The Zone of Interest: A Review - The Profound and the Mundane

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. This is a masterful arthouse film about the banality of evil that normal audiences will despise but cinephiles will adore.

The Zone of Interest, written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, is an unconventional and unorthodox film that will confound and frustrate general audiences to the point of exasperation. It is also one of the very best films of the year, and one of the most insightful Holocaust films ever made.

The film, which is adapted from the Martin Amis novel of the same name, chronicles the daily life of Nazi Commandant Rudolph Hoss and his family in their new house right next to Auschwitz concentration camp.

Hannah Arendt coined the term “The Banality of Evil” when describing the men who perpetrated the Holocaust. According the Arendt, these men, like Rudolph Hoss, where not sociopaths or Nazi fanatics, but rather bureaucrats and middle managers motivated by professional success rather than ideology.

The Zone of Interest is Arendt’s Banality of Evil brought to cinematic life. The mundanity of the Hoss family life is a damning indictment as it is surrounded by the most monstrous evil that was the Holocaust, which is only ever heard, but never, not once, seen in the film.

The Zone of Interest features no true plot. Nothing really happens in the movie. But the mundanity of it all within the historically cruel setting is what generates the film’s profundity.

Auschwitz is a company town, and Hoss is a good company man. The business of Auschwitz is killing and business is good. Hoss is successful and is very good at his job. He’s an admired and respected man among his peers and underlings.

Rudolph’s wife, Hedwig, is the queen of Auschwitz, and she is constantly at work on her beautiful home and exquisite garden, which are attached to the concentration camp’s outer wall. Beyond that wall the cries of children and screams of parents are routinely heard…so routinely that they become empty background noise.

Rudolph and Hedwig, along with their five children, are living the American dream – or more accurately the Nazi dream. They have gone East (as opposed to West in the American myth), built a beautiful home, found meaningful work they are good at, and have lots of open space and freedom of movement. Their life is idyllic…except for the sounds and smells of slaughter which occasionally break through and pierce their ignorant bliss.

That their blessed life exists because, and within, the most degenerate and dehumanizing industrial genocide imaginable, is something that they are deeply skilled at keeping at bay. The Hoss’s aren’t unaware of the atrocities that surround them, they just choose to focus on other things….just like the rest of us.

The Zone of Interest is exquisitely directed by Jonathan Glazer who never veers from his brazen artistic thesis. The film’s meticulous visual style, its deliberate pacing, it’s odd and jarring photographic and time alterations, all point to a filmmaker who knows exactly what he is doing and exactly what he wants to say and how to say it.

The film is shot by Lukasz Zal, and he and Glazer put on a masterful cinematography clinic. The camera never moves in The Zone of Interest, as every shot is perfectly still. Any movement in the frame is made by the characters or by use of edits to a different angle.

There are straight lines everywhere, spotlighting the precision of the filmmaking and the horrifying meticulousness of the Nazi machine which keeps everything in order in the Hoss’ world.

There are no close-ups of characters in the entire film, and scant few close-ups of anything else…the only one I remember is of a flower. Instead, Zal’s still camera is kept at a cold distance, in a wide frame, never moving, never judging, just observing.

There are times when the film is shot with thermal imaging, which is an alarming change from the cinematic stoicism employed for the majority. That this thermal imaging is used to spotlight the rare moments of humanity, as opposed to the still, distant camera’s capturing of normalized inhumanity, is striking and very effective.

Also very effective is the sound design and music. Mica Levi did the music and it is an industrial sounding horrorscape, that when accompanied by a black screen or a red one, makes for unnerving viewing and listening.

Sound designer Johnnie Burn’s work is astonishing as the ambient sounds of the Holocaust are expertly recorded and deployed throughout, creating an unseen but very deeply felt sense of moral malignancy and madness.

The performances in the film are so understated and naturalized as to be astonishing. Sandra Huller, who is nominated for her work in Anatomy of Fall at this year’s Academy Awards, is absolutely astonishing as Hedwig Hoss.

Huller’s Hedwig is in constant movement and always searching for something, anything to occupy her. She is a proud mother and wife and loves to show off her success to her mother. But beneath her surface there is a calculating and vicious woman who knows what and who she is and what she will do to maintain her kingdom and maintain her status.

Christian Friedel is the picture of normalcy as Rudolph Hoss. Friedel’s Hoss could be at home as a bank manager, a car manufacturer or any mid-level bureaucrat middle-manager in any company in the world. That he is skilled at managing a death factory is almost beside the point.

It is common nowadays to call one’s political opponents or enemies “Nazis”. The U.S. routinely calls whomever it has deemed it adversary on the world stage “Hitler”, and anyone who negotiates with them or fails to go to war against them, “Chamberlain” – as in Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain who famously signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler which was seen as appeasing tyranny.

