I recently watched the film The Zone of Interest, a work depicting Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and his family. The most accurate way to describe my impression would be a “silent shock.”
This is not a film that attempts to shake the audience through “atrocious imagery” or “explicit depictions of violence.” Instead, the tragedy never appears on screen. Through the mundanity of daily life, sounds heard from a distance, the sense of space, and the deliberate editing, the very coldness of the world is brought to the surface.
After watching it, I found myself thinking not just about the film itself, but about the perspective from which I received the work, and how that connects to my own creative stance.
The Difference Between “Cruel but Beautiful” and “Simply Unpleasant and Exhausting”
I tend to be drawn to works that depict the essential truth that “the world is cruel.”
From Dancer in the Dark to The Mist and Silence, I have been deeply moved by films that starkly confront us with the ruthlessness of the world and human helplessness. These works express the world’s cruelty and often include specific, harsh depictions. However, this does not mean that all “cruel depictions” possess the same quality.
For example, I do not find deep resonance in works that provocatively sharpen violence or pain, making them the primary object of stimulation or consumption. In such cases, I feel that the intensity of the sensory stimulus itself has become the goal, rather than an update of our understanding or the structure of the world.
To put it another way, what I am drawn to are works where cruelty emerges as a “structure.”
- Violence and pain are not the protagonists but appear as (inevitable) by-products.
- There is an editorial intent toward indirectness and maintaining distance, rather than trying to make the viewer feel something overtly.
- It is quietly demonstrated that the world does not guarantee “meaning-making by humans.”
- A reorganization of cognition occurs after viewing.
In this regard, The Zone of Interest seemed to me to be a singular, extraordinary pinnacle of this approach.
Terror in the Sublime
I believe that the sense of “the sublime” is crucial to the essential truth that the world is cruel.
To me, the sublime is something much closer to “terror” than to relief or healing. For instance, when standing before the overwhelming majesty of nature, like the Grand Canyon, one is struck by a sense of awe—and simultaneously by an experiential understanding of one’s own smallness, the uncontrollability of nature, and the world’s staggering scale.
That physical sensation is by no means a pleasure. Rather, I believe it is a sincere perception necessary to accept the world as it is, without trivializing it.
The shock brought by The Zone of Interest was also closer to this structural terror—not necessarily anger or sympathy toward the historical tragedy, but the realization of how indifferently and calmly the world continues to move.
The World is Indifferent, and Humans are Helpless. But…
Many of the films I find compelling seem to embody a common worldview:
- The world is essentially indifferent to human beings.
- Structures easily override individual ethics and goodwill.
- Humans are surprisingly helpless in the face of it.
At the same time, these works do not end in mere despair.
- Humans are not completely powerless.
- Even if limited, there is a margin for agency and choice to resist.
- The exercise of that agency becomes the site of ethics.
I believe I want to observe, sense, and savor this very relationship—asymmetrical and fraught with tension—between the world and the individual.
Correlation Between Macro and Micro
As I organized these perspectives, I arrived at an image regarding my own creative work. It is a triad structure consisting of:
- The Macro world (nature, society, structure, indifference).
- The Micro world (inner world, cognition, creation).
- The “form” of my worldview that permeates both.
The preference for input (watching films) and the inclination for output (creation) are not separate; they are pierced by the same form of world perception.
Furthermore, this form of world perception appears to have a fractal (self-similar) structure, maintaining its isomorphism even when the scale changes. This triad can be expressed more concretely as follows:
- Within a giant world structure, a human possesses a minute (yet precious) agency.
- Within a single work’s structure, the material possesses a limited (yet open) degree of freedom.
- The character of the whole is folded into a single motif.
Creation as World-Model Construction, Not Self-Expression
Thinking this way, it seems that creation for me resides in a place slightly different from what is commonly called “self-expression.”
It is less about:
- Venting emotions.
- Conveying a message.
- Confessing one’s inner self.
And more about:
- What is the structure of the world?
- How are humans positioned within it?
- In what form can that relationship be stabilized?
I believe my work is closer to a kind of “construction of a world model” in response to these questions.
To put it psychoanalytically, one could say I create in order to build my own “fortress”—a way to continue accepting the world’s indifference (cruelty) and its sheer magnitude and strength without distortion. In other words, the work is both a psychological defense and a storage device for understanding the world.
Final Thoughts
Watching The Zone of Interest was more than just a cinematic experience; it became an opportunity to verbalize and visualize the consistency between my own world perception and my creative stance.
- Do not trivialize the world.
- Stare directly at its indifference (the cruelty of the world).
- Yet, do not let go of the possibility of human agency and response.
I intend to continue quietly sealing these tensions into the “form” of my works.
