child who began playing with the Barbie her rebellious daughter had long since tossed into the rubbish bin of her past. America Ferrera is very appealing in the role, and when Barbie is gripped with existential crisis, she is the character Gerwig uses to give voice to the deep, righteous gripe of the movie. She lays it all out for the confused stereotype: how at every stage and station of life, girls and women are expected to embody a seamless integration of contradictory qualities, from virgin/whore to empowered slave. It is a powerful summation of the feminist argument against the scourge of insidious patriarchy, and Ferrera tears into it with the voraciousness of a starving wolf- or a person historically denied their intrinsic personhood. I am gleefully certain the Ridiculous Right just hated every word of it. The audience loved it. The women hooted and cheered raucously. It touched a raw nerve and gave grotesque flesh to the surreality of the gender roles assigned them by traditional culture. America’s soliloquy drops the veils from Barbie’s eyes (and hopefully from some in the audience too), setting her off in a new direction- away from the limitations of Barbieland and into the uncertain possibilities of the Real World, where Barbie is the absolute embodiment of fish out of water.

. Much has been written about this poison apple of a film (candy coated on the outside, broken glass and shrapnel on the inside), and deservedly so. It is such a contradiction- both homage and evisceration of the corporate world that sells harmful gender stereotypes to girls hungry to see a piece of themselves reflected back in the popular culture, and profits off putting them in a box. It is astonishing that Mattel had the courage to allow their trademark to be manipulated by this filmmaker with a vision, and an agenda that can hardly be said to coincide well with theirs. They allow themselves, and their keynote product, to be skewered mercilessly. A brilliant move, it turned out! There have been small, direct to DVD releases of animated Barbie features before- but nothing like this massive entertainment that became the first film helmed by a woman to break the $1 billion mark in its first few weeks of release. With this triumph, Gerwig joins an exclusive Hollywood club that virtually enables a blank check in the future. Her next project: a limited series reimagining of THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, for Netflix. After that- the sky is the limit for this great talent. And I am a big fan, but…

. Although I found LADY BIRD a delight, I really hated her take on LITTLE WOMEN. (To be fair, I have hated every take on LITTLE WOMEN. I hate LITTLE WOMEN.) And BARBIE? High-concept fun, alright, but thin stuff to hang a film on. The beginning was great, a witty comic homage to both Barbie and Stanley Kubrick, and the introduction to the colorful world of Barbieland and the alternate laws of physics that apply there was delicious, but the film goes awry quickly, when Weird Barbie sets our heroine off on her journey of self-discovery. My eyes got tired of plastic pink, and the knowing winks became a bit much. There were long stretches that were kind of boring, actually- especially once she hit the Real World. If this becomes a franchise, and no doubt the bankers are crying for it, it will take place here. There are times the characters sound more like gender studies lecturers than characters. It’s a self-conscious joke, yes- but it’s didactic in the extreme. At one point Barbie herself blurts out something that sounded like a passage from a doctoral thesis, and then added: “Did I say that?” And sadly, Ken’s final emotional resolution is fake, fake, fake, and one of the real letdowns of the movie. I didn’t buy it for a second.

. When the closing credits ran, I was less than enthused about BARBIE as a movie- as something more than the sum total of its parts. But it grew on me over the ensuing days. For its originality, chutzpah and eagerness to gore a deserving sacred cow, I boosted my rating half a star. BARBIE really had something to say about the way both men and women are oppressed by the straitjacket of patriarchy. Ken’s journey illustrates how women are not the only victims. And you gotta love any film the radical right loathes as much as they do this. There’s got to be a good reason they are so reactive to it. Gerwig fashioned cultural history with BARBIE, causing millions of tongues to wag, and neurons to fire- unfortunately, in that order most of the time. But it’s a start. And jumpstarting the conversation- that’s really something, Greta.

. Delightfully, the several flaws of BARBIE are all but washed away by the final line of dialogue. It says so much about Barbie’s newfound female empowerment, now that she is planting her flag in Reality. Don’t read the Wikipedia synopsis. It tells you too much. That final line is so fucking funny, it may just be the best final line since Joe E. Brown discovered his ladylove was not a lady at all, telling an unmasked Jack Lemmon in SOME LIKE IT HOT:

– “Well, nobody’s perfect!”

*

THE HOLDOVERS

(directed by Alexander Payne, 2023)
***+ (out of 5)

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> A new cinematic caprice from the creative mind that brought us ELECTION, ABOUT SCHMIDT, SIDEWAYS, and the magnificent NEBRASKA is always a welcome treat.

. Alexander Payne is a consistently interesting director who makes warm, humanist films reminiscent of the work of James L. Brooks- rooted in characters and their relationships. There is no gunplay at all and not a single car chase to be bored by. A Payne film is always counter-programming to the typical bombast of current American cinema.