The thing that has always bothered me about the depictions of Nazis, whether it be in films/tv or in our culture in general, it is that they are cartoonish versions of evil. These men are shown as being blood-thirsty and often completely insane. These depictions make it much too easy for us to see Nazis solely as something that other people become, never ourselves.

The truth, of course, is much more complicated and much more unnerving. The reality is that we are all very capable of becoming Nazis…hell…we are all Hitler’s in waiting who would reflexively dehumanize our opponents and enemies, and/or ignore atrocities that become so common as to be background noise.

Back in the wake of the 2016 election and Trump’s rise to power, there was a debate in our culture about the legitimacy and efficacy of “punching Nazis”. I wrote at length about it expressing the danger of that line of thinking. The majority of liberals and leftists I knew, and many readers of this blog and my writing at RT, were fervent in their belief that punching Nazis was always, and every time, the right thing to do.

My counter-argument was, that is exactly how Nazis think…that punching/silencing/eliminating your opponent/enemy is a righteous act and that violent impulses are to be indulged in the name of that righteousness.

My friends on the left said I was a Nazi myself for not wanting to punch a Nazi, which is sort of ironic since I was much more likely to punch anyone in real life than they ever were.

The reason I bring all of this up in the context of a review about The Zone of Interest, is that the power of the film is that it lays bare in excruciating detail, how all of us, in similar circumstances, would fall into the rhythm of our time and place and would ignore the atrocity right outside our zone of interest in order to maintain our comfort and our sanity.

For example, while there are protests, most of which are performative and impotent, against Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the truth is no one is actually going to do anything about it and it’s not going to change because we have all been conditioned to, at a bare minimum, accept it, if not celebrate it. Thousands of children slaughtered in Gaza? Oh well… shrug emoji…did you see who Taylor swift is dating?

The same is true of the senseless and endless epidemic of murder in inner-city Black communities, and the ceaseless epidemic of suicides by the White working class, and homelessness and drug overdoses among the ever-expanding under-class.

We are overwhelmed by the scope and scale of all of these rapacious tragedies, and so we simply go along to get along and we live out lives of comfort on the mountain of misery our nation routinely produces.

We don’t think of ourselves as Nazis, despite the fact that our government is a malignant force around the globe which inflicts great harm and suffering upon millions, all on our dime and occasionally at our behest. For example, we send billions to nefarious nations like Israel and Saudi Arabia and turn a blind eye when they massacre innocents, just like we turn a blind eye when our nation directly massacres innocents, be it in Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan or Yemen.

The denizens of D.C., be they venal politicians or craven lobbyists and the weapons manufacturers across our nation, don’t think of themselves as being Rudolph Hoss, but they are. Those diabolical fools are just like the mainstream media members who think of themselves as Woodward and Bernstein and not Joseph Goebbels. They are mini-Goebbels all.

The Zone of Interest is such a great film because it lays bare this fact that we are all Nazis, in action if not intent, whether we like it or not. And that is why the film is such mandatory viewing.

Unfortunately, The Zone of Interest, despite being nominated for five Academy Awards – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International Feature and Best Sound, is an arthouse movie through and through, and mainstream audiences, conditioned to expect films that are structured in certain ways and have familiar dramatic arcs, will be repelled by Glazer’s artistic choices.

In common parlance, this film will bore the shit out of normal people because nothing happens in it. But the problem is that nothing happening is the point of the movie.

In my opinion, The Zone of Interest is one of the very best, and best-made, films of the year and is a critical piece of art in our current times. It would be a fantastic companion piece to watch in an ad hoc film festival with Michael Haneke’s masterful The White Ribbon (2009) and Elem Klimov’s masterpiece Come and See (1985), the greatest war film ever made, to try and capture, and understand, the zeitgeist of pre-war and wartime Germany as it is afflicted with the cancer of Nazism.

In conclusion, The Zone of Interest is a magnificent piece of cinematic art that cinephiles will adore and normal people will despise. If you’re a normie, then skip it, but if you are a lover of cinema and all of its artistic possibilities, then The Zone of Interest is definitely a must see.

Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2024

The Film 'Come and See', the Russian Psyche, and the War in Ukraine

My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT NOW. Arguably the greatest war film, and greatest anti-war film, ever made.

‘COME AND SEE’ IS VITAL TO UNDERSTANDING THE RUSSIAN PSYCHE REGARDING THE WAR IN UKRAINE

A few years ago, in order to commemorate the 75th anniversary of V.E. Day, I wrote a list of the best war films ever made that was published at RT.com, an English-language Russian news outlet. I got a lot of feedback on my list, as readers shared their favorite war films and compared them to mine. Interestingly, I was inundated with emails and comments from Russian readers who were outraged I failed to have Come and See, the 1985 Soviet war film directed by Elem Klimov, not only not on my list, but not at the top of it.

