Jonathan Glazer’s eerie sci-fi stunner Under The Skin landed near the top of our list of the decade’s best films, and now the English filmmaker has begun teasing his 2020 return with “The Fall,” a short film that debuted, abruptly and with no fanfare, with a single run on BBC Two back in October. It’s since played before select screenings of The Lighthouse, but is only now available for streaming via BBC Films and A24. Watch it here.
Set to a predictably chilling score from frequent collaborator Mica Levi, Glazer’s short explores mob mentality and collapse via a feral gang of masked assailants and their human prey. “I think fear is ever-present,” he told The Guardian during a recent chat about the film. “And that drives people to irrational behavior. A mob encourages an abdication of personal responsibility. The rise of National Socialism in Germany for instance was like a fever that took hold of people. We can see that happening again.” In the same interview, he cites a poem by Bertolt Brecht, the etchings of Francisco Goya, and a photo of “the Trump sons “grinning with a dead leopard.”
The DNA of Glazer’s next feature can also be seen here. Set to begin filming in the spring, it will explore the Holocaust through the lens of Martin Amis’ The Zone Of Interest and touch on the complicity of those who stood by and watched from the sidelines. “I remember being very taken by the faces of the bystanders, the onlookers, the complicit, you know? Ordinary Germans,” he said during a podcast appearance from last year. “I started wondering how it would be possible to stand by and watch that. Some of the faces actually enjoy it. The spectacle of it. The kinda circus of it.”