While “The Zone Of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer may still be embattled with criticism about his Oscar speech—the filmmaker caused much uproar during the Academy Awards ceremony for condemning the violence, “dehumanization,” and war in Gaza— the director is seemingly carrying on with business as usual.
Glazer is the latest filmmaker to direct an ad for Prada, which reunites the helmer with his “Under The Skin” star Scarlett Johansson, as part of a Prada Galleria bag series to “celebrate the art of performance.”
READ MORE: ‘The Zone of Interest’ Wins The 2024 International Film Oscar
In the ad, Johansson struggles to recite Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” and “Macbeth” during a screen test, culminating with tears of frustration. The ad, shot in black and white, then transitions to color as she rushes outside (in slick Prada gear, of course), hailing a cab in New York City. It’s also their first collaboration in over ten years, “Under The Skin” was released in 2013.
Titled “Scarlett Johannsson Galleria Bag, A Film By Jonathan Glazer,” the ad was shot in New York with Prada’s Italian creative director Ferdinando Verderi. Glazer is no stranger to commercial filmmaking. Directing a feature every ten years or so at this point, he has presumably paid the bills in the interim with ads for Guinness, Sony, and Apple.
And for a Prada advertisement, it’s pretty damn haunting using booming, unsettling music not unlike some of the ominous music featured in “The Zone Of Interest” by composer Mica Levi (it’s unclear if she also wrote this music, but it does sound very similar).
“The campaign is a celebration of technique, an ode to the mechanism of acting as the true motor of cinema – and to the talent of the actor,” a statement from Prada reads. “The still and motion images showcase Johansson as an actor, honing her art — repeating phrases with different feeling and meaning, she showcases the infinite self-transformation that define an actor’s skill.”
While Glazer has been under fire since his controversial Oscar speech during his win for Best International Feature—an open letter signed by over 500 people in Hollywood denouncing his comments came out in the following days— he has also recently been met with some belated support. Today, Joaquin Phoenix, Joel Coen, Elliott Gould, and Chloe Fineman were among some of the 151 Jewish creators who recently came out defending Glazer, his decrying-the-violence comments, and his stance on the war in Gaza (Kirsten Dunst and filmmaker Ken Loach also recently came out in defense of the filmmaker as well).
Regardless, you can watch that Prada ad below in less heavy subject matter to contemplate.