The truth was I hadn’t seen Come and See because it isn’t widely or easily available here in the U.S. The film, which for years was nearly impossible to find on any streaming service, is now available on the Criterion Channel (which is wonderful and a must have service for any cinephile). Having finally watched the movie I can now say that those Russian readers were right and I was wrong…Come and See deserves to be on the top of the list of best war films ever made. It is a terrible injustice that the film has thus far remained mostly undiscovered in the West as it is an astonishing piece of cinematic art.

I think now, as the war in Ukraine rages into its second month, it’s most imperative that Westerners watch Come and See in order to better understand historical context and how it effects the collective Russian psyche regarding perceived enemies on its western border.

The dramatically scintillating Come and See is unquestionably a cinematic masterpiece, and I don’t use that word lightly. The film chronicles the odyssey of Florian Gaishun, a young teenage boy trying to survive the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Republic of Belarus in 1943.

Florian is eager to join a rag tag group of Soviet partisans in a guerrilla war against the Nazis. But his mother, afraid to be left alone in their small village with two young twin daughters, is adamant he stays home.

But once Florian discovers a discarded but usable weapon buried in the dirt, the partisans come to his house and officially conscript him into service.

Thus begins Florian’s coming of age story, which is a trial by fire where a Focke-Wulf 189 German reconnaissance plane haunts the skies above his head like a blood-thirsty vulture and Nazi savagery dominates and decimates the fragile world around him.

Florian is thrust into most harrowing journey through the brutality of war and the darkness of the human heart, and must endure the most hellacious of circumstances and devastating of tragedies.

It’s impossible to adequately describe Florian’s gruesome crucifixion upon the cross of war, and the ungodly horrors he must suffer. The viewer must simply bear witness to them too and suffer the same visceral anguish as Florian.

The film boasts two terrific performances, one from Aleksei Kravchenko as Florian, and the other Olga Miranova as Glasha.

Kravchenko’s face over the course of the film is a roadmap of the horrors he’s experienced. His ‘thousand-yard stare’ is a monument to the soul-crushing and heartbreaking ordeal he’s undergone.

Miranova is electrifying as Glasha, a young woman Florian meets in the early days of his time with the partisan guerrillas. Miranova is like a beautiful, gaping wound walking the earth, trying to avoid catastrophe but sentenced to an endless parade of calamities.

Director Klimov pulls no punches on Come and See, as he masterfully, using a variety of clever and intriguing filmmaking techniques, such as a split diopter lens and the use of reduced sound to heighten drama, tells Florian’s tale. Klimov’s brilliant direction immerses the viewer in the hell of war, as well as expresses the collective rage against the Nazis that unleashed a wave of brutality and barbarity against the Soviets that is staggering to contemplate.

This is why it’s so imperative that Westerners watch Come and See, because it so forcefully conveys the palpable fear, anxiety and angst left on the Soviet/Russian psyche by the barbarity of the Nazi invasion forty years after it happened, as well as today.

Hitler sent his very best divisions when he invaded the Soviet Union because he understood that to win the wider war the Nazis needed to destroy the USSR and usurp its plethora of resources, most notably oil and wheat, which would then fuel and feed Hitler’s war machine.

Hitler, like Napoleon before him, found out the hard way that invading Russia is never a good idea, as the winters are brutal and the people made of extraordinarily stern and resilient stuff.

Roughly 30 million Soviets died in World War II (compared to about 418,000 Americans), but their deaths were not in vain as it was the Soviets who broke the Nazi war machine’s back and won World War II. But there isn’t a Russian family that didn’t suffer immensely during the war and for generations after, and the psychological damage from that trauma still resonates today.

In the West, when we hear talk of Russia wanting to “de-nazify” Ukraine, it sounds like a vacuous talking point. To Russians it deeply resonates though because it’s driven by a palpable existential fear – a fear perfectly captured in Come and See.

My intention here is not to try and change any minds regarding the war in Ukraine, as I’m aware enough to know that when emotions are as inflamed as they are now, and the bullshit propaganda is piling up so high you need wings to stay above it, as it is now, appealing to reason and logic is a fool’s errand.

But what I am here to do is to try and get people to watch Come and See for its cinematic mastery, and its collective cultural insights, so that they can at least understand the deeper psychological and historical context of Russia’s actions and impulses.

For instance, most people in the US don’t know this but in 2014 the US backed a coup in Ukraine that overthrew a democratically elected government. The overthrown government was more inclined to Russia’s viewpoint, and the newly-installed government was beholden to the US.

To Americans, that bit of history is largely unknown, but to Russians it’s not only well-known, but deeply troubling and anxiety-inducing.