. Here, he tells the story of three lonely souls thrown together against their will over a Christmas holiday. Paul Giamatti is perfect, perfect, perfect as the prickly professor at an austere prep school in reserved New England, who is widely reviled by students and staff alike for his impossibly high academic standards and total inability to relate to other people. (The fact that he has a medical condition that causes him to stink like fish and sweat profusely does not help much!) He is a teacher of antiquities who has become quite the antiquity himself. His students are virtual aliens to him. He can’t relate to them the slightest bit. A haughty, judgmental curmudgeon who has no real life outside of school, the loner rarely leaves the campus. It is his safe space, where he has his place in the scheme of things, an insular world that makes sense to him when the larger world simply does not.

. Come Christmas break, he is roped into the year’s most unpleasant duty: to stay behind and babysit the students who have nowhere to go over the holiday. Eventually, the group winnows down to just the bitter, nasty instructor, the school cook who is grieving the loss of a son to the carnage of Vietnam, and one deeply distressed young fellow with a troubled backstory and a rebellious, contentious nature. It’s a familiar trope: they share a series of misadventures causing an unlikely bond to form between the three, that alters the trajectory of their lives forever. Nothing fresh or new there. The pleasure comes in the telling.

. Giamatti’s foils are played by a quietly effective Da’Vine Joy Randolph and a newcomer named Dominic Sessa who has never acted in his life. It doesn’t show. He’s very good- if not believable as a high school senior. (The actor is 21 now.) Sessa answered the casting call placed at one of the schools where the movie was filmed, got the part- and shazam! Instant career.

. As warm and fuzzy as it is, this is another of those films that uses bait-and-switch in its advertising to place butts in seats. THE HOLDOVERS is clearly marketed as an almost madcap comedy, but nearly every laugh in the film was telegraphed by the trailer. No, it is not a comedy. It is at best, a dramady. Though peppered with good humor, Payne has really delivered a human drama about grief and loss, loneliness and isolation. There is plenty of pathos running throughout, and more than a little tragedy. But don’t that that deter you. It may not be Payne’s best effort, but as paint-by-the-numbers as this film is… No car chases! No gunplay. No superheroes in bizarre costumes!

– Just actual people we can care about and root for. Imagine that!

*

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

(directed by Martin Scorsese, 2023)
****+ (out of 5)

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> Marty Scorsese’s long-anticipated 26^th feature film is finally out, and I am pleased to report, it is his best movie in 20 years.

. Not since 2012’s GANGS OF NEW YORK has Scorsese been able to deliver a film whose ambition so matched its impact. It is a massive effort, that paints with a very broad brush- an old-school western epic that tells a story of gut-wrenching racism and its accompanying injustice.

. His last film, the bloated crime-drama THE IRISHMAN, was much admired but not much appreciated. In the early days of its release, this one seems to be getting an emotional buy-in his last gangster opus didn’t. (92% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes indicates near-universal love!) This is still essentially a “gangster” film, Scorsese’s stock and trade, but it is a whole lot easier to care about the plight of the people. His canvas is both more specific, and broadened in a sense. Specifically, Scorsese worked (with his writing partner Eric Roth), from a book by David Grann, that covered actual, very shameful events in the Oklahoma of the 1920’s. From the more meta vantage point, it’s a rumination on the genocide of America’s native population- in this case, by other means, for wholly other reasons.

. Even after the conquering and subjugation of the American Indian, the ruthless exploitation continued. The tragic fate of the Osage people was sealed when vast oil deposits were discovered under tribal land so barren, they felt safe from the material lusts of the white settlers. They were wrong. When the tribe suddenly became the wealthiest minority in the country, the predators took notice, and the coyotes swooped in. Amoral opportunists of every stripe realized that if they butchered the men of the household, that would leave wealthy widows needing husbands. And once married, simply kill the Indian bride and voila! The fortune is yours. If there was anybody in line in front of you, it was nothing a bullet or the introduction of poison wouldn’t cure.

. Leonardo DiCaprio plays one such adventurer without a moral center. Wounded in World War I, Ernest can’t do manual labor anymore, so he goes to work for his uncle William Hale, appropriately nicknamed “King”. Hale is a big, influential Bossman played by Robert De Niro, who is as good as he’s ever been- almost better! Hale is a wealthy rancher- “King” of his realm. Posing as a friend to the Osage people, he lives on the reservation and draws his wealth from it, while ruthlessly manipulating events from behind a shield of respectability. The powerful King uses every tool in his toolkit to milk the Osage of their newfound wealth, including murder- though he is happy to let underlings taint their hands with the actual blood. And it is a bloody story. How many murders do we witness before it’s all over? (A dozen? Perhaps more.) It was a reign of terror, unleashed upon the targeted people with a frightening persistence and viciousness- another great American shame, like the Tulsa Massacre, which is also mentioned. Scorsese is only showing what happened, not spinning another violent mob fantasy. So many Osage were murdered for their money, it’s hard to make a total count.

