TEASER - 162: The Zone of Interest (with James Slaymaker)

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The writer James Slaymaker, author of Time is Luck: The Cinema of Michael Mann, returns to the pod from Southampton to discuss Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest.

In this wide-ranging conversation James and I discuss Glazer’s methodology to adapt Martin Amis’ Holocaust novel for the screen, including his determination to create two separate films inside one film: what we see (the bucolic family life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss) and what we hear (the horrifying sounds of death from over the wall of the concentration camp next door). Glazer uses 21st century technology to tell this story to indicate that this film is not about history, but about the present moment, including provocative ideas about the ways we all try to compartmentalize and overcompensate to tune out the horrors of the world that make our own comfortable lives possible.

We also compare The Zone of Interest to other Holocaust works to discuss why it’s so difficult to tell these stories with sensitivity and respect and without compromise, some of the most noteworthy sequences, and what the film has in common with Alain Resnais’ masterful short film about Auschwitz, Night and Fog.

And of course we discuss some of the bad faith arguments from Zone of Interest haters, and some hot takes online from people who even if they saw and liked it, may not have grasped its point.

Night and Fog is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Follow James Slaymaker on Twitter.

James’ book Time is Luck: The Cinema of Michael Mann, is now available in paperback and Kindle.

Trailer #2 for The Zone of Interest (Glazer, 2023)