The same is true of the fact that the newly installed Ukrainian government sat idly by as 42 pro-Russian activists were burned alive in the Trade Union House in Odessa, Ukraine post-coup in 2014, something which most Americans don’t know but that Russians know all too well (and which is remarkably reminscernt of one of the more horrifying scenes in Come and See).

Another example, which most Americans don’t know but of which Russians are keenly aware, is that this same US installed Ukrainian government then banned the Russian language and went to war with ethnic Russians in the Donbass region in Eastern Ukraine. Since that war started in 2014, nearly 14,000 people, mostly ethnic Russians, including women and children, have been killed.

Another piece of historical context largely ignored in the US is that when Russia and Ukraine signed a ceasefire/peace agreement called the Minsk Agreements (Minsk Protocol signed in 2014, and Minsk II – a ceasefire signed in 2015), it seemed peace was possible, but Ukraine and the US ignored those agreements and the slaughter of ethnic Russians continued in the Donbass.

To watch Come and See gives Americans an opportunity to see the developments in Ukraine through the eyes of Russians. To Russians, Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, which western media reported on extensively for years as a battalion of devilishly devout Nazis but which now ignores that context, is not an outlier, but the crux of the issue. As evidenced by the brutal wholesale slaughter of an entire Belorussian village in Come and See, which the film informs us was something that happened to 628 Belorussian villages at the hands of the Nazis during the war, Nazi bloodthirst isn’t a speculative talking point to Russians, it’s a historical fact and a traumatic trigger.

The way Russians see it, the US installed a Nazi friendly regime in Ukraine, and Russians remember what the Nazis did the last time they had power in the region…and it was genocidal in its scope and scale and demonic in its unabashed cruelty.

When Russians see pro-Russian activists burned alive in Odessa, and ethnic Russians massacred in the Donbass, the horrors of World War II as exquisitely captured in Come and See are conjured in all their grueling and gruesome savagery.

I understand that many Americans, fed a hearty diet of establishment media Zelensky worship as well as ludicrous propagandistic tales of the Ghost of Kiev and the Heroes of Snake Island, might watch Come and See and interpret it very differently. For instance, Americans might watch Come and See and believe Putin to be Hitler and the modern-day Russians in Ukraine the equivalent of the Nazis in Belarus in 1943.

I disagree with that assessment and find it to be historically illiterate and painfully myopic, but that said, I completely understand why, after years of relentless Russo-phobic propaganda, people would be conditioned to feel that way.

Regardless of how you interpret Come and See, I whole-heartedly encourage you to watch it. By being one of the greatest war movies of all-time, Come and See succeeds in being the greatest anti-war movie of all-time.

As for the war in Ukraine…like all wars, I hate it and vehemently oppose it. I understand why it’s happening, what triggered it, the wider forces at play in it and the stakes involved in it, but I despise war in all its brutality and callousness and inhumanity.

I know most people don’t believe in this sort of thing anymore, and frankly I don’t blame them, but I ardently and earnestly pray every day that the war in Ukraine ends and an everlasting peace is found and prospers. Ukraine is nothing but a boiling cauldron of suffering, and the last thing this world needs is more suffering, the brilliant Come and See is a testament to that fact.

©2022

Munich: The Edge of War - A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!*!!***

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A middle-of-the-road, paint-by-numbers thriller without the thrills.

The new Netflix film, ‘Munich: The Edge of War’, which premiered on the streaming service on January 21, is a pseudo-historical thriller that mixes fact and fiction, resulting in a middle-of-the-road movie that is fundamentally, and at times forcefully, at odds with itself.

The film, directed by Christian Schwochow, is based upon the best-selling novel ‘Munich’ by Robert Harris and tells the story of two men, a Brit, Hugh Legat (George McKay), and a German, Paul von Hartmann (Jannis Niewohner), who were once chums at Oxford but had a falling out over politics when von Hartmann embraced Hitler in the mid-1930’s.

Now, years later the two are mid-level diplomatic staff members, Legat for Britain and von Hartmann for Germany, but they end up working together to try and thwart Neville Chamberlain from signing the Munich Agreement in 1938.

You see, von Hartmann has seen the light regarding Hitler’s malevolence, and he is supporting a secret plot by some German generals to have Hitler arrested if he invades Czechoslovakia. But if Chamberlain signs the Munich Agreement, then no crime will have taken place when the German army rolls into Sudetenland as it won’t technically be an invasion, and thus the generals will waver, the plot will crumble and Hitler will be left to run amok.

In order to convince Chamberlain to leave the Munich Agreement unsigned, von Hartmann enlists Legat to show the Prime Minister a top-secret classified German document that details Hitler’s plans for the Third Reich’s aggressive expansion across Europe.

