English director Jonathan Glazer has directed four films in the past 25 years, and they present an intriguing cross-section of many of the ways films can be great. Every one of them can make some claim to brilliance, and each offers a master-class of direction, tonal control, and production from Glazer. Yet each has some wrinkle in its story or presentation that is off-putting or idiosyncratic. How much you value various aspects of the production and cinematic philosophy may shine a light on what’s important to you as a film lover.
Just to emphasize how messy it is to try and rank Glazer’s films, I’ve done so seven times below across different parameters. The last one is my “official” ranking and has a link to the reviews I’ve written for each, plus my rating on the “Is It Good?” scale.
Ranking 1: The Conventional Greatness Ranking (Or, How Likely They Are To Show Up On “Best Ever” Lists)
4. Sexy Beast (2000)
Undeniably a bit of a trifle; it’s deeply stylish, but this unconventional heist movie is more about splashes of unusual style than it is pushing the craft of cinema to a higher level.
3. Birth (2004)
Now we’re talking: Birth is the moment that Glazer really figured out how to get the mechanics of his filmmaking in alignment with a story that required all those faculties to hold together. Despite a silly premise (will Nicole Kidman fall in love with a 10 year old who claims to be her dead husband reincarnated?), it strikes a tone of profundity while still never losing that dry Glazer sense of humor and irony.
2. The Zone of Interest (2023)
It is perhaps too soon to say what the long-term legacy of The Zone of Interest will be. But I suspect it will come to be viewed as a major work by the cinephile intelligentsia. The soft gaze on the quaint and comfy lives of the family of a Nazi officer is deeply provocative and troubling, and a genuine achievement of pushing the boundaries of mainstream form to tell a story. Truly a miracle of a Best Picture nominee, button-pushing in the way Oscar contenders rarely are, even if it’s not my favorite, per se.
1. Under the Skin (2013)
It’s already placing deep in the They Shoot Pictures Don’t They master-list top 1000 of all time (sitting at #414 as of this writing), making it one of the 15 or so most acclaimed films of the 2010s. Under the Skin is a creative and razor-sharp story of a strange (likely alien) serial killer in search of the truth about that which is in the title. It has an entirely unique cinematic texture that finds meaning in the variations of its patterns and subtle changes in its central character. Obliquely but undeniably a major feminist work.
Ranking 2: Most Fun to Watch Ranking
4. The Zone of Interest (2023)
A prim German family going about their dully ordinary daily lives while a Holocaust concentration camp operates in the far background, the walls and barbed wire blocking the view but not the screams of victims or the smoke of incinerated flesh. It’s a real barrel of monkeys.
3. Under the Skin (2013)
Scarlett Johansson as a serial killer sounds like it should be enrapturing fun, and yet there’s an exhaustion in the film’s repetition and absence of catharsis, intentional though that exhaustion may be. Even the otherworldly black void that subsumes its victims starts to lose its intrigue.
2. Birth (2004)
The outrageousness of the premise told with a haunted, emotional voice results in a weirdly intoxicating and surprising film. You never quite know where it’s going, but it’s always alluring to see where Kidman and Glazer bring you, every step of the way.
1. Sexy Beast (2000)
Just a delight from start to finish. It’s funny and tense in a nice balance, Glazer shifting between tones with X-Acto knife precision, always surprising you just when you think you’ve figured the damn movie out. It makes you laugh with surface-level comedy in a way Glazer hasn’t really tried since, and the various gangster personalities are immensely fun. And it all builds to a unique and well-shot heist sequence. Sexy Beast never lingers on any idea too long, so even the imperfect ones are no bother.
Ranking 3: Best Acting Performances Ranking
4. The Zone of Interest (2023)
Sandra Huller and Christian Friedel are so good at being blandly hateable, but it’s very intentionally non-showy work.
3. Sexy Beast (2000)
Most people (correctly) remember Ben Kingsley’s combustible, profane gangster mid-manager. But it’s not the only highlight: Ray Winstone’s affected relaxation carries the whole film, and Ian McShane is about as scary as anyone has ever been in a movie in the final half hour.
2. Under the Skin (2013)
Johansson is absolutely phenomenal as a quasi-human just starting to understand empathy and the basic parameters of her humanity. It’s a wonderfully inviting yet upsetting turn.
1. Birth (2004)
Kidman gives one of my favorite lead performances of the 2000’s. It thrives not with many big gestures but with the sheer intensity of the smallness and stillness of her presence. Mike D’Angelo wrote she plays Anna like she’s “fighting her way through amniotic fluid,” and I think that’s a perfect descriptor.
Ranking 4: Most Inventive Direction and Visual Design Ranking
4. Birth (2004)
All of Glazer’s films are products of outstanding direction. Birth has perhaps the least visual definition of his films, but that’s mostly because of its setting: Upscale New York life, hermetically sealed from messy passions like those that a raving ten year old might bring upon you. But the framing, blocking, and editing are all slightly askew in a disorienting way that you wouldn’t call “elliptical” but you might come close.