. Ernest is quickly and effortlessly degraded by his duplicitous uncle, who preys upon his craven nature to transform the lad into his loyal henchman- even if he has to administer a good, Masonic paddling to keep him in line. At his uncle’s direction, he targets and marries a widow with an inheritance, the kind, taciturn Mollie, played with poise, dignity and empathy by Lily Gladstone. The film is heavily populated with native actors and fresh faces like Gladstone (who is both, and truly the soul of the film), as well as familiar character actors like Barry Corbin and John Lithgow, and slumming musicians like folkie Pete Yorn, bluesman Charlie Musselwhite, rocker Jack White, and a couple of country stars that might as well have been Martians to me. Poor Mollie suffers from the diabetes her population is genetically prone to- the sugar in white man’s food is killing her. After an ailing Mollie visits Washington and personally lobbies Calvin Coolidge, the newly-constituted FBI decides to probe the epidemic of tribal murder, sending Jesse Plemons and a crew of agents to investigate.

. Here, the film shifts gears to be a detective story, followed by a courtroom drama. It’s a vast tapestry. No wonder it runs a controversial 3-and-a-half-hours! I don’t have a problem with lengthy films, if the story requires it and it entertains throughout, but it’s a problem for many. (I made sure to bring a back support, and avoid fluids for a couple hours before the showing- yet still missed the first few minutes of the film to a restroom run, including, I understand, a direct address to the audience from the director. Would like to have seen that. Damn bladder!) Still, the final third seemed to drag a bit. The deeper the tragedy grew, the slower the film. The filmmaker in me began to look at each scene critically, pondering whether or not I might have edited this or that out, to relieve the ponderousness of it all. Not good.

. Still, every time DiCaprio and De Niro shared the screen: combustion! (De Niro was reputed to have grown very annoyed by all Di Caprio’s improvisations. Perhaps it was trying. But the outcome? Onscreen fireworks.) Scorsese’s world-building is palpable, creating a sense of time and place so vivid you can almost taste it. The backgrounds are alive with detail. The sets and locations, perfectly reflective of the action they will contain. The camerawork is crisp and effective, and it’s well edited despite the length. It’s hard for me to comment on the lighting, because everything was so damn dim! Not the film, I don’t think, judging by all the clips I’ve seen elsewhere- including the trailer when I went to see STOP MAKING SENSE at a different venue. But the luminosity of the projection in the Santa Cruz Cinemas? Pitifully weak, making everything murky, obscured, low-contrast. I won’t be going back to that theatre if there’s a choice- and, so far, there is. (We’ll see how long that lasts.) KILLER MOON is playing at every theater in Santa Cruz county!

. My track record of prognosticating who, and what will be nominated for Oscars is not nearly as good as my ability to pick a winner among the eventual nominees, but I will be very surprised if this remarkable achievement isn’t nominated for a veritable shitload of Little Gold Men. I could well imagine nods for: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score (by the late, great Robbie Robertson), Best Art Direction, Best Actor for DiCaprio, Best Supporting Actor for De Niro, an acting accolade for Gladstone, Best Picture of course, and I fully expect: Best Director for elder cinematic statesman Martin Scorsese. Nominated 14 times, but only won once (for THE DEPARTED), I boldly predict that he will win. Even without knowing his competition- Scorsese will win. It’s his time. The National Treasure is getting’ old. Hollywood is straining at the bit to show him some overdue love. They should. They will.

. For a nice, light evening of heavy drama, unchecked greed, callous corruption, flagrant fraud, cruel exploitation and stark tragedy, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON is your bladder-straining treat.

– See it, but skip the fluids…

*

MAESTRO

(directed by Bradley Cooper, 2023)
*** (out of 5)

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> Bradley Cooper’s long-anticipated biopic of great American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein is out, and for all its pleasures, it’s more disappointment than triumph.

. There are so many inherent pitfalls in the biopic, it’s hard to know where to start. Biographies are not an easy nut to crack. It seems no matter what the writer emphasizes, something equally, or perhaps more interesting, is likely to be given short shrift. Difficult choices have to be made to try to translate a human life to a story arch. Unfortunately, for this Netflix release, Cooper seems to play it safe at every turn.

. He largely reduces the drama to the romance aspect of his complicated marriage with actress Felicia Montealegre, excellently played by the ever-wonderful Carey Mulligan, (although her inconsistent Costa Rican accent is garnering her some grief). Their world is like one big party, populated by famous luminaries of the day, like Aaron Copland, and songwriting team Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Background is provided in painfully obvious dialogue when the two first meet, each recounting what they know about the other. So clunky! Sarah Silverman is serviceable, but barely there as Bernstein’s sister.

. It feels like Bernstein’s art is almost secondary. Too bad, because the musical passages are the most stirring parts of the movie. The film throws us directly into his moment of breakthrough, when he suddenly gets the call to conduct the orchestra for the first time in his life, as the scheduled conductor is suddenly taken ill. No buildup- we go straight into his instant success. We get a few brief glimpses of this momentous debut- not vaguely enough to approximate the brilliance that the crowd seemed to be reacting to. All that is saved for later, which feels like a real wasted opportunity and an odd structural choice.

. As for the central relationship- Leonard Bernstein was a gay man, or more likely bisexual, whose marriage to the glamorous South American film star may have been, to some extent, cover for them both- he could shield the public from his true sexuality, she could obtain a green card. Such gay/straight marriages were not unusual arrangements at the time, when being gay could even land you in jail. MAESTRO takes the middle ground, showing their union as tempestuous but mutually loving, despite his many increasingly blatant infidelities. But the relationship all feels so murky- perhaps because it was. They made a family together, had children, built a life. But the underwritten part of Felicia is presented as a deeply unsatisfied woman who may have known what she was getting herself into, but was just about done with the marriage. She had her own rich history as a notorious lefty, but this is barely hinted at. Her character’s constant one-note resentment grows tiresome before the end.