The major problem with ‘Munich: The Edge of War’ is that the film desperately wants to be a thriller but due to it being a historical drama, it is devoid of thrills.

All the trappings of a thriller are present in the movie. For instance, there are a bevy of scenes at restaurants where passionately whispered conversations between men with furrowed brows come to a screeching halt when the waiter arrives and takes his time serving drinks while all the characters give each other intense, knowing glances.

There’s also a bunch of scenes where Legat frantically runs through the streets, bumping into random people (I hope these extras got combat pay), as he rushes to deliver a message of great import to the British Parliament or to the Munich Conference.

There are also multiple scenes where von Hartmann quickly walks, eyes forward, head down, past nasty Nazis bullying unfortunates on the streets of Germany hoping to avoid danger.

And then there’s the plethora of hand-held, floating camera shots and and purposeful music used to try and build suspense.

But the reality is it’s very difficult for a film to be a thriller and to build suspense when the audience knows exactly how the story ends, and obviously, spoiler alert, we know World War II happens and millions die.

Another failing of the film is that it tries to personalize history with the fictional relationship between Legat and von Hartmann. But the film’s dual narratives, which jump between Legat and von Hartmann, never allows sufficient time for either character to be developed enough for the viewer to be fully invested in their individual journeys. When the two narratives merge, the friendship between them isn’t established enough to carry any dramatic weight.

Unfortunately, director Schwochow also does not imbue the film with any distinct style, as it is visually indistinguishable from any second rate, made-for-tv movie with its staid framing and conventional camera work.

On the bright side, the cast is, for the most part, proficient.

For example, George McKay and Jannis Niewohner give solid if unspectacular performances as Legat and von Hartmann.

Ulrich Matthes plays a credibly creepy and slightly weird Hitler.

Jeremy Irons is particularly good as an enigmatic Chamberlain, embracing nuance and avoiding caricature.

The same cannot be said for the usually stellar August Diehl, who plays Franz Sauer, von Hartmann’s former schoolmate and current bodyguard to Hitler. Diehl’s retread of a performance as the cackling, crazy-eyed Nazi is a tired and over-used caricature.

Ultimately, ‘Munich: The Edge of War’ is as painfully pedestrian and paint-by-numbers a film as you’ll find. The most striking thing about it is not how banal and boring it is, but how fundamentally self-defeating it is. It isn’t an awful film, but it also isn’t a remotely interesting one.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2022

Jojo Rabbit: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. This film is funny at times and definitely worth seeing, but only at matinee prices, or until you can see it for free on Netflix.

JoJo Rabbit, written and directed by Taika Waititi, is based upon the Christine Leunens novel Caging Skies and tells the story of Jojo, a ten year old Hitler youth in Nazi Germany whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler. The film stars Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo, with supporting turns from Taika Waititi, Scarlett Johansson, Thomasin McKenzie, Sam Rockwell and Stephen Merchant.

Jojo Rabbit is an ambitious cinematic undertaking that describes itself as an “anti-hate satire”. As someone who hates the vacuous woke rhetoric of “anti-hate” and believes that hate is not only normal but a vital part of the human condition, that tag line is a turn-off. But then I discovered that the film was a dark Nazi comedy, and since I have long whined about the fact that World War II movies, be they drama or documentary, always and every time make Hitler out to be the bad guy*, the film then became more intriguing to me. After being lured in by the prospect of Nazi-induced laughs, I pulled the trigger and went to see Jojo Rabbit. Thankfully, the film lives up to its premise and remedies the past anti-Hitler cinematic injustices and gives audiences the wacky and zany Hitler we’ve always wanted. (*This is a joke!)

In all seriousness, making a Nazi comedy, especially in these hyper-sensitive, hot-take abundant times, is an act of artistic derring-do. Jojo Rabbit for the most part succeeds in pulling off this most difficult of feats. If I am judging the movie on pass/fail, it passes. That said, it is a good film, not a great one.

The credit and the blame for the film’s better than average and less than terrific outcome, is writer/director/supporting actor Taika Waititi. The first and only other time I’ve seen a Waititi film was when I watched Thor: Ragnorak while bleary-eyed on a cross country flight. I hadn’t ventured out to the theatre to see Ragnorak out of sheer Marvel fatigue, and so, due to boredom, checked it out on my flight. To say I was blown away is an understatement. I was totally mesmerized as I watched this Marvel masterpiece that was funny, smart and insightful, play out on the tiny screen mere inches from my face on the cramped plane. Waititi brings the same level of inventiveness and ingenuity to Jojo Rabbit that animatedThor: Ragnorak.

