Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

I avoid films about The Holocaust - I find them too upsetting and anyway what more is there to say? But this film is directed by Jonathan Glazer whose previous film 'Under The Skin' was one of the most unsettling and disturbing films I have ever seen, so I was intrigued to see how he would follow it up. Normally I don't read reviews in advance, so as to be able to see a film free of preconceptions. Unfortunately in this case I knew enough going into the film so that the moment early on when we discover the truth about the affluent, seemingly nice family we are observing, and what is going on next door to their villa, didn't have the shock value it might have had.  Even so, it's a jaw dropping moment as we come to understand what  those ceaseless and sinister sounds in the background might signify.  The family we are observing is that of the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig.  He was executed for war crimes in 1947 whilst she lived to a ripe old ag...

Unquestionably this film deserves its Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.  It's not so much that the story told is especially clever; in essence it's fairly simple and can be summarised quite easily - a woman is put on trial for the murder of her husband, and (spoiler alert) is cleared.   We the audience are left unclear whether she is in fact guilty, or whether the death (from a fall) might be an accident or even suicide. The merit of the screenplay (by Arthur Harari and the film's director Justine Triet) lies more in the ways it draws us into the relationship between successful novelist Sandra (played superbly by  Sandra  Hüller ) and her frustrated husband Samuel, and how it manages to maintain ambiguity without annoying us.  The flashback scene where eventually we get to see the tensions between Sandra and Samuel  exploding to the surface is one of the most riveting I can remember.   The dialogue as each of them tries to seize the moral h...