‘Oppenheimer’ and ‘The Zone of Interest’ Changed Film by Leaving Violence Unseen

Humanity begets desensitization. It’s not necessarily our fault that we become hardened by all of the atrocities we witness in our lives. If we’re fortunate enough to live for a long time, acclimating ourselves to an angry world is practically the only way to cope with the unending horror of humanity’s atrocities. How else can we be expected to go on, knowing all of the death and destruction that our greedy species has wrought?

But coping is one thing; achieving understanding and acceptance is another, more difficult effort. It’s a comparatively simple act to relegate terror to the conduct of others, rather than to examine the capacity for terror inside of ourselves. “I could never be a part of that,” we tell ourselves as we look back and consider all of the abominable deeds of the past, or when we wake up to read the breaking news’ most heart-wrenching headlines. Is the fact that humanity’s repugnance has persisted through history, up until this very moment, not enough to shake ourselves awake? Perhaps we’ve found comfort in our desensitization, and maybe that comfort has morphed into complacency.

The Zone of Interest and Oppenheimer—which picked up five and 13 Oscar nominations last week, respectively—are two films that are unwilling to bow to this modern state of unconscious ignorance. These movies don’t aim to educate in the ways that the war films of our past have done, through graphic images of violence and inhuman brutality. Instead, all of that cruelty is offscreen, just out of sight, left to the gnarled fringes of implication. The audience is given no out in the context of these two incredible depictions of human unthinking. There are no broad pictures of destruction, or any sights of violence to give viewers a one-way ticket back to complacency. They are so blisteringly effective because that traditional method of storytelling is no longer cogent enough to obtain true empathy. By forcing the spectator to focus on the unseen, The Zone of Interest and Oppenheimer have changed the way that movies about war and genocide should be made forever.

There’s no question that The Zone of Interest is leading the pack in this burgeoning era of stylistic, conceptual war movies. But simply labeling Jonathan Glazer’s bold masterpiece as a “war movie” diminishes the scope of its ambition; The Zone of Interest is a dense, trembling marvel of cinema, one that doesn’t fully convey its importance until its final moments. Up until that point, this portrait of a real-life Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his family—whose home is separated from the concentration camp by only a few walls—is simple and surprisingly direct. While there is little in the way of dramatic tension, the film maintains a sickening hold on the viewer through its masterful soundscape.

The noise of Rudolf’s children playing in the yard is interspersed with the low percussion of distant gunfire. Conversations between Rudolf and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), are scored with the rumblings of furnaces starting and trains entering the camp. Occasionally, dialogue will be overwhelmed by the shout of a prisoner beyond the walls—or so you might think. The Zone of Interest asks that you be penalized for listening more closely. Was that really a scream you heard? Haven’t you already heard enough? Your inclination to eavesdrop on the horrors that are only thinly concealed implicates you as a voyeur. Harnessing this curiosity from the viewer is one of Glazer’s most stunning accomplishments. For once, we do not look away to avoid being confronted with the truth. We are fooled into participating in the trivial, everyday activities of a family sinking deeper into evil each minute, just by maintaining their proximity to it. How Glazer recalls this feeling in the film’s last scene is nothing short of gut-wrenching; it’s a frank bit of editing brilliant enough to call him one of the greatest storytellers in modern cinema.

Christopher Nolan, already largely revered as a filmmaking genius, achieves a similar greatness with Oppenheimer. His story of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s role in the creation of the atomic bomb is as layered and heavy as The Zone of Interest, albeit more accessible (despite its protracted runtime). Throughout the movie, Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) debates the morality of his work, attempting to contend with the reality that an opposing geopolitical enemy’s development of an atomic weapon could produce greater destruction. But no two scenes in the film are more effective in making this point than the initial nuclear test and America’s reaction to the ensuing nuclear bombings in Japan.

The countdown to the first test—which could destroy the world and humanity as we knew it, if the physicists who created the bomb had miscalculated their science—feels like the introduction of a unique type of cinematic sound. It’s beyond nerve-shattering, a scene that will keep a pit lodged in your stomach forevermore. But it’s that following response to the Japan bombings, as observed by Oppenheimer, that creates a new level of inescapable fear, one that begs us not to forget the perils of war. Oppenheimer takes the stage to give a speech to a roused group of Americans at Los Alamos. Except here, their cheering and rhythmic foot stomping is its own deafening death rattle. As he peers out at the crowd, he envisions fleeting images of annihilation, the consequences of his work. Burned faces, bones, and entire histories wiped off the face of the planet forevermore. Nothing lasts long enough to resemble the graphic sights of a traditional war movie. Instead, it implies the sickness of nationalism, a disease of an idea that no one can be sure they won’t be infected by if their lives are supposedly at stake.

In Oppenheimer and The Zone of Interest, Nolan and Glazer shirk the inclination to convey the horrors of blind patriotism, war, and humanity’s capacity for wickedness through violence. Instead, the wrathful nature of human anger is hidden away within the invisible, woven between the narrative lines. Their decisions to avoid the vicious conventions found in (admittedly excellent) films like Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, and so many other World War II-era films are introducing a new mode of communicating in a tech-focused universe. In a world where we are constantly inundated with images of unthinkable violence, abstraction is a necessary counter-companion. Examining atrocity from a global, 360-degree perspective lets no stone remain unturned.

We are already inherently familiar with the words, images, and actions of World War II. Photos of mass graves and obliterated cities land in our faces from the moment that we’re deemed old enough to be taught about them. From there on out, most of us spend our whole lives running from that uncomfortable feeling. We never again want to come face to face with the fact that we are part of a species capable of such evil. Our mere existence on Earth requires some level of complicity, some ability to succumb to something so awful if pushed to the darkest reaches of callous cruelty. We watch these graphic depictions while clinging to the knowledge that there are fabricated walls of cinema and time between us and the events of the past. The credits roll and we leave the dark theater, convincing ourselves that that level of genocidal terror is long gone, just to get through the day.

Except, we know in our hearts that it is not. The only way to go forward, to actively combat the mercilessness of war, is to examine its atrocity through films like The Zone of Interest and Oppenheimer. These impenetrable films are made to watch and digest. You are asked to stare at them, bewildered, like a static painting in a museum. Face the dread from every angle. Know that it is real. Find room for sympathy and empathy concurrently. That is what movies are all about. Where the darkness seems to always be nipping at our heels, it’s what we need to survive.