February Films Part 1: Nyad, Rustin, The Zone of Interest

Yes, this is where you get reviews of all the Oscar-nominated films that were pending on my to-do list. I had a busy week getting caught up, and now you can read my reviews to see if you want to get caught up too.

Nyad: Written by Julia Cox and directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, this film tells the real-life story of Diana Nyad, a woman who completed a marathon swim from Cuba to Florida at the age of 64, a feat that she had previously failed as a young woman, and which no other swimmer had been able to complete in the intervening years. It's a remarkable story of perseverance and passion, and while I vaguely remember hearing about this story in the news, it was informative to spend two hours watching a movie about this woman and everything that needed to happen before she was able to accomplish this astonishing feat.

Annette Bening does an incredible job portraying Nyad, both in terms of the physicality of the role, but also conveying her slightly abrasive personality. It makes sense that in order to even think about such a feat, you need to have a slightly unhealthy level of self-confidence, and Diana can certainly be off-putting with her self-centeredness. As a counterbalance, therefore, we have Jodie Foster as her best friend and subsequently, coach, Bonnie Stoll, the stalwart right-hand woman who keeps the whole operation going and ensure that all Diana has to do is swim. 

While this movie is a little clunky and the special effects can sometimes look pretty obvious, I was incredibly moved by Bening and Foster's performances, and can see why they have been nominated for Oscars. The friendship portrayed between these two women is so touching, and accompanied by Alexandre Desplat's score, there were definitely moments that moved me to tears. I don't know why I expected this to be a story of how Nyad accomplished the swim on her first try; there were several attempts, and watching the plan evolve, and the lessons learned as she undergoes horrors like jellyfish swarms, sharks, unpredictable currents, etc. was thrilling. This is a great movie about what humans can accomplish when they put their mind to it, but also how they cannot accomplish these things alone. 

Rustin: Colman Domingo stars as Bayard Rustin, the gay civil rights leader who orchestrated 1963's March on Washington, the largest peaceful protest ever conducted to date. The movie briefly touches on earlier events in the 1950s when Rustin was a close collaborator of Martin Luther King's but was then forced to resign from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference after Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. threatened to leak rumors of a fake affair between Rustin and King. However, the movie then shifts to 1962 when Rustin gets the idea for this March and subsequently manages to use his powers of persuasion and organizational skills to accomplish this monumental feat of civil protest.

Written by Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black and directed by George C. Wolfe, this film highlights a Civil Rights pioneer that I had never heard of before. His sexual orientation played a big part in why he was relegated to roles behind-the-scenes, but the movie also points out how he truly believed in the cause and didn't mind taking a back seat as long as the work got done. This is a man who fought for what was right, didn't think any task was beneath him, and now rightfully deserves to be lauded for his phenomenal work that was instrumental in leading to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

While the subject matter seems heavy, the film has a deft touch, with Domingo never portentously weighing down proceedings but ensuring we always see the energy and enthusiasm Rustin brought to this work. Are there horrific flashbacks to his past? Of course, the man is both Black and gay, his life was not easy. But this movie is a celebration of a man who did important, history-changing work, and you'll walk away from it with a sense of quiet wonder.

The Zone of Interest: Written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, who loosely based the story on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, this is a movie about Rudolf Hoss and his family. What's interesting about this family? Hoss was a Nazi and the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and he and his family lived in an idyllic house right next door to the camp. So what follows is a film that occasionally seems to tell a tale of domestic peace and tranquility, and then will chillingly feature a line of dialogue or just a sound that makes it clear these people are absolute monsters.

The most notable aspect of this film is its sound design. You start to notice that while you might be able to hear some birds twittering in the background, you can also hear gunshots and screams and burning furnaces. It's the ultimate sign of human indifference - these people live next to a concentration camp and the sounds of genocide have merely become background noise to them. However, other aspects of this film were a little too artsy and incomprehensible for me and didn't work as well in keeping me engaged. And while I greatly appreciated the first half of the film that took place within the house and garden, the second half where Hoss is stationed in another location and is mostly dealing with other Nazi generals felt like a much less necessary film that had nothing new to say. 

Towards the end, there are some scenes where we see the modern-day Auschwitz Museum and the janitorial staff vacuuming the carpets and cleaning the windows of the exhibits. It is yet another chilling reminder of how the mundane business of living can be in such close proximity to such abject horror. This is a movie that has found a novel way to make you feel even more horrified by the Holocaust; while some of its ambitions far exceed its grasp, it still demands a viewing because it is so powerfully told.