Popular reviews

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  Review by Mitchell Beaupre ★★★ 7

  Truly horrifying how many people are going to watch this movie, rate it highly and bestow it awards and whatever, and then still be pro-Israel. This is literally about you.

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½

  Holocaust cinema has so implicitly existed in the shadow of a single question that it would no longer seem worth asking if not for the fact that it’s never been answered: How do you depict an atrocity? The most urgent and indelible examples of the form offer equally simple yet perfectly contradictory responses. Documentaries like “Shoah” and Alain Resnais’ “Night and Fog” suggest that you don’t, while historical epics like “Schindler’s List” insist that you must. If the latter argues that seeing is believing, the former maintains that seeing wouldn’t help — that some things are too unfathomable for the human eye to comprehend from a distance, and can only hope to be understood by their absence. A tsunami might…

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  Review by Ella Kemp ★★★★★

  the vines will grow and cover it all

  Everything I want to say is in here.

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  Review by esther ★★★★★ 71

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  It turned out to be surprisingly fitting to see this film preceded by the final work by Jean-Luc Godard. Godard once declared the end of cinema, but with The Zone of Interest Jonathan Glazer has built the guillotine.

  Michael Haneke once famously criticized Schindler's List for Spielberg's application of his filmmaking talent to scenes of the most horrific inhumanity, particularly the moment where Spielberg creates suspense out of whether or not prisoners are about to be showered with gas or water. What Haneke left unsaid was that the cinematic grammar which Spielberg has such firm command over has its roots in the promotion of fascist ideology. Haneke said that no film about the Holocaust can have any attempt at "entertainment,"…

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  Review by xiu_shoegaze ★★★★★ 35

  shaking my head in the theater so ppl know i disagree

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  Review by coffee ★★★★½

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  the cut directly at the end of this, from the holocaust museum back to Höss traveling down the stairs, sucks the air right out my lungs. history collapsing in on itself, evil surrendering itself to time, unforgivably vile men becoming stories to the slaughters of the future. the history of Nazism becoming standard, banal history does nothing but dull its genuine impact to the world, ensuring the future of fascism to the next generations and beyond. it makes me want to vomit. a deeply wretched film

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  Review by Matt Goldberg ★★

  Maybe it’s because when you’re Jewish you tend to learn about the Holocaust at a younger age and you keep learning more as life goes on, and maybe Glazer is trying to reach a gentile audience that can’t grasp the banality of evil without seeing it play out. But for me, the banality of evil is the only way to understand such atrocities, and depicting that banality for 100 minutes doesn’t add anything beyond Arendt’s famous and straightforward assessment of Eichmann. 

  The film isn’t helped by everything being so glaringly obvious. It’s a juxtaposition you get immediately—this family enjoys comfort while suffering exists right outside their door. That’s it. That’s the movie. But any extrapolation of that—of how we dehumanize…

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  Review by 24framesofnick ★★★★½ 25

  There is an evil in this world thats impossible to look away from

  The small details, the tiny blink and miss moments, the daily repetition of life. It’s never been more haunting to watch someone clean or do chores

  I didn’t flinch, I didn’t move an inch 

  Don’t make a sound

  You are left to audibly digest all horrors that mankind can bring

  You must gaze into the very dark chasm of this world and only then can you speak

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  Review by James (Schaffrillas) ★★★

  A chilling directorial achievement with some of the most purposeful sound design I've ever heard. And yet, I couldn't help but feel that the film was very one-note; deliberately so, I'm sure. Even so, the banality of evil can only sustain a horrific on-screen atmosphere for so long. I was chilled to the bone during the first half of the film and only felt that same sensation in fleeting moments during the second half (the piano scene, when the boy locks his brother in the greenhouse, etc.) I appreciate what the film was going for but I can't say it remained effective for me personally the entire way through.

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  Review by Sethsreviews ★★★★★ 43

  You could hear a pin drop in a packed house. As soon as it was over, I sat in quiet, absolutely distraught. It made me feel genuinely sick. Nothing could have prepared me for this. We begin in darkness and end in total emotional torment. In a decade full with important films, I believe this is one of the most significant, if not the most. The reluctance to follow a conventional story is admirable; each sequence develops and builds until it bursts at the end and broke me. So relentless and strong, yet full of creative flair and distinct direction. The best sound design in quite some time, dedicated to providing a permanent, horrific experience. Glazer succeeds on all fronts…

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  Review by Casey Malone ★★★★★ 15

  Made me physically ill.

  Impossible to watch a movie about casual, bureaucratic genocide without being consumed with horror about what Israel, enabled by America, is doing to the Palestinian people in Gaza. The casual, almost offhanded, discussions about mass murder felt disgustingly familiar from any number of clips of the President, or pundits, or Twitter threads. 20,000 dead, half of them children, executed by a cold-blooded government. It shouldn’t take 80 years to recognize this kind of inhumanity. We shouldn’t wait for history. Ceasefire now.

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  Review by KYK ★ 19

  Why must I watch the inner lives of Nazis? I was hoping Glazer would answer that question but this film does not go into any enlightening or thought-provoking territory beyond, like, "here it is, the banality of evil! Also here are some random 'experimental' shots in between." What a hack of an ending too.

  Like, what is new or interesting or moving here? I'm not sure. Plus, seeing this shortly after Anatomy of a Fall really made me think wow, such misuse of the wonderful Sandra Huller (who, here, refers to herself as "The Queen of Auschwitz"). Also, question: Did the movie look like shit on purpose?