What is the role of objective truth—if any—in a modern moment when reputations and livelihoods can be instantaneously demolished without tangible evidence, and belief in alternative facts has been emboldened? And what are the spoils of idealism against such a rigged court of public…
Read MoreEvil in the Cold Light of Day: Single-Minded The Zone of Interest Tells Us What We Already Knew
by Lee Shoquist
Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is an austere exercise with a single idea—that evil deeds can be compartmentalized while their perpetrators lead otherwise innocuously guilt-free lives—stretched out for 106 minutes. Deploying a theme applicable to many of history’s villains, Glazer’s glacial treatise on…
Read MoreThe Zone of Interest Star Christian Friedel on Nazi Villain and Family Man: “To find and create the normality, or the banality, was an intense challenge”
by Lee Shoquist
In Jonathan Glazer’s icily austere The Zone of Interest, German musician and actor Christian Friedel was tasked with a dauntingly antithetical assignment in playing real-life Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss: to convey an architect of doom as a mild-mannered family man. No, these were not…
Read MoreA Superb Jessica Chastain Confronts Troubled Past in Memory, Michel Franco’s Searing Drama
by Lee Shoquist
Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard superbly navigate challenging psychological terrain in a tough, hopeful picture.…
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