mateuszmiter

There are certain movies that are too heavy to objectively rate and look back on. For me, All of Us Strangers is that kind of film.

The story follows Adam, played by terrific Andrew Scott, who's in his forties, living alone in a freshly-built block in London, indulging himself in his loneliness. One night, he's visited by Harry, played by brilliant Paul Mescal, and the two start a relationship, in which both open up about their insecurities. It turns out, Adam's main source of anxiety is not being able to get over grief after his parents' death 30 years earlier.

Adam writes screenplays for movies, and it turns out, All of Us Strangers seems like one of his screenplays, because he regularly visits his parents. He talks with them about his everyday life, struggles, and what has changed in these 30 years.

Now, I'm lucky enough to have both parents alive and well. Still, due to how excellent the dialogue, narration, and acting is in All of Us Strangers, I was still devastated. I can't recall when was the last time I shed so many tears during a film.

Imagine a person so lost in grief and loneliness they talk to their dead family members and acting as if their fantasies were true. All of Us Strangers brings these kinds of images alive to a great effect. Fortunately, the movie is also more than only an emotional blow. It hardly loses its narration, even when the tempo accelerates in certain moments, and the border between what's real and fiction seems to vanish.

And the acting. I won't ever understand how Andrew Scott wasn't nominated for an award for his depiction of Adam. His range in this movie is just unmatched. A lot of positives can also be said about Paul Mescal, or Adam's parents, who are played by Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, but they're a background to Scott's brilliance on the screen.

It's tough to think of a story about grief and loneliness without emotional baggage. All of Us Strangers, despite its emotional overload, delivers a solid, stunning, and tough story about people who are lost. More importantly, it's a story about a lot of us, too afraid to talk about our inner battles, running away to imaginary scenarios. A truly superb film.

Jonathan Glazer embarks on a bold adventure of showing the tragedy of the Holocaust in a subtle way. To do so, he focuses on Hoss family, whose head, Rudolf, happens to be the overseer of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The idea itself of taking a subtle approach is intriguing, but it doesn't stick the landing.

There's not much that can be said about the story due to the whole concept of the movie. Hoss family are living an idyllic kind of life, with their fence practically being the wall of Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. The elusive sounds of violence can be heard throughout the movie, with the characters never reacting to them, enjoying their splendors as if nothing was wrong. Because for them, or at least for the adults of the family, they are living a dream.

On its own, seeing these kinds of haunting images has enormous potential to deliver a terrific story about the Nazis. Such lens is truly unique, especially for this genre, which seems to be releasing new movies each year. Yet, despite a fresh idea, The Zone of Interest failed to keep me interested for the majority of its almost two-hour run.

Both the story and characters are bleak and stand still. There isn't any evolution, while frames itself look like something taken out of movie inspired by Wes Anderson. You can't put any of the actors in the spotlight, because the movie doesn't give them time and space to shine.

Sure, the main focus of the Zone of Interest is on the sound and noises in the background, which is underlined in the first minute of the movie. But, these noises don't stand out for longer than half an hour. When mixed with the dull rest of the movie, they are just forgettable.

There are moments where characters and moments not related to the story appear. Without spoiling them, at first they seem pointless, but they actually blend in really nicely with the overall motive of the movie.

Still, The Zone of Interest was nothing more than a boring experience for me. Maybe it's the fact I'm Polish, and I've been taught about World War 2 and the Holocaust since the first grade, and know my fair share about it and its tragedies. Maybe I had my expectations too high after seeing all major outlets sell it as a groundbreaking movie. Maybe it was both.