Waititi not only wrote and directed the film but co-stars as Jojo’s imaginary friend Adolf Hitler. The film is at its best when Waititi, a charismatic performer, is on-screen. Waititi’s masterful Hitler bits crackle and had the audience at my screening, myself included, laughing out loud. The problem though is that they are too few and far between. After the first fifteen minutes or so, Waititi’s Hitler vanishes from the film for long stretches, and those stretches scuttle all of the film’s giddy and insane momentum.

In my opinion I think the film should have been more of a Harvey-esque story, with Hitler being a constant companion to Jojo rather than the star of brief interludes. I think this approach would have not only made the film more consistently funny and bizarre, but also more dramatically potent and poignant. Again, I understand that the film must’ve been limited by the source material, but source material needs to be adapted to the screen, and my suggestion should have been part of that adaptation.

As for the cast, it is as wildly uneven as the film. Roman Griffin Davis is very good as the Jojo, the committed Nazi boy with the active imagination. Davis plays everything straight and it is his commitment to truth that makes his Hitler sidekick so funny.

Sam Rockwell does his usual stellar work as Captain Klenzendorf, a down on his luck German soldier. Rockwell elevates what could have been a Sgt. Schultz level caricature into a brilliantly comedic yet painfully human portrayal. Rockwell fills each moment and movement with a dynamic intentionality that is simply brilliant.

Stephen Merchant has a small role as a member of the Gestapo and he is both funny and exceedingly unnerving. Merchant’s usual banal goofiness takes on a menacing tone as he is imbued with the dark power of Nazism.

Thomasin Mckenzie is an actress I really like, her Mickey Award®© (Breakout Performance of the Year) winning work in Leave No Trace was fantastic, but here she does the best she can with a rather pedestrian role. McKenzie’s Elsa is the dramatic counter-weight to the film’s comedy, but the character is so one-dimensional as to be cliched, and thus the film never sustains the dramatic heft it desires. The narrative shift to Elsa is ill-conceived and feels like an albotross around the film’s neck.

Scarlett Johansson does not fare so well either, as she is handed a paper thin character and does little to put any meat on the bones. Johansson’s Rosie is like a #Resistance manic pixie dream girl for the World War II set. I found her performance to be grating, aggravatingly shallow and irritatingly frivolous.

Rebel Wilson has a small role as a Nazi Fraulein that goes over like a lead(Pb) zeppelin. I have often wondered aloud “what in the world is the appeal of Rebel Wilson?” I don’t get it…I don’t get it at all..NOT…AT…ALL. Wilson is not funny…not even a little bit. Her bits in Jojo Rabbit are painfully unfunny and fall thunderously flat. Rebel Wilson is one of the great mysteries of our time and I am hoping she goes away before I have to exert any mental energy trying to figure out her appeal.

The bottom line is this regarding Jojo Rabbit…it is most definitely a flawed film, but it does pull off an amazing feat by being a crowd-pleasing Nazi comedy. Waititi’s Hitler humor and Rockwell and Merchant’s Nazi comedy are uproariously satisfying. While the film can be at times cinematically uneven and dramatically trite, at other times it is tantalizingly original and combustibly hysterical.

Jojo Rabbit is the type of film, both politically simplistic and emotionally manipulative, that may catch fire and garner Oscar buzz. I do not think it is an Oscar level film, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an enjoyable cinematic experience. I thoroughly enjoyed Jojo Rabbit despite its faults, and I think people should see it, they just shouldn’t pay $14 to see it. My recommendation is to either pay matinee prices or wait until it hits Netflix before seeing Jojo Rabbit. It isn’t a perfect film, or even a great one, but it is an interesting one, and in these artistically cowardly times, that ain’t nothing.

©2019

Hereditary: Political Sub-Text

****WARNING - THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FILM HEREDITARY!!! THIS IS YOUR LAST SPOILER WARNING!!****

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 19 seconds

Hereditary isn't a great movie, but it does speak volumes about the state of America's collective unconscious and most definitely about our political future. Here are some random thoughts on the film, its subtext and its deeper meaning…to be clear, I am not saying these are my politics, but rather the film's politics.

There are multiple ways to interpret Hereditary. One of which is that Toni Colette's character Annie is Donald Trump. Annie's character even utters the Trumpian line of "I am the only one who can do it…only me". 

The film opens with a funeral for Annie's mother…think of it as a funeral for the old guard GOP. Annie gives a speech at the funeral where she says, "It’s heartening to see so many strange new faces here today. I know my mom would be very touched and probably a little suspicious. My mother was a very secretive and private woman. She was a very difficult woman, which maybe explains me."

Seen in the 'Annie as Trump' context, that speech makes sense for the current Republican party. It is not the old blue blood Republicans, but a new group of "strange new faces" (populism) which would make the old guard "a little suspicious". The old guard was "very difficult…which maybe explains me", "me" being Trump. Annie/Trump is explaining that without the old guard of Republicans being the way they were, he never would've found the fertile ground upon which he could blossom into power.