. Later on, there are extended scenes of Cooper’s Bernstein conducting rousing music that genuinely hint at the genius that so captivated the world in his time. But there is no dramatic tension there- or at least no narrative tension. He frets a little about wanting to write “serious” music after the popular success of West Side Story, but his artistic angst, which could have been so interesting, is severely underdeveloped. When the film treats us to the man’s music, it is a real treat indeed.

. The score is great. It’s 100% Bernstein, meaning it will not be eligible for the Best Original Score Oscar- a real shame, because of all the awards it is likely to be nominated for, this would be perhaps, the most deserving of recognition. The cinematography is breathtaking. It announces “I am an art film!” from the first carefully-composed and artfully-lit frame. The whole movie feels self-conscious about its pedigree. Framed by color segments of the older man reminiscing, the flashback portions are rendered in gorgeous black-and-white. Interestingly, Cooper chose a very narrow, nearly square aspect ratio that squeezes everything applying pressure to the contents of the frame. It too, feels like a preciously self-aware choice.

. Cooper has gotten huge amounts of shit for using what critics are derisively calling “Jewnose”- a prosthetic that more approximates the schnoz of Bernstein. I am of a mixed mind on the subject. It was a little distracting, but it certainly did make him look quite a bit more like the famous personality. I would tend to agree with the critics who have noted that an accomplished actor like Bradley Cooper should not need a prosthetic nose to become Leonard Bernstein. In the end, I don’t think he needed it at all.

. This is an “authorized” version of the man’s storied life. His surviving family members all signed off on it, which I suspect was a big part of the problem. He tried to create a script that pleased everybody, seeming to forget about pleasing the audience with a compelling story. There are moments that just don’t ring emotionally true at all, as in a cloying family group hug that seems to gloss over all the family tensions in favor of a saccharine Hallmark moment.

. At the end, you realize that you are unfulfilled as a moviegoer. MAESTRO makes promises it just doesn’t deliver on. Still, Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan are awfully talented actors, and their work frequently dazzles here despite the films many flaws, ensuring likely acting nominations for both, though I can’t see wins for either.

– Honestly, this misguided film seems like a prime example of a project where the total feels like less than the sum of its parts. But that music!

*

OPPENHEIMER

(directed by Christopher Nolan, 2023)
**+ (out of 5)

.

> Two stars? Two–and-a-half lousy stinkin’ stars for the year’s most anticipated blockbuster?! What a fucking ripoff.

. Christopher Nolan’s 3-hour-and-one-minute biopic of the “father of the atomic bomb” was probably the densest and most disappointing film I have ever sat through- and I’ve sat through about 3000 of ‘em. Serves me right, for anticipating it so. Strange, I would have thought I was the ideal audience for this film. I dig science, I am very interested in politics and history- particularly this chapter. But come to think of it, I really did not enjoy his previous, incomprehensible film TENENT. But this over-inflated film steals the award for self-indulgence from Oliver Stone for his abysmal Kennedy claptrap. JFK was child’s play compared to this beast. Everyone is patting Mr. Nolan on the back and calling him a genius. He would really not like to hear what I think of his bloated turd of a movie!

. To be fair, the first half showed great promise, despite taking interminably long to get to the meat of the Trinity project, far and away the most interesting part of the tale. An hour into it, I was grooving on the textured, layered storytelling that successfully balanced so many complex threads, if still, impatient for the film to gather a critical mass it never really achieved. It does feature an extraordinary stable of capable actors plying their trade, including Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Gary Oldman as Harry Truman, and Tom Conti perfectly cast as Albert Einstein. But all that, came unraveled in the final reel. Once the bomb was detonated, in a terrifically tense sequence, the whole film was drained of interest- and yet it went on. And on, and on, and on. After the high drama of developing and deploying the bomb was past, all that remained was petty politics and the unsavory campaign to smear Oppenheimer’s good name and reputation. Nowhere near as much drama in that story! Now we see why Oppenheimer had never been the focus of a major biography before- he was such a reserved, emotionally distant character, his inner workings so fuzzy and murky, he is just not a man worthy of hanging a 3-plus hour movie on. Certainly not this 3-plus hour corpse.

. Some of it is in color, some in black-and-white, but I couldn’t tell you Nolan’s criteria for using either. The timeline appeared to have been thrown into a blender, chopping the narrative up into incoherent pieces that only served to confuse and obfuscate events. Cillian Murphy seemed lost in Oppenheimer’s coat and hat. He can be a very effective actor- but not in this role. The movie swallowed him whole. The wonky script failed miserably to find a focus for the story and stick to it. Nolan seemed loathe to omit even the tiniest detail from the source book American Prometheus, cramming a billion facts and subplots into every scene. The movie was fucking exhausting long before it was mercifully over. I was ready to get up and leave the theatre a good 45-minutes before the (welcome!) closing credits. Ultimately, OPPENHEIMER is a bloodless exercise in arcane historical minutia that often feels more like a lecture than a movie.

