Director of Film About War Crimes Can’t Be Bothered To Talk About War Crimes

Oppenheimer's creators show us what their film is about.

British Director Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest won Best International Film at the Oscar’s last night. The movie is about the family of the commandant of Auschwitz; it’s a forceful condemnation of prejudice, genocide, and easy complicity.

Glazer didn’t want to be complicit himself. So he took a moment to briefly but forcefully denounce the occupation, Israeli war crimes in Gaza and Hamas’ crimes on October 7.

“All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present,” he said,

“not to say: ‘Look what they did then’ — rather, look what we do now. Our film shows where dehumanisation leads at its worst. It’s shaped all of our past and present. Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza — all the victims of this dehumanisation. How do we resist?”

War crimes are not a thing of the past alone; they’re occurring right now. Glazer could have ignored that. But he recognized that to do so would have been to betray his own film. If you make a movie about the moral imperative to oppose dehumanization and genocide, you need to make some good faith effort to condemn dehumanization and genocide when you are given a chance to do so.

Zone of Interest was not the only film, and not the main film, about war crimes and violence honored at the Oscars. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a movie about the creator of the atomic bomb, was the night’s big winner. It took home seven academy awards, including three of the big four: Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture.

Oppenheimer, like Zone of Interest, confronts issues of mass violence and war crimes. J. Robert Oppenheimer led the effort to develop the atomic bomb, thinking the weapon would be used against Nazi Germany. Instead, the weapon was dropped on the Japanese. In the film, Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, wrestles with his own guilt and responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of Japanese killed. At times he (and the film) justify the destruction as a necessary evil. At times he (and the film) struggle with guilt and hope for a future in which no nuclear bombs are ever dropped again.

Actors and filmmakers are not politicians. But, again, if you make a movie about complicity and the moral responsibility to confront and prevent war crimes, it’s incumbent upon you to use the limited power and visibility you have to confront and prevent war crimes. Otherwise, you look like a vacillating hypocrite.

The creators of Oppenheimer dodged their responsibility and the moral engagement of their own film in order to out themselves, every one, as vacillating hypocrites. Christopher Nolan made no mention of Israel, of Palestine, or of Russian violence in Ukraine (emotionally condemned by Mstyslav Chernov, director of the Best Documentary 20 Days in Mariupol.) Neither did Emma Thomas, the film’s producer, when accepting the Best Picture award.

Murphy, who won Best Actor, didn’t mention any current conflict specifically either. Instead, he gestured as vaguely as possible towards moral engagement.

We made a film about the man who created the atomic bomb, and for better or for worse, we’re all living in Oppenheimer’s world. So I would really like to dedicate this to the peacemakers everywhere.

Calling for peace in Ukraine without specifically demanding Russian withdrawal is essentially a demand that Ukraine surrender to tyranny. Similarly, wishing for peace in Gaza without demanding a ceasefire, without condemning Israeli mass murder, without calling on Israel to stop blockading humanitarian aid and deliberately starving Gazans en masse, without calling on Hamas to release hostages, is worse than useless. Peace without justice isn’t peace. Condemning war without identifying war criminals is a cowardly abdication of responsibility.

Again, you can argue that the failure of Oppenheimer winners to speak about current war crimes and violence is a betrayal of the themes and moral commitments of the film for which they were honored. But…you could also argue that the wishy-washiness and the cowardice is the real truth and lesson of the movie.

Was creating the bomb bad? Was it good? Was Hiroshima justified? Oppenheimer not only shrugs off these questions; it goes out of its way to avoid giving them any urgency. You don’t see victims of Hiroshima onscreen; no Japanese people are shown in the film. Oppenheimer feels bad about the large numbers of the dead, but those numbers never become individuals. In that context, it’s easy to say airily that the US devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki “for better or worse.” It happened offscreen, we feel bad, so it goes.

I don’t think it’s an accident that the Academy decided to honor Oppenheimer’s ethic of responding to atrocity with a furrowed brow and a shrug. Hollywood often mistakes ambiguity for seriousness, and a refusal to commit as the essence of ethics. Katheryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, which won Best Picture in 2009, is a parallel example. Other classic war films, like Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket also focus on the sadness, guilt, and horror of those who commit mass violence, presenting war as a violent hellhole in which all shades are grey and the greatest morality is to admit that you can do naught but suspend judgment. “For better or worse.”

There were films from 2023 that have more thoughtful things to say about violence. Zone of Interest, El Conde and Eileen are odd, ambitious works that use a mix of surrealism, satire, and confrontation to demand viewers confront the lies and self-justifications of abuse and atrocity. But Zone of Interest won only two awards (and none of the big four), El Conde was nominated for only one and lost, and Eileen was utterly ignored. I have mixed feelings about Killers of the Flower Moon, but it’s also a call for moral clarity in the fact of racist dehumanization and violence, and it too won nothing. Instead, the Academy for the night went for the big, long, comfortable epic, which flatters its viewers for their inaction and equivocation.

And sure enough, outside of the moments of clarity provided by Glazer and Chernov, inaction and equivocation was what Hollywood offered its viewers in 2024. The people honored for a film centered on war crimes and genocidal violence had almost nothing to say about the horrific atrocities occurring today. I think that’s a condemnation of Oppenheimer. It’s a condemnation of the Oscars and of Hollywood, as well.