In this episode, we review two more films nominated for Best Picture Oscars. I call this grouping “Genocidal Husbands.” Yes, it is strange that we would have two major nominated films on that topic but indeed we do. Check out the episode as we wind down to the end of our list and approach the 96th Annual Academy Awards on March 10.

Hi, This is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 58 of Contemplating Life – Oscar edition.

The 96th Annual Academy Awards are just a few days away as I’m writing this. We still have four more Best Picture Nominees and two episodes to cover them. We have saved some of the best for last.

When I came up with the idea of grouping the Best Picture Nominees into pairs, I didn’t have all 5 pairs figured out. But now that we are down to the end, my little gimmick for grouping the films in twos has worked out much better than I thought it would.

This week’s grouping is called “Genocidal Husbands”. We have two films about marriages in which the husbands engaged in rampant, racist, murder of people based on their ethnic background. It’s strange that we would have two such films in the same year.

The first one is “The Zone of Interest” directed by Jonathan Glaser. It is the story of Rudolf Höss who was the Commandant of the Auschwitz Concentration camps. He and his wife Hedwig live in a spacious villa with a huge garden that includes a swimming pool, a greenhouse, and stables for his horses. The other side of the tall garden wall is the camp where Jewish prisoners are sorted. Those capable of working are sent to local factories as slave labor. Those who are too weak are killed in gas chambers and the bodies burned in furnaces.

Although this is a British production by a British director, the entire film is in German with English subtitles.

The film does not show us the horrors going on in the camp but we hear them quite vividly. From time to time, you can hear screaming and occasional gunfire as unruly prisoners are eliminated. There is only one brief scene at the camp itself and the camera stays focused on the face of Höss as he oversees the unloading of train loads of prisoners. We hear the screaming of men women and children and again occasional gunfire dealing with those who are uncooperative.

The majority of the film simply shows us the day-to-day happy life of this couple who enjoy the benefits of his position. The renovation of their house and the construction of the garden and other outbuildings were all performed by or paid for by local businessmen as a kickback for getting the slave labor from the camp. In one scene, Höss meets with a pair of contractors who have come up with a more efficient design for the furnaces.

Höss and his wife have 5 children ranging from an infant up to a teenager. Their eldest son enjoys playing with his collection of gold teeth that have been extracted from the prisoners. Hedwig enjoys receiving fine fur coats and jewelry stolen from the Jews and she distributes other lesser-quality pieces of clothing to their household servants.

The family enjoys picnicking, fishing, and swimming in the nearby river. However, one day the river is polluted by ash and human remains. Rudolph has to scurry out of the river where he is fishing in hip waders and get his children out of the water quickly to run home and be scrubbed vigorously with hot water.

The movie was filmed using remotely operated hidden cameras placed around the house and grounds so that the actors would not be distracted by them. There are no movie lights used. Everything is shot digitally with natural lighting. They would act out long scenes and would be unaware of what part of the scene the cameras were focused upon. The actors said that it made their performance more natural because they didn’t have to worry about hitting their marks. They just played out the scene.

Except for one scene, I don’t recall seeing any close-ups in the entire film. During conversations, there is little or no back-and-forth editing between the participants. The cameras are static.

In one particular scene, while Rudolph is discussing the new furnaces in his office with the contractors, Hedwig is entertaining her friends, and a Polish servant girl scurries around the house serving drinks and collecting the Commandant’s bloody boots to be cleaned by another servant. The scene was filmed with 10 remotely controlled cameras in fixed locations. It is edited together to follow the servant girl as she wanders between the rooms. It’s as if this is all happening in real-time and we are voyeuristically watching it unfold. I have linked a YouTube video about the filming of that particular scene. It’s really fascinating.

The actual Höss home still exists in Poland adjacent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial. Director Jonathan Glaser visited the museum and spent years researching the film including material from the museum’s archives. This included written testimony and interviews of the actual servants who worked in their home.

The movie was filmed on location in Poland just a hundred yards from the actual home. They found an appropriate abandoned home and renovated it. It took months to re-create the garden which is meticulously identical to the original. The museum was cooperative in the production and there is an epilogue scene filmed in the museum. I have linked the museum/memorial website in the description.

There is very little plot to the film. We are simply a fly on the wall witnessing the normality of these deeply evil people.

The only plot point occurs about halfway through the film is that Rudolph is reassigned to a new position in the Nazi hierarchy. He delays telling his wife about the move for over a week which upsets her greatly. She has worked hard to create the idyllic garden behind the house and to create a luxurious life for herself, her husband, and their children. She begs him to allow her to stay in the home as he travels to his new assignment. He petitions his superiors to allow her to stay behind and they agree. One of the servants whose testimony is in the museum archives was the source for the information that the couple argued over this incident so it is entirely authentic to what it was really like in the Höss household.