. There were a few bright spots. Nolan’s world building is palpable, and shares a playbook with the very different ASTEROID CITY- both involving artificially generated desert towns, operating in the nuclear shadow. Robert Downey Jr. and Matt Damon both give terrific performances, and Emily Blunt is very good too. She always is. She takes an underwritten role and extrapolates a full, flesh and blood person. The controversial sex scenes are controversial for a reason- but at least watching Florence Pugh lounge in the nude served as a brief wake-up call when the human drama fell flat- which was often.

. Yes, this very big, very hyped prestige product will be among next year’s Best Picture nominees. That seems a foregone conclusion for such audacious and ambitious filmmaking. It will be a travesty if it wins.

– The best thing about OPPENHEIMER? It made me look forward to seeing BARBIE!

*

PAST LIVES

(directed by Celine Song, 2023)
****+ (out of 5)

.

> Canadian/Korean playwright turned filmmaker Celine Song really hit the bull’s eye on this, her maiden effort.

. Ms. Song has fashioned a small film that garnered a huge amount of well-deserved attention, generating some real Oscar buzz in the process. No wonder. It is that rare gem of human drama where the central romance is not a carnal thing. From a narrative standpoint, it is certainly the road less taken. The script is a complex interweaving of human emotion, that acknowledges connections between people that seem to exist on some almost non-corporeal realm.

. In a Song’s partially autobiographical story, Teo Yoo and Greta Lee play Hae Sung and Nora, platonic childhood sweethearts in their native South Korea, who share a special bond that is obvious to everyone. But Hae Sung is devastated when Nora’s family suddenly packs up and emigrates to Canada following economic opportunity. 12 years pass- and though they are physically separated, that ineffable bond persists. Each, is tattooed on the other’s soul.

. When the Internet age dawns, social media reintroduces the two, and they begin to enjoy regular online chats, resuming the childhood friendship virtually, as adults. The attraction is unspoken, yet clearly understood by both. She wonders aloud when he might come visit her in Toronto, where she has ended up. He wishes she would return to South Korea to be with him for a while, before he leaves to study Mandarin in Beijing for a year. But both are too invested in the dreams and goals they are pursuing, to drop everything and fly away on a whim, just to explore a relationship that only existed briefly, when they weren’t even grown up yet.

. Another twelve-year passage of time. Nora has met and married a nice guy named Arthur (an excellent puppy-eyed John Magaro), and settled down with him in New York. Hae Sung also meets a partner, but the relationship doesn’t take. He contacts Nora, and tells her he will be vacationing in NYC for a week, and he hopes to see her then. Arthur is understandably insecure about the whole thing, but being a modern man, he goes with it. So, after 24 years apart, the childhood couple are reunited. It is a spectacular scene, delicately navigated by two deft actors who show great finesse calibrating the different mix of sometimes conflicting emotions the characters experience.

. The rest of the film is an absolute wonder. The dialogue says so much, and leaves so much left unspoken, that still rings loud and clear through inference and innuendo. It all shows right there on the faces of three excellent actors giving such sympathetic performances you love them all. There are no bad-guys in this story.

– PAST LIVES is a spiritual romance of the highest order. It’s as three-dimensional and satisfying as any romance ever made.

*

POOR THINGS

(directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023)
****+ (out of 5)

.

> Ack! Gasp! Sputter! Choke! Snort! Guffaw! Holy fuck, what a bizarro film!! Surrealism has a new King, and his name is Yargos Lanthimos.

. Part Frankenstein, part Candide, this visionary director has masterminded a modern surrealist masterpiece that is so rich, so dense, that in the future, whole books could be written on it. College courses will be taught on The Films of Yargos Lanthimos. Taken from the book by Alasdair Gray, it presents a fantastical steampunk version of Victorian Europe where a woman is a wholly owned subsidiary of a man, and where her body is not her own.

. In a career best performance, Emma Stone plays Bella- an infant in a young woman’s body. She is an experiment, overseen by a magnificently-scarred Willem Dafoe, playing a mad scientist who specializes in fantastically unethical surgeries- like melding a pig with a duck- that kind of thing. (Is it a piduck or a dupig?) Coming upon the freshly dead body of a pregnant suicide, the twisted doctor with the sliced and diced face finds the fetus still alive, and decides to take its blank slate brain and place it in the woman’s head. A little electricity and Zap! It’s alive! He brings in a student to help him study and record her accelerated mental and physical progress, played by Ramy Youssef, the weak link of the cast. Immediately smitten (he declares: “Oh, what a lovely retard!”), the two eventually become betrothed, but before the nuptials can occur, a corrupt scoundrel (played to the hilt by an insanely delicious Mark Ruffalo, having the time of his life), whisks her away to show her the beauty and horror of the great wide world. They are a great combination: she’s a sensationalist, he’s a hedonist.

