Attending a premiere screening at the Cannes Film Festival is a strange experience. No matter what movie is playing, the men are in tuxedos and the women are in formal suits. Pop music and old songs are popping up on the red carpet. Cameras shoot celebrities in Chopard jewellery and random attendees who occasionally showcase something silly to catch photographers’ attention.
I walked into the Grand Lumière on Friday night, fascinated by the strange pomp, but at the same time excited and a little nervous about what I was about to see: Jonathan Glazer’s area of interest. everything i know about Under the Skin The director’s first film in nearly a decade was about Nazis living just outside Auschwitz and was based on a Martin Amis novel, but apparently very different from its source material. I was also aware of Glazer, known for movies like. Birth And Sexy Monsterproduces strange and exciting work that defies expectations.
And when Glazer’s movie begins with a long black-screen sequence as Mica Levi’s disorienting music explodes, I’m sure a disturbing chill descended on the huge movie theater filled with people gawking at the likes of Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman. At one point, as the darkness went on, a round of applause broke out, as if that corner of the audience thought something was wrong and wanted to force the movie to really start. But it had already happened.
area of interest It’s hailed as the first great movie to come out of Cannes this year, and for good reason. A disturbing and wonderful film that challenges what it means to make a Holocaust movie.
When the screen finally lights up after this long period of darkness, it presents a picturesque view of a family by the lake. They are shot from afar, composed almost like Seurat’s bathers, but this is not France. The people we watch in Poland near Auschwitz are the commandant of the concentration camp and his wife, Rudolf and Hedwig Höss, played by Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller.
The structure of the film will indeed surprise some viewers, as it probably surprised those around me who entered the runtime early. Shooting on-site, Glazer observes Höss puppies spending their days at home. Hedwig tries on a fur coat she bought from a Jewish woman and gives it to her maid to fix it. She then gossips about other items they stole with her friends, she.
Rudolf hears a pitch for a new crematorium design. They garden, they party, they ride horses, and while they usually enjoy their lives, on the other side of the concrete wall are the bitter cries that separate them from the terror they have caused. Occasionally, smoke fills the sky. You can’t help but think of the scent that these people must ignore when trying to surround themselves with beauty. Their wickedness is recorded not in the way they are typically portrayed on screen – through brazen violence – but in the randomness with which they spend their days. It’s terrible that they’re partitioned. Suffering is nothing but their daily music, nothing to worry them about.
Glazer, a Jewish filmmaker, doesn’t fully humanize Hösses, but neither does he edit. At a press conference the next day, he announced that he didn’t want to portray them as monsters. “The great crime and tragedy is that it’s okay for us to have people do this to other people and try to distance ourselves from them as much as possible because frankly we think we can never act that way, and we don’t act that way. this way,” said Glazer. “But I think we should be less sure of that.”
Most of the action takes place in Höss’s house, which Glazer captured from afar: There were 10 cameras on set that captured scenes playing in different rooms at the same time. He kept his distance, watching from a trailer. However, Glazer occasionally strays away from the so-called heroes, allowing Levi’s annoying voices to dominate as the image turns to night vision negative, and we see a young Polish resistance girl picking up fallen apples and releasing them to the prisoners.
Its story is presented in a distorted form, but it adds an element of elegance that is almost hard to express once you see it. Kindness is worldly; Fear is routine.
I kept thinking about how the movie portrayed, during a long standing ovation, the extraordinary ability to ignore what was easy to witness after it was over. I was shaken, taking deep breaths to record Glazer’s work. Then a woman in a bright red dress caught my attention. She looked unimpressed, she. During the applause, she smiles and takes a selfie of herself, as she turns to capture the room. Perhaps it was easier to focus on the magic than to take into account what he saw.
Did you like this review? Sign up to receive weekly See. Skip newsletter Every Tuesday and find out which new shows and movies are worth watching and which are not.