ok i really liked this movie. i think that the way people who benefit from atrocities like the holocaust or other genocides can just like, turn it into background noise, is so deeply fascinating and i think this movie has a very interesting take on presenting that.
when i watch this movie, i think about israel. i think about the israelis putting up chairs and cheering at the bombs dropping on gaza after october 7th. there is something so deeply unsettling and real about the way people can normalize evil, even turning it into entertainment. the zone of interest almost never really like, tells you like "hey isnt this fucked up that this family is living right next to auschwitz and they dont even care". but in almost every single scene in this movie you can see the walls of auschwitz. you can hear gunshots and screaming and suffering, all the while the family the movie focuses on hardly ever even acknowledge it. this is just life to them and they have no issue with it. they love living there, even. the deep contempt and hatred you have to have inside of you for other people to be able to live like this is unimagineable to me
it was almost kind of hard to even enjoy the movie while watching it. i wanted to look away even though no violence is ever directly portrayed on screen, only the sound. but at the same time i think this is such an important topic to explore and talk about. the normalization of violence and suffering is such an important core of any government that executes violence upon others (note: this is all of them! every government is violent). theres the extreme examples like the one depicted in this movie or the one i mentioned earlier from israel, but even the way the military is glorified in western media is another facet of this. we're told violence is good and heroic and we happily depict and roleplay scenarios of needless violence until its so normalized no one even bats an eye. enemies of the state are dehumanized until we just accept people being treated like animals.
idk where im going with this ramble! the world is a scary place. the zone of interest is a good movie.