. Bella is all about one thing: self-actualization. Insatiably curious about the world outside of the doctor’s cloistered compound, she just wants to be more, to be bigger, to improve and discover her Real True Self. But the Victorian era is not very empowering to women, nor understanding of those who buck convention. Bella is delightfully unfiltered, and does not suffer fools gladly. Impulse control, she does not have. (When a crying infant begins to annoy her, she excuses herself from the table to go punch the baby!) The cognitive dissonance generated between the infant mind and the woman’s body is considerable and a big part of the humor of the film.

. Earlier, I compared this to Voltaire’s Candide. In both, the young hero is a blank slate, eager to experience everything the world has to offer. In both, they leave home and get buffeted by the corrupt ways of the world, receiving an education in The School of Hard Knocks. Voltaire’s hero ultimately decides that the world is shit, but probably the best world humans can possibly create considering… you know- that human thing. Lanthimos’s heroine has a different conclusion. If the world will not bend to her will, she will grab it by the balls and twist until it capitulates.

. Bella discovers early on, thanks to a particular vegetable, that she really likes sex. There is tons of carnality in this film, and it’s fairly explicit. As someone who has had a mad crush on Emma Stone for years, it’s nice to see her lounging so much in her birthday suit. I’d certainly rather see flesh than blood. But like all of Victorian society, sex has so many confounding rules to perplex Bella. And with it, women have no agency whatsoever. Wherever she goes, men seem to think they somehow own the rights to her. The more control Bella gains, the more it drives these men insane. They want to keep her simple and childlike, and thus, far easier to manipulate. One suitor even thinks he is within his rights to just clip off her clitoris, thinking that if he robbed her of much of the pleasure of sex, he would more fully own that part of her. In the final reel, she exacts her delicious revenge.

. Technically, the film is an absolute wonder. The world created here is as richly detailed as any imaginary world ever committed to film. The costuming is eye-popping, the gowns Bella wears, fantastically frilly. The ornate sets and meticulous art direction are a sumptuous feast for the eyes. The score is as fascinating and original as the images. The cinematography ranges from fisheye lens black-and-white of the exposition, to a dazzling palate of color when Bella enters the world. Every frame is a stunner.

. Still, with all this wonderfulness, the film is not without its flaws. There is a pacing problem. It’s never particularly slow, yet there were times I was borderline bored- partly because it all seems to move at the same pace, and early on, we wonder if it is leading anywhere. We are thrown into this bizarre otherworld and left to find our own land legs. Everything is just so palpably weird, that it takes a while to achieve buy-in. And because this is essentially a road movie, as Bella experiences one whirlwind adventure after another, it is an episodic journey. Nothing wrong with this per se, but lurching from one episode to another leaves us wondering where the whole is, amid its many parts. Fortunately, POOR THINGS redeems itself beautifully in the second half, as its themes become more apparent.

. The film is crammed with sly, subversive humor, yet in the screening I saw, I seemed to be the only one laughing out loud. Most of the people in the auditorium looked about half my age, and I suspected they took things far too seriously, missing the forest for the trees. The movie is so consistently politically “incorrect”, I fear they may have been afraid to laugh. Don’t make that mistake. Bring your funny bone with you to the screening.

. Ultimately, POOR THINGS is a very alternate coming of age movie. It is either feminist or anti-feminist, depending on your point of view. (Though I think the final scene settles this, where Bella ceases to be the exploited and settles into a life where she can be the exploiter.) Bella grows and changes throughout- particularly when she has her first exposure to grinding poverty. Coming from a pampered world of plenty, it is a rude and painful awakening she thinks she can fix by just throwing money at the problem. She has a lot to learn. And we root for her every step of the way.

. I’ve prattled on a long time now, and I find that I still have much more to say about this fascinating oddity. I was serious when I said the film’s themes were complex and fraught enough to birth a book about them. So much has already been written, pro and con. I’ve read reams about it, including some very thoughtful commentary that had not occurred to me. (There is just so much here!) Despite near universal acclaim and a 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating, the movie has its detractors. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that the movie’s “design is rich, its ideas thin”, adding: “It isn’t long into POOR THINGS that you start to feel as if you were being bullied into admiring a movie that’s so deeply self-satisfied there really isn’t room for the two of you.” Mick LaSalle, a critic I normally find common ground with, called it: “A 141 minute mistake”. Ouch. Apparently, Manohla and Mick left their funny bones at home.

. Ultimately, it is Emma Stone’s movie. She is in nearly every scene and it is a tour de force performance that absolutely will garner her another Oscar nomination, though a win is far from certain, with so many great female performances this year. Stone’s physicalization of the character is masterful, her performance appropriately fearless. She really makes us feel the child learning how to negotiate a grown up body. And her dance sequence is killer stuff!

. We can expect Oscar noms for hair and makeup, art direction, score, adapted screenplay, cinematography, best actress for Stone and Supporting actor for Ruffalo, best direction, and absolutely, positively for Best Picture of 2023. It’s not likely to win the big prize. It’s just too other, but for me (along with THE BOY AND THE HERON), it was the most entertaining film of the year by a country mile.

– See it in theaters while you can, you poor things, you. And prepare to be dazzled!

