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What unites “Son of Saul” and “The Zone of Interest,” for all their differences, is a level of aesthetic distance, an impatience with the familiar, classical narrative conventions and a conscientious refusal to depict atrocities on screen.

By the time he’s in high school, he’s showing signs of the Spielberg we’ve come to know and revere: someone who seems to intuit our secrets, who uses art to entertain but also create aesthetic distance from pain, whose ultimate audience — his fiercely supportive, confounding mother — is never far from his mind.

For classical audiences, aesthetic distance has long authorized the consumption of pain, meaning that institutions seeking to represent the Black experience in America — a conspicuous turn since the summer of 2020 — have tended to keep suffering center stage, much to the annoyance of many Black artists to whom I’ve spoken.

Downey explained that he had to take proactive steps to avoid completely disappearing into the Tony Stark persona, saying he leaned on his theater training of creating “aesthetic distance.”

Despite trying to create aesthetic distance from the superhero, he concluded by noting the parallel he notices between his future and Stark’s journey from a self-serving egomaniac to the person that makes sacrifices for the greater good.