Eventually, Hitler approved a new plan to bring 700,000 Jews from Hungary to the camps in Poland for extermination and war production. Höss will be returning home to his wife and family to supervise the massive new importation of Jews. Himmler describes it as “Operation Höss”. Rudolph excitedly calls his wife to share the good news. She is mildly happy but ultimately just complains that he called her so late at night. Couldn’t this have waited?

And that’s basically it. That’s the movie in a nutshell.

I’ve summarized the entire plot. There is no “action” per se. We just our witness to the casual approach that these people have to evil.

Fortunately, the film only lasts one hour 45 minutes and that is more than enough time for it to make its point.

Rudolph is played by German actor Christian Friedel who is unknown to me and his IMDb listing doesn’t show anything I recognize.

Sandra Hüller was similarly unknown to me until I saw this year’s nominated film “Anatomy of a Fall.” Both of them deliver chilling performances although it’s a bit difficult to judge their performance with a lack of close-up shots.

The film has 5 Oscar nominations. In addition to Best Picture, it is also nominated for Best Foreign Film and Best Director Jonathan Glaser. Also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay by Jonathan Glaser very loosely based on the novel of the same name by Sir Martin Amis. Sadly, Amis died on the same day that the film made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival where it was awarded the “Grand Prize of the Festival”.

None of those Oscar nominations are likely to win in the face of stiff competition however it is also nominated for Best Sound and although I’ve not looked up what other films are nominated in that category, it should definitely win. The entire premise of the film is that you hear the horror but do not see it.

By the way, it was easy for the actors to ignore the sound during filming because they did not have any of those sound effects of dying people during the shooting of the film.

It was nominated for 9 BAFTA awards and it won Best British Film of the Year, Best Film Not in the English Language, and of course Best Sound.

It was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards. IMDb lists 158 nominations and 51 wins.

The film has earned just over $7 million in the US and Canada and $16.5 million worldwide.

For the most part, the film is an impossible pain to watch. But then again, that’s the point, isn’t it? Is quite strange that the film can be simultaneously boring and horrifying. It is an amazing piece of filmmaking and I understand why it received its nominations. I think they are all well deserved. But I cannot recommend the film. Although I’m glad I saw it, and I am fascinated by the way it was produced, it is my least favorite of the 10 Best Picture Nominated films.

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In our second film this episode, we get a different look at genocide this time a little closer to home. Martin Scorsese directs “Killers of the Flower Moon.” It is based on the true story of the Osage Native American tribe in Oklahoma in the 1920s who discovered oil on their lands. Then one by one, they are killed off by white people in an attempt to steal their oil rights.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkart, a young man who returns home to Oklahoma after serving as a cook in the Army during World War I. He is taken under the wing of his uncle William Hale played by Robert De Niro. Hale who goes by the nickname “King” is a wealthy rancher in the area who is very powerful in the nearby town of Fairfax.

Ernest is unable to perform manual labor because of a hernia condition but King finds work for him as a driver. The Osage people have become extremely wealthy and Ernest finds employment driving around an Osage woman named Mollie. At Uncle King’s encouragement, Ernest courts and eventually weds Mollie thus making him a partial heir to her oil rights.

King is the leader of a conspiracy to kill off the Osage oil rights holders one by one. Some are simply murdered in cold blood. Some fall victim to accidents. Some are staged suicides. Wherever possible, the powerful white men tried to marry into the Osage families so that their rights would eventually fall to them.

The story jumps in time in several places as we see Ernest and Mollie begin to raise a family. Molly suffers from severe diabetes and King and her doctors arrange for her to be given insulin treatments which are a brand-new therapy during the time the story takes place.

King claims to love the Osage people and befriends many of them. The Osage for the most part believe that he is their friend.

The tribal Council hires private investigators because the local authorities will not investigate the deaths of the oil rights holders. The investigators mysteriously disappear. Eventually, they send a representative to Washington DC to request that the federal government investigate these deaths. For some reason, he never arrives. Then Mollie joins a large Osage delegation who travel to DC themselves and insists on being seen by someone who will investigate the deaths. DC eventually sends investigators.

King insists that Ernest get his wife under control and keep her from being such a troublemaker. They add drugs to her insulin injections and keep her in a drug-induced stupor.

As members of Mollie’s family are killed off, Ernest serves as a go-between between King and the suckers they get to commit the murders. He begins to realize that at some point his wife is going to be next. Even though he is been on board with the plan all along, he truly loves his wife and doesn’t want to lose her or leave his children motherless.

So, what will Ernest do? Does he dare stand up to his powerful uncle and the other powerful white men of the community and testify against them? If he does so, he will naturally have to reveal his role in the conspiracy. While that might save the life of his wife, it will in all likelihood destroy their relationship when his involvement becomes public knowledge.

DiCaprio does a wonderful job portraying this man who participates in such evil acts yet grows a conscience when he realizes the evil is eventually targeting his immediate family. You feel every bit of his struggle with his conscience. You feel he really loves his wife yet he feels bound by loyalty to his powerful uncle. It’s an amazing performance and his Oscar nomination as Lead Actor is very much deserved.