*

THE ZONE OF INTEREST

(directed by Jonathan Glazer, 2023)
****+ (out of 5)

.

> Johnathan Glazer’s fascinating, very alternate Holocaust drama poses a lot of thorny questions.

. Among them: What is cinema for? Is it merely a mirror through which society can see itself mirrored back, engendering a spark of familiar recognition- or is it something more? Is it possibly more of a prism than a mirror, breaking down the layers of light through which we can envisage fictional worlds we’ve never imagined, and real-life worlds in ways we’d never thought, or dared to look at them?

. It took ten years for British filmmaker Johnathan Glazer to make this singular, ambitious film about Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, his wife Hedwig and his 5 children, thriving in an idyllic life in a carefully manicured “zone of interest” directly adjacent to the infamous concentration camp, yet seemingly living in a completely separate world. Given access to the most sensitive of archives, Glazer researched the hell out of it before he dared undertake a project that is likely to upset everybody and really please no one.

. Was it Joseph Campbell who said “Every man is the hero of his own story”? What if the STAR WARS saga were reimagined through the eyes of Darth Vader? Before this fascinating film, had any filmmaker ever dared to think of monstrous figures from history like Höss as mere men, invested with all the trappings of humanity his victims had? Is humanizing them akin to excusing their crimes? Does telling their story risk making inadvertent heroes of them? It is tempting to separate the humans from the evil they do, placing history’s killers on a kind of pedestal that imagines they were somehow special, different from ordinary people in their shocking capacity for depravity. Certainly, different than us, right?! We imagine it takes a special kind of man to do evil on such a grand, operatic scale. But does it? How much societal rot does it take for corruption to take hold of a man?

. THE ZONE OF INTEREST presents this Nazi criminal as a man like any other: he loves his brood like any other family man. He enjoys the bounty of nature- picnicking, horseback riding and happily fishing in a stream with his kids (…until he discovers human remains in the water. Yuck!). He is an educated man, who appreciates the finer things in life. He nurtures his children, spoils his dog, craves recognition by his peers and wants to do his job well- never mind that his job is butchering innocent men, women and children as efficiently as possible. Some might find this an almost offensive notion- unspeakable monster as everyday man. It can be a heretical notion. Here, it is exactly the point. When everything is working for you- you have wealth, privilege, status- you are providing well for your family and your career arc seems to be on the upswing, you may be less inclined to look at the larger picture and your role in it. Why make room for irksome things like morality and conscience when your life seems to be firing on all cylinders? Very few men set out with the conscious intention to do evil. But evil can happen when groupthink enters the picture, and humans become more concerned with going along to get along.

. The two most potent quotations to bear in mind here are Hannah Arendt’s admonition about the insidious banality of evil and the idea that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. When we strip way the perverse celebrity of evil, we are forced to ask ourselves if history’s villains are really that different than us. I am not drawing conclusions here, but amplifying Glazer’s message: If we don’t want the worst horrors of history to repeat themselves, there are questions that need to be asked- deeply, deeply uncomfortable questions that do not have easy answers.

. Admittedly, this film is a one-trick pony and some will find fault with it for being a bit of an intellectual exercise. It’s not like there is a single character we can empathize with- unless it is the children, being made victims of Germany’s war-lust while just trying to have a childhood. Children are the first victims of any war, regardless of which side of the conflict their parents are on. As guilty as Höss was, his kids were not complicit, and if the war had gone on, they would have been groomed to be just as amorally vicious as their infamous dad. They would have lived in a society where butchery was normalized, and even rewarded. That banality of evil would have enveloped them as well. In “The Gulag Archipelago” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote: “Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren’t.” One side fell into the group delusion that target groups were somehow “other” and “less than”- the other did not.

. Would any person become the monster Höss became, if placed in the exact same complex set of conditions? No- almost certainly not. It takes a special kind of corrupt depravity to sink to the very lowest mankind can be. But if one remembers the Stanford experiments where one group was randomly assigned the role of “guards” and another the role of “inmates”- those in the powerful position invariably became little Hitlers themselves. Even when they thought the shocks they were administering to prisoners in an adjacent room was causing excruciating pain, all but one individual upped up the amperage when pressured by “authority”. No, humankind’s record is not good in this regard. Ordinary people can become extraordinary monsters.

. THE ZONE OF INTEREST declares itself at once as an experimental film, jumping right into the soundtrack like the echoes of history reverberating, while the image takes a long time to come into being, as though the film were coming-to after a long, deep sleep, reversing the process at in a mercifully briefer reprise at the end. It’s a self-conscious trick that will certainly test the patience of some filmgoers before the film has essentially begun. But it serves the same function that the “Overture” used to serve in big screen blockbusters of yore: It gives us a moment to transition from the world we live in moment-to-moment, and readjust to the temporary world we are about to inhabit. It provides a clearing of the head so we don’t bring our personal baggage into the theatre with us, and a settling-in for what’s to come. In this instance, it does something even more primal to the success of the film: with nothing to look at, it focuses our attention completely on the soundtrack: the sounds of the natural world- insects buzzing, water rushing. I have rarely seen a film where the soundtrack was a larger piece of the whole- unless it was in the similarly impactful Holocaust film SON OF SAUL, which employed much the same aural assault.