Annie's mother is Reagan and/or Reagan Republicans, this is clear when she says of her mother, "She wasn't all there at the end", echoing the fate of not only Reagan and his Alzheimer's but the tone deafness of Reaganomics in the last decade. 

The grandmother as Reagan is made even more clear when seeing the rather strange daughter Charlie as symbolic of not just the white working class, but the white underclass and poor. Charlie looks like a descendant of one of the banjo playing kid from Deliverance, and it seems like she is either autistic or mildly retarded, 

Charlie as the "stunted" white working class in relation to grandmother Reagan, is made clear when Annie says to Charlie, "That’s grandma, you know you were her favorite, right? Even when you were a little baby she wouldn’t let me feed you because she needed to feed you." Meaning that Reagan wouldn't let the populists actually empower the white lower classes, he only wanted to "feed" them his meal of Reaganomics…keeping them under his control…which they lapped up with a flag waving fervor. 

Annie's teenage son, Peter, is a fascinating character when seen through the context of Annie as Trump. Annie loathes Peter, and even tried to kill him when he was a child by lighting him on fire. Annie blurts out during an argument that she "never wanted to be his mother!" What is interesting about Peter (actor Alex Wolff) is that he actually looks very different from the other family members. Peter is darker skinned and has darker features than his mother Annie and sister Charlie who are blond and light skinned. Peter looks either Latino or Middle Eastern. The actor who plays Peter, Alex Wolff, looks "other-ish" enough to have convincingly played Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev in the film Patriots Day. 

Annie/Trump hates Peter/Latinos/Middle Easterners regardless of the fact that he/they are members of Annie's/Trump's family/residents of his country. The fact that Peter "accidentally" kills his sister Charlie/white working class in a bizarre car accident, only fuels Annie/Trump's rage even more. Annie/Trump cannot forgive or forget what Peter has done, not just to Charlie/white working class but specially to her/Trump. She takes Peter's accidentally killing Charlie as a personal affront because Annie is the one who found the grotesquely mutilated body. 

Speaking of that body, Charlie, again symbolic of the white working class, is decapitated when Peter swerves to save a deer and drives too close to a telephone pole while Charlie is gasping for air with her head out of the car window. Charlie/white working class being decapitated is symbolic of the white working class "losing their heads" meaning abandoning intellect and reason. To put it even more clearly…intellect/reason, in the form of Charlie's head, literally flies out the window in regard to the white working class and Peter/Latinos/Middle Easterners. 

To dive even deeper into the Charlie character, she is "allergic to nuts", literally and figuratively. When Charlie is forced to go with Peter to a party, he abandons her to use drugs and chase girls, and Charlie eats some chocolate nut cake, causing her throat to swell shut. The "chocolate nut cake" poison is Obama, and the white working class were unable to speak (their throats closing shut) or breath as a result of ingesting what he served them because they are allergic to it. Peter then carries Charlie to the car and drives quickly towards a hospital, but before he can get there he has his accident and Charlie is left without her head. 

Charlie/white working class being "allergic to nuts" is obviously a matter of perspective in regards to their political favor over the years, but because Charlie ingests some Obama "poisoned" chocolate cake after she follows Peter/Latino/Middle Easterner to a party, it is symbolic of the white working class being poisoned, choked and eventually dying by ingesting the "multiculturalism/diversity" brought to her by "others" in the form of chocolate cake (Obama). 

Annie/Trump spirals into madness after Charlie/white working class death and fumes against Peter/Latino/Middle Easterners. She is then seduced into an odd relationship with an older woman Joan, who convinces her to do a ceremony to bring Charlie's spirit back and communicate with it. 

Joan is the conduit for Annie/Trump to let in the real power behind the throne…think of Joan as a Steve Bannon/John Bolton type of character. Annie/Trump is so desperate to connect with her deceased daughter/white working class that she falls into a trap set by a conniving, Machiavellian sorceress. 

As Annie/Trump follows Joan's advice, she falls deeper and deeper into a tangled web of madness and manipulation, resulting in her lighting her husband on fire and trying to kill her son. Ultimately, after finding an altar to evil in her attic (houses are symbolic of the psyche, with the attic being high minded intellect and the basement being sub-conscious thought) she herself is sacrificed on the altar of an even greater power that has been using her to manifest in the world and take the throne of global domination. 

The entity that uses Annie, and Charlie and eventually Peter is King Paimon, a powerful spirit that is one of the eight kings of hell. Paimon leaves Annie/Trump headless after she cuts her own head off (literally severing her intellect so she can only function by feel/emotion) and bowing at his feet as he implants himself into the body of Peter and is crowned as king of this world. 

