Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears this Week?
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
The Football Bit
I got nothing.
How many times can I write the same thing about Justin Fields?
How many times can I write the same thing about Matt Eberflus?
Sometimes a season just needs to end and that is definitively the case for the 2023 Chicago Bears. This season needs to end, and the organization needs to make their decisions at quarterback and coach. Nothing will change this coming Sunday. Nothing will change the Sunday after.
I hope the Bears beat the Falcons because winning is more fun than losing and they already are guaranteed a top two pick in the draft. That is the entirety of what’s at stake at Soldier Field, a potentially fun afternoon.
The Movie Bit
Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is one of the most remarkable films I have ever seen.
First, a plot summary, in the briefest sense. The film is a domestic drama, but the domicile in question is the home of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, situated directly outside the high walls of the concentration and extermination camp in question. Throughout the film, we engage the Höss family as if they were any other German family, i.e. the stress of visiting in-laws, the drama of a work transfer, etc. We watch in detail as Rudolf, the family’s patriarch, locks the doors and turns out the lights each evening. We see birthday cakes and visits to the local creek for recreation.
We never see the atrocities of the camp. But throughout the film, we hear constant reminders of what is happening inside those walls. Gun shots. Screams. The most horrifying cinematic soundscape I can remember.
There will be time, years, to discuss this film further. Glazer might be the modern Kubrick; he’s made three other films (Sexy Beast, Birth, Under the Skin) and each is brilliant. But for now, I want to use this space to encourage you to find Zone of Interest and sit with it. It is a film that questions the very nature of how we construct narratives of history, and how those narratives are consumed. Glazer has said the film is “not a history lesson, it’s a warning.” That warning haunts me.
This is the film of the year.
