"Poor things" and "The zone of Interest": two daring visions which challenge the public to see or not to see the reality

Translated by Angela Tagliafierro

The question arises instinctively: is it better to show or not to show? Is it better to show what we are telling on the screen in each detail and facets, or not to reveal something? Does the public need or not to see them? Above all, what are the implications in both situations?

I think that the Oscar 2024 can add a piece to this wonderful and unsolvable matter.

Poor things, the new Yorgos Lanthimos’ film, presented at the 84^th edition of the Festival of Cinema of Venice, is a bizarre, macabre and aesthetically aggressive comedy. Topics like the anatomy, the science and the growth, developed and analysed through Bella’s sexual discoveries, played by a masterful (and, I dare to say, Oscar-worthy) Emma Stone. The film is the carpet and the ceiling of a film which goes on the search of the reality outside of Doctor Baxter’s home, played by Willem Dafoe. The four-way relationship between him, his assistant Max McCandles, played by Ramy Youssef, and Duncan Wedderburn, played by Mark Ruffalo, are the walls and the "tragic-romantic" element of the plot.

All this is entirely shown: scenes of violence, of sex and masturbation, blood and shots, in a steampunk-retrofuturistic setting, as the critics have defined it many times, are there in our eyes. Eyes, those of the public, who jumps and laughs in the theatre to break the social embarrassment.

In my opinion, Poor things is an extravagant and distorted analytical look which materialize through Lanthimos’ lens, in the search for the intergenerational normalization of the topics suggested. A witness of Lanthimos ’exceptional talent in creating interesting works which challenge the public to think deeply about the complexity of the reality.

On the contrary, the brilliant and evasive director Jonathan Glazer comes back to the big screen after ten years with The zone of interest, one of the most distressing and aesthetically mysterious film of this year. In this case also the script is not original but has been inspired by the novel of the same name by Martin Amis (2014). The film offers a devastating vision of the Holocaust through the look of the commander of an internment camp, Boll (then named Höss and played by Christian Friedel), and his family.

Serenity and normality shared the scene with the wall of the internment camp of Auschwitz. This was made obvious by the constant presence of the watchtower, the flash, or the furnace from afar, the shots, and the screams which constantly remind the viewer of the reality of the horror. All this is made not showing children deprived of their personality or human beings once strong and powerful now reduced to a build-up of bones. This makes us aware of the indifference of those living there, making this a universal guilt. Glazer creates a wonderful feeling of a ghostly realism, using a meticulous arrangement of the fixed cameras and a digital lightning without mercy and keeping a surprising realism.

In this case also the film does not make its first appearance at the Oscar because it had already been presented in advance at the 2023 Festival of Cannes. It focuses on the character of Höss and his family, adopting a severe visual approach. The close-ups are almost inexistent and, through only one recurring movement of the camera, the tracking shot creates an observational and distant style which amplifies the distress of the public. This is introduced and taken to the extremes by the absence of colour in the incipit.

Self-negation, complicity in the cruelty, slavery, and killing are faced through a story set in 1942. The slowness not only does not belong any longer to the contemporary viewer, but in some way it also tries to converse with those coming from that period.

Glazer’s choice of not showing unreasonably the horror but to make them echo in the mind of the audience, supported by the powerful soundtrack by Mica Levi, makes the film an audiovisual and disturbi(vati)ng experience.

Turning the initial question around, is it better for us, the audience, to see the horror or only to imagine it? You decide of going to the cinema and immersing yourselves in these two works of art.

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