3. Sexy Beast (2000)
As a former music video director, Glazer brought a flair for images that pop from the start. That he sewed so many of them together into a dynamic whole on his first try is a real accomplishment. From the instantly iconic sun-baked opener, to the repeated and clever use of water, to some great close-ups on freaked out individuals throughout, Sexy Beast is as much fun to look at as it is to weave through its unpredictable story.
2. The Zone of Interest (2023)
Glazer reportedly was so committed to the naturalist aesthetic of Zone that he hid cameras on set and kept the crew largely invisible from the cast. The result is a deeply immersive sense of space and natural lighting that, of course, provides a stark contrast the horrors just outside the frame. Some night vision interludes add a trippy counterpoint. Tremendous use of form.
1. Under the Skin (2013)
Scarlett Johansson is the uncomfortable outsider, but Glazer makes us feel like we’re the ones on an alien planet. Hypnotic visual rhythms, bizarre liminal spaces, and a black gooey void simply begging for projection of meaning all throw the viewer into an off-kilter headspace entirely through the film’s visual language.
Ranking 5: Best Sound Ranking (Considering Both Score and Sound Effects)
4. Sexy Beast (2000)
Glazer started his career as a music video director, so it’s no surprise at all that he has good instincts for how music and sound can define the experience of watching a film. His debut has an original, flavorful soundtrack by Roque Baños and UNKLE, with some great needle drops.
3. Under the Skin (2013)
Mica Levi has scored Glazer’s two most recent films, and they are both outstanding works of chilly uneasiness. Under the Skin also offers excellent, subtle mixing of diegetic sounds to pull you deeper into its unique texture.
2. Birth (2004)
Rare is a score as good as Alexandre Desplat’s for Birth, so perfectly heightening every theme and emotion of the film by itself. It’s a blend of tinkling bells that evoke children’s toys and bass-filled gloom that evoke grief and existential dread. In that intersection lies Birth.
1. The Zone of Interest (2023)
Rarer still is sound design more innovative and central than what’s in The Zone of Interest. The film requires we be drowned in an omnipresent, monaural fog of horror of the noises of Auschwitz concentration camp, and boy howdy. Levi Mica’s score is great and haunting but sparingly used so there’s no escaping the evil with stuff like “mood.”
Ranking 6: Most Incisive or Relevant Thematic Content Ranking
4. Sexy Beast (2000)
Sexy Beast is mostly content to be a sharp, funny movie; yet in the final half hour it also becomes a stark reminder of the cycle of violence inherent in criminal enterprise.
3. Birth (2004)
Nicole Kidman facing down a boy who claims to be her reincarnated husband triggers a lot of complicated, subtextual feelings: Namely, a personification of the grief both at losing her husband and never having a child.
2. Under the Skin (2013)
Scarlett Johansson’s “The Female” methodically abducts and kills men. This very inversion of serial killer tropes would be a statement, but it runs deeper than that. She is driven by dueling impulses: one, to destroy the patriarchal system surrounding her, one body at a time, and two, to better understand and empathize the very men she slaughters. Glazer and Johansson grapple with how these ideas compete for the soul of a woman trying to make her way in a scary alien world.
1. The Zone of Interest (2023)
Simply making a movie demonstrating how the Holocaust was enabled by cowards who sat by in comfort is a deeply provocative act by Glazer. Set in this current political climate, it’s downright incendiary, especially as Glazer explicitly linked it to the violence in Gaza in his Oscar speech.
Ranking 7: My Overall Personal Ranking (And Reviews And Ratings)
4. Under the Skin (2013) (Very Good)
I confess that as much as I admire Under the Skin, I found it to be a slightly frustrating experience as I watched it. It’s intentionally repetitive. It deflates across its runtime rather than growing in resonance and tension. Maybe it will click a bit more with me on a second viewing, but of Jonathan Glazer’s four great films, this is the one I love the least.
3. The Zone of Interest (2023) (Very Good)
While Under the Skin may rise in my estimation with future watches, I’m not sure there will even be a future watch for The Zone of Interest. It’s obvious what the movie is doing within its first ten or fifteen minutes, and yet it’s excruciating for the entire, tedious duration. Phenomenal film, deeply upsetting and moving, full of clever and immersive craft… but one where the value comes from having completed the act of watching it rather than experiencing the watching itself.
2. Sexy Beast (2000) (Exceptionally Good)
Brilliant, energetic, clever heist-comedy-drama-thriller; also just a smidge lightweight. But so damn watchable. What’s really surprising is how much it controls its tone for all the twists and turns it goes through. Glazer’s precision is incredible it being his first film: When it reverses an expectation or jumps to a new setting, it’s always with perfect timing and the storytelling instincts of a seasoned veteran.
1. Birth (2004) (Exceptionally Good)
Birth is the moment when Glazer’s technique became fully formed, yet before his aspirations graduated into intellectually detached “art film” territory. It is an odd, melodramatic story, told with a very distinct, almost sensuous, tone. But despite a premise that reads goofy in the logline, it is moving and funny and fascinating all at the same time. It’s anchored by a generationally great lead performance and score. Having sliced it and diced it, I find Birth is the most engaging and rewarding film Jonathan Glazer has made to date, which is saying something.
- Review Series: Jonathan Glazer
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