. The dividing wall (which reminded me of the barrier in Belfast that separated the Catholics from the Protestants), is perfect metaphor for the even larger theme of complicit denial. On our side of the wall: a lovely garden with bees and flowers and a swimming pool for the kids. On their side of the wall: the unspeakable horror of factory extermination. Everybody knows it’s there, but the soundtrack of terror spilling over day and night, every day of the year- the screams and shouts, the gunfire and the low rumble of machinery becomes like a lullaby- so regular and constant that one hardly notices it anymore. When the smell of burning corpses wafts unpleasantly in your direction, simply close the windows until the wind shifts. All better! It’s different for Hedwig’s mom who comes to stay with them. She hears the screams and gunfire. She smells the crematorium at work. She sees the flames shooting from the chimneys, so she barely lasts one night. She simply sees and acknowledges the horror in a way the Höss family no longer can.

. Highly technical filmmaking, it’s an example of what is now being called “slow cinema”, and such- it’s certainly not for everyone. Glazer takes his time, often shooting at a remove that frames family life in context- a little green oasis butting up against a lethally efficient death camp. It is methodically and impeccably edited, in a cold, formal style calculated to avoid fetishizing the characters, as the camera is wont to do, anytime you point it at a character. To this end, none of the traditional film lighting was employed, lest they be glamorized by it. It’s all shot in natural and unobtrusive structural lighting that gives the film a flat, everyday tone. Interestingly, it was shot on location next to the infamous deathcamp, the interior of the Höss compound recreated in a derelict house. And Glazer used the same unusual technique Robert Altman used on GOSFORD PARK, placing remote cameras and mics everywhere and shooting in long extended takes that allowed the actors to move freely through the set and improvise continually, because they were always on camera, wherever they were. It allowed them to recreate that mundanity of family life needed to make the inert terror work.

. Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller are terrifyingly real as Rudolf and Hedwig. Friedel lamented having to wear that godawful haircut for two years of shooting. (When you see it, you will feel for him!) For her part, Hüller (who swore she’d never play a Nazi because of the way such roles tend to stereotype Germans), is having a huge year, nominated in the Best Actress category for ANATOMY OF A FALL. If you ask me, she got nominated for the wrong film. (It also might have been nice to see the extraordinary experimental score remembered as well, though it was banished to technical transitions, because it tended to romanticize the characters.)

. Every detail is completely intentional, and there are so many telling details it is impossible to notice them all on one viewing. (One clear example of this: a Jewish housemaid prepares a shot glass full of liqueur so Höss can have a toast with his staff to celebrate his birthday. She stops for a moment and focuses on the task at hand, being sure to place the glass in the absolute dead-center of the tray. Details matter. Not heeding them could have serious consequences.) Whether you agree with all Glazer’s choices or not, there is no doubt each one was carefully considered before being decided upon. An undertaking like this is much like a stroll through a minefield. Every step is carefully considered.

. Near the end, there is an unheralded and somewhat jarring shift in time to present day, where we meet the custodians of history- quite literally, as the janitorial crew keeps Auschwitz clean for modern visitors, and for a moment, the movie becomes documentary. The endless display cases of empty shoes lining the hall make explicit what had only been implicit up until then, and it is an appropriate kick in the teeth.

. In a year where the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chose much more wisely than usual, honoring this important film with nominations for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound and Best Director- but also for both Best International Feature Film and Best Picture- only the second time that’s happened in their 95-year history, after the equally deserving PARASITE. I would be surprised if it does not win the international prize, as well as the award for its devastating soundtrack. It absolutely deserves both accolades.

. Let’s face it: I am not an especially gifted film reviewer. After writing thousands of reviews, I’m skilled from mere dogged repetition, an expert merely by putting in Malcolm Gladwell’s 10 thousand hours of practice. I am more of a self-appointed fangeek who evangelically shares his love of movies with the world as something approaching an addiction. Deeper thinkers than I have distilled these ideas far more potently than I was able to, when they said things like:

“Dispassionately examining the ordinary existence of people complicit in horrific crimes, THE ZONE OF INTEREST forces us to take a cold look at the mundanity behind an unforgivable brutality.” And:

“Glazer has achieved something much greater than just making the monstrous mundane— by rendering such extreme inhumanity ordinary, he reawakens us to its true horror.” And:

“Through painstaking framing and sound design, its horrors gnaw at the edge of every shot.” And:

“Glazer describes the situation in what is possibly more oppressive than anything we’ve seen in Holocaust films before. It concentrates in one garden the attitude of an entire nation that wanted to know nothing.”

– Yeah. What they said!

*

> Are we entering a new Golden Age of cinema, like the storied seventies? It would not surprise me in the least. The American film industry is growing up. New possibilities are emerging with revolutionary technology. New international partnerships are being formed that bring fresher, stronger ideas into the marketplace, and a whole lot more variety. FAST AND FURIOUS is yesterday’s news! Superhero epics are as moribund as Paleolithic Man. The king is dead. LONG LIVE THE KING!

*  *  *

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