De Niro of course turns in a phenomenal performance as the sly and duplicitous kingpin of the entire plot. He is nominated for an Oscar as Supporting Actor as he should be.

Mollie is played by Native American actress Lily Gladstone. She is the first Native American nominated for a lead role and would make more history should she win. She won the Golden Globe for Lead Actress in a Drama as well as the SAG Award for Lead Actress. I think Emma Stone who won the Golden Globe for Lead Actress in a comedy probably has a lock on the Oscar for Lead Actress but the Academy might not be able to resist the opportunity to make history. This one is pretty much a tossup. I can’t tell you who is going to win

While her performance was probably my least favorite of the five nominees, I will grant that it was worthy of the nomination. I would not bump her to make room for Margo Robbie in “Barbie” or Natalie Portman in “May December” who gave amazing performances but were not nominated.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to tell you that we do find out what decision Ernest makes and the consequences of that decision. I won’t tell you what that is.

However, how that information is presented is a bit strange. There is sort of an epilogue in the form of a radio drama that we see performed on a theater stage in front of an audience. It’s sort of a 1930s version of a true crime podcast in which actors and a narrator tell the story of what happened. Martin Scorsese himself makes a cameo appearance in the radio play. While it was good to know how the story wrapped up and I was satisfied with how it was wrapped, I found that epilogue in the form of a radio play to be quite bizarre. I might have preferred an ordinary montage sequence with some sort of voiceover narration.

The film has earned 10 Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Director for Martin Scorsese, Lead Actress Lily Gladstone, Lead Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, Supporting Actor Robert De Niro, Production Design, Costume Design, and Cinematography all of which are very much deserved. It was also nominated for musical score, a song that I don’t remember, and film editing none of which I have an opinion about.

It received 9 BAFTA nominations and 7 Golden Globe nominations.

As you might expect from a Martin Scorsese epic, the runtime is 3 hours 26 minutes yet the pacing does not feel particularly slow.

Produced on an estimated budget of $200 million it earned nearly $68 million in the US and Canada and over $156 million worldwide yet it was made for Apple TV streaming so it’s difficult to say if it turned a profit depending on how much Apple paid for it. Those numbers don’t show up in the box office figures.

It is my sixth favorite of the 10 Best Pictures. I found it engaging, and well worth my time. It’s everything you expect from people like Scorsese, DiCaprio, and De Niro. You can’t go wrong with a trio like that. I highly recommend it. It is still playing in some theaters and is currently available for streaming on Apple TV+ and for rent or purchase on Amazon and YouTube.

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After doing all the editing on this episode I have a few more thoughts to share.

On a YouTube channel called “Native Media Theory,” Native American Elias Gold gives a review of the film from an indigenous perspective. He has some interesting insights. He talks about the complaints that not enough of the film was told from the Native American perspective. It was all about Ernest and King Hale, and not so much about Mollie and her family.

But he reveals that the book and the original screenplay told the story strictly from the point of view of the FBI agents who came into the town to investigate after all of the killings. So, the film is much more representative of the indigenous you than the book was. Scorsese has really stepped up in that regard to tell a much more interesting and balanced story than he would have if you stuck to the original book.

Gold also supposes that the film was not made for an indigenous population. It was made for white people so that we can take a hard look at our own biases. We need to look at the people in the film who were complacent in what was going on even if they weren’t actively participating.

The same thing could be said for the other film “The Zone of Interest.” Thousands of people knew what was going on in the camps but remained silent and were thus complicit.

So, both Jonathan Glaser in “The Zone of Interest”, and Martin Scorsese in “Killers of the Flower Moon” in what ways are we complacent by our silence about the racism that still exists in the world today?

Some things to think about.

I’ve linked Mr. Gold’s YouTube video in the description. I highly recommend that you watch it. It gives an interesting perspective from an indigenous person.

* * *

So, that wraps up our look at genocidal husbands. It’s bizarre that we even have such a category but I think the phrase is applicable to both of these films.

In our next episode, we present the final two of the 10 films nominated for Best Picture and they are among the best of the best. We have a pair of biopic’s about amazing geniuses. Christopher Nolan gives us a fascinating look at physicist J Robert Oppenheimer who led the efforts to develop the first atomic bomb in “Oppenheimer”. And spoiler… My favorite film of the year is Bradley Cooper directing and starring in “Maestro”. The story of famed composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein.

At the end of our final episode in the series, I will have a brief recap of all 10 Best Picture films, as well as the 20 lead and supporting actors and actresses as well as the 10 nominated screenplays. I will recap my favorites in order and then I will pick who I think will win even though I may or may not agree with the favorites.

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You can check out any of my back episodes which are all available where you found this episode. If you have any comments, questions, or other feedback please feel free to comment on any of the platforms where you find this podcast. Tell me what you liked or did not like about these films.

I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe everyone.