Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes, the director of “Son of Saul,” is doubling down in his criticism of “The Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars acceptance speech.
Nemes had already called Glazer’s Oscars speech, and the applause that greeted it, “appalling”, saying that there was a time and place to talk about the Israel-Hamas war and that the Oscars, where Glazer was being honored for a film about the holocaust, wasn’t it.
Nemes has now written an op-ed, which was published by The Guardian. The full transcript can be found below:
It is strange when the overclass of Hollywood preaches to the world about morality, instead of worrying about the sorry state of cinema, the crashing level of craft and artistry in films, the destruction of creative and artistic freedom by corporate mindset or the conquest of pyramid-scheme streaming services producing junk cinema. When they should aspire, in a world more and more fragmented and drawn to its own destruction, to create meaningful movies, the disconnected, hypocritical and spoiled members of the cinema elite are busy – for some reason – trying to moralise us.
And this is reflected in their productions, uninspired and academic, cowardly and never challenging. They all act in unison according to a worldview that reminds me of 12th-century archbishops, in an ecstatic state of self-righteousness, self-flagellation, denouncing vice, longing for purity. Only totalitarian political regimes and repressive religious fanaticism are defined by this kind of state of mind or maybe even collective psychosis.
The Zone of Interest is an important movie. It is not made in a usual way. It questions the grammar of cinema. Its director should have stayed silent instead of revealing he has no understanding of history and the forces undoing civilisation, before or after the Holocaust. Had he embraced the responsibility that comes with a film like that, he would not have resorted to talking points disseminated by propaganda meant to eradicate, at the end, all Jewish presence from the Earth.
It is especially troubling in an age where we are reaching pre-Holocaust levels of anti-Jewish hatred – this time, in a trendy, “progressive” way. Today, the only form of discrimination not only tolerated but also encouraged is antisemitism. But maybe it all makes sense, ironically – there is absolutely no Jewish presence on screen in The Zone of Interest.
Let us all be shocked by the Holocaust, safely in the past, and not see how the world might eventually, one day, finish Hitler’s job – in the name of progress and endless good
László Nemes won the 2016 Oscar in the same category as ‘Zone,’ for his masterful “Son of Saul,” which was also set at Auschwitz, so there is a reason why much of the press has zeroed in on his comments.
Still no word from Glazer since his Oscar speech, he even skipped the post-Oscar press room and has refused to give a statement to multiple outlets. It will likely remain this way. Glazer will remain silent and let his speech do the talking for him.
Since Glazer seems to release a film every decade, and is rarely seen in public, we might not hear from him until 2034.
It should be noted that Glazer did condemn the terrorist attack that happened in Israel on October 7, but the detractors of his speech claim that wasn’t enough — instead, they believe he should not have criticized Israeli retaliation to the attacks while accepting an Oscar for a film about the elimination of Jews during WWII.
Nemes seems to be going one step further by implying that claims of Israeli genocide towards the Palestinian population is “propaganda” and that the retaliation on the part of the Israeli government, post-October 7, was fully justified.
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