Joan and a cavalcade of old white naked people (a perfect description of modern day Republicans - they are overwhelmingly old, white and their ambitions and sensibilities are naked for all with eyes to see) bow to Paimon in his elevated tree house palace. These people are Republicans bowing to power like they have bowed to Trump. Annie and Charlie, both headless (without reason), bow to Paimon in fealty. The treehouse is elevated because it is not grounded except through trees, to the earth. trees are symbolic of antenna, they wave in the air receiving the silent, unconscious messages floating through the ether. 

King Paimon is what comes after Trump, and he is what we should all truly fear. Trump/Annie has opened the gates of hell and let out a powerful force, King Paimon, that will usurp the crown and rise to power with minimal effort and maximum impact. 

Another interpretation of the King Paimon character is that he IS Trump. King Paimon, who is a real spirit mentioned in various religious type of texts, is a trickster demon who is in service of Lucifer. Trump is the ultimate trickster, and whether he is in service of Lucifer or not I will let you decide. 

According to Wikipedia, King Paimon's powers include, "knowledge of past and future events, clearing up doubts, making spirits appear, creating visions, acquiring and dismissing servant spirits, reanimating the dead for several years, flight, remaining underwater indefinitely, and general abilities to "make all kinds of things" (and) "all sorts of people and armor appear" at the behest of the magician". 

Trump has certainly acquired and dismissed many servant spirits in his administration, but as for the rest of it, you can make the case that symbolically he has done a good number of them. From making spirits appear/creating visions (manipulating the media) to reanimating the dead for several years (non-stop talk about Hillary and lock her up), Trump has a King Paimon-esque quality about him.  

Another interpretation of the film has the Charlie character as a sort of Sarah Palin, a near nitwit bumpkin who is chosen by power elites to temporarily carry the torch, who then passes it to Annie, the Trumpian figure, who is then replaced by Peter, a Latino/Middle Easterner other, who is possessed by the most duplicitous and vicious of demons King Paimon, who uses Peter to take the crown and power, and one would assume, use it in the most diabolical of ways. 

Annie being a miniature artist is a pretty terrific part about Hereditary. Annie as Trump, being adept at manipulating the little world she controls, while in turn King Paimon manipulates Annie's/Trump's little world from a higher vantage point. To Trump, we are all pawns in his personal power game, and to King Paimon, Trump is his pawn in a much grander power game. This reminds me of the line from Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's The Doors, when during an acid trip on Sunset Boulevard Morrison climbs atop a car and pontificates to the astonished crowd that "we are all plastic soldiers in a miniature dirt war!" 

Charlei is a budding miniaturist as well. She creates crude dolls from various scraps she finds…including a dead birds head. Charlie, like Annie and like King Paimon, manipulates and controls the world at her finger tips. 

I'm sure most rational people will scoff at the idea of Trump as King Paimon, but CG Jung wrote extensively on how Hitler was a manifestation of the Norse God Wotan (otherwise known as Odin). Wotan is no joke of a god, he is the father of Thor after all. Jung had been in Hitler's presence on occasion and noticed that he was an empty man, devoid of any charisma or personal power, there was no there there. But like an empty vessel, Hitler would be filled by the powerful spirit of Wotan when he spoke to crowds. Jung claimed that Hitler was speaking for the unconscious of millions of Germans and for Wotan, which is why he resonated with them in such a frighteningly electrifying way. 

Trump is no Hitler because King Paimon is no Wotan. Trump does speak for the unconscious of many Americans though, and by brining their voice from the shadow into the world, he has earned their undying love. Trump as a conduit for King Paimon to manifest int he world as Hitler was a conduit for Wotan to manifest in the world, may sound like nonsense to some, but rings of truth to me. 

The idea of Trump being the conduit by which King Paimon manifests in the world through another person seems even more likely to me. As I ahem been saying during the course of Trump's rule, he has caused not just his followers, but his opponents to go mad. The madness that is sweeping America knows no ideology, it crosses all sorts of boundaries. Trump has opened the doors to the unspeakable, and even those opposing him have fallen under his spell, which does not bode well for our future. 

When Trump leaves…King Paimon enters…and then the real darkness descends. As Hereditary reveals, Trump could be a conduit for a much higher (or lower as the case may be) and even more nefarious entity to come to power in the guise of saving us from Trump.

Hereditary does not paint a pretty picture for our future, but if I am being honest, I think it certainly paints a dramatic, symbolic, but not unrealistic, vision for what lies ahead for America and the world. 

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with my analysis of Hereditary and its political sub-text, if you get a chance to watch Hereditary multiple times, looking at the film through this unique perspective may add to your enjoyment of it, or at the very least it will prepare you for King Paimon's 2020 presidential campaign.

©2018