Three Fun Things for April 7, 2024

A divisive film about Auschwitz, saving money at the box office, and a groundbreaking playwright who died this week.

The Zone of Interest

Jonathan Glazer’s entry into the Holocaust film canon, which focuses on the daily life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, his wife Hedwig, and their family, was divisive when it came out earlier this year, with one critic calling it “hollow” and “self-aggrandizing.” I understand the criticism— The Zone of Interest approaches real-life horror obliquely, mostly through sound design (quiet, then increasingly obtrusive) and in momentary sidelong glances. Though the movie is about Auschwitz, the cameras linger mostly on the periphery—the Hoss villa, the nearby fields and river, and a work site seen only at night, through infrared cameras, where a young local girl hides apples for the prisoners.

The film focuses on the seemingly idyllic life of the Höss family just over the camp wall, but the intrusions into that idyll are never far away. Gunshots penetrate the night while two young children lie awake in their beds. A child passing through an overgrown field on a family outing catches a glimpse of prisoners being marched through the tall grass a few feet way. A boy plays casually with a handful of gold teeth. A visitor wakes up to a sky lit red from the crematoria, then steals away in the middle of the night.

This is an impressionistic film, shot mostly from a dispassionate middle distance, in which the details of the family’s story are largely superfluous. We aren’t meant to care what will happen to Hedwig and the children, for instance, when Rudolf is called away from Poland to Germany, or whether the family will manage to hold on to its bourgeois existence. The Zone of Interest succeeds mostly through implied horror (including one scene in which a greasy spot spreads across a river) and extreme sound design (including a recurring, slightly silly BWAAAAANG), not plot twists or conversational revelations.

Still, there are points when the dialogue is entirely the point. Because the machinery of mass murder is almost entirely offstage—and discussed mostly in euphemisms—the rare moments of directness have a shocking effect. In one scene, Rudolf speaks to Hedwig on the phone after attending a celebration, but struggles to describe it. “I wasn't really paying attention,” he says. “I was too busy thinking how I would gas everyone in the room.”

Save Money on Tickets With This One Weird Trick!

Everyone knows that Ticketmaster sucks. (If you want to know more about why they suck and how they became a monopoly, here’s one of many articles looking back at their ugly history). The classic middleman, Ticketmaster extracts money from ticket buyers in exchange for the “convenience” of using a glitchy app that somehow always forces you to log in again right as you’re approaching the entrance to a show.

I feel slightly embarrassed that I just recently learned this trick—I used to work at a box office, for crying out loud!—but you can avoid fees by buying tickets directly from the box office. If you already knew this, please contain your laughter. If you didn’t, just know that by showing up at two downtown Seattle box offices—the Showbox, where I bought tickets to see Stars, and the Paramount, where I’ve recently bought tickets to see Paul F. Tompkins, Drive-By-Truckers, and Camera Obscura—I’ve saved actual hundreds of dollars. Just check the hours—the Showbox, for instance, is open on alternating days and at different hours at each of its two locations, and the Paramount, which sells tickets for all Seattle Theatre Group shows (including at the Moore and Neptune theaters) is open on weekdays only.

Christopher Durang, 1949-2024

Like many theater-adjacent kids (I watched plays; I wasn’t in them), I was introduced to Christopher Durang’s plays in high school, probably by a progressive English teacher who wanted to broaden our horizons beyond The Scarlet Letter and Animal Farm. I devoured them voraciously, gravitating to the satirical tone and humor of plays like The Idiots Karamazov and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it all for You (my introductions to The Brothers Karamazov and Catholicism, respectively).

The Washington Post writes, “Although he was courteous and gentle in person, Mr. Durang was best known for plays that left audiences feeling disoriented and unsettled, marked by a brooding sense of menace or existential angst that was partly concealed by bawdy humor, surrealist gags and verbally dexterous monologues.” Durang died last week at 75.