La zona d'interesse

Director Jonathan Glazer isn't very prolific with only three prior films over the past 23 years, but each is marked by a distinctive vision (SEXY BEAST, BIRTH and UNDER THE SKIN). ZONE OF INTEREST is no different with an even more controlled conception.

Loosely adapting Martin Amis' novel, Glazer creates a setting, a tableu, and never lets go. Opening with a long ominous musical overture by Mica Levi the viewer is plunged into a seemingly tranquil German family home. Uniformed Nazi officers are about, served by compliant women. A commandant, Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedel) returns home to his family including his wife Hedwig (Sandra Huller, superb as she also was in this year's ANATOMY OF A FALL) and five children. Hedwig's mother, Linna (Imogen Kogge) comes to stay with them. Their yard is idyllic save for a high concrete fence that partially masks an industrial looking building just behind it. Auschwitz.

Lukasz Zal's (IDA, COLD WAR) camera never moves. The set-ups are often at quite a distance, as if it were all a set-piece on a stage. As officers come and go, the viewer overhears snatches of conversation about how to more efficiently run the camps, Rudolf attententively leads the discussions. Hedwig runs the home, with a determined, yet outwardly calm demeanor. The banality of evil has rarely been depicted with such domesticality. The children play outside as most kids would do, only with a faint everpresent chimny smoke wafting into the sky. There are a couple of departures from the regimented compositions when dark children's fairy tales are depicted as if a camera negative. Levi contributes additional chilling music cues.

As placidly chilling as the visuals are Sound Designer Johnnie Burn creates a malevolent maelstrom of audio effects mixing in gunshots, dog barks, mayhem and human voices. Glazer never shows the insides of the camp, yet the sound and visions more than carry his intent. Even more so, since they burrow into the audience's subconscious.

Glazer has crafted a movie with a precise, if a bit self-limiting, goal. There are some moments that don't work (particularly late in the film), but one never doubts that it is uniquely his own. For those willing to take the bleak journey, Levi's exit music will haunt one long after it fades out.

This film was definitely different than I expected. Yes, it's a little slow. But you have to go into the screening not waiting for something big to happen. The whole point of the film is to show us that while all the horrific events of the Holocaust were happening and Jews were being murdered just for existing, there were plenty of folks that lived like everything was normal.

The fact the the Hoss family didn't even register the screams, cries, gunshots, dogs barking and massive amounts of fire and smoke shooting into the air right next door, just shows how self involved, entitled & oblivious they were. Thank goodness for Grandma who realized things were not right even after wondering aloud if her ex employer was "over there."

The most telling bit of action that I thought was genius was the dog, Dilla. The household is calmly going about their days. Servants are stoically doing their jobs, kids are playing and Mom is busy revelling in how great she has it. There's a bit of unrest in the house because of a disturbed sleep-walking daughter and a baby girl that obviously knows this world is f-ed up and is crying nonstop hoping Mom will let her go back into the good place.

But Dilla! She is trying to get anyone's attention! She is running, scratching on doors, whining and barking in every shot. Obviously she is the only one who REALLY hears what's going on next door and knows there are very bad people there. She can hear the cries and screams. Why won't anyone pay attention to her and listen to what she has to say? Somebody pay attention to the dog! Listen to Dilla! She's trying to tell you something and she's the only one that sees the truth.

This movie gave me the shivers in a big way.

I don't even know how to articulate my thoughts on this film. I didn't really think it was possible to show me a story about the Holocaust that felt like something I hadn't already seen, but Jonathan Glazer manages to do just that with this film. I tried to read the Martin Amis novel this is based on and got almost all the way through it, but I bailed with about 50 or so pages to go. Just couldn't force myself through that last bit. But I read enough of it to know that the film is a very loose adaptation. It's more like Glazer took the general idea and then made his own story out of it.

I had just watched "All the Light We Cannot See" shortly before seeing this film, and I was so irritated in that series that the Nazis were all portrayed as such cartoonish villains. Every single one was a ghoulish monster who monologued while terrorizing whoever they happened to be in the room with. My problem with that is that it makes the Nazis look like aberrations rather than as normal people who were somehow brainwashed into thinking that what they were doing was on the right side of history, so it's easy to dismiss the Holocaust as something that couldn't happen again. But in "The Zone of Interest," Glazer does the exact opposite. The Nazis in this are banal, ordinary people who tend their gardens, bicker about the things spouses bicker about, spend the day bathing in the river with their kids. It just so happens that literally outside their backyard is daily mass murder which they can conveniently ignore because it's out of sight. We hear the screams, gunshots, the trains bringing in fresh batches of people to be slaughtered, but we don't ever see it. The film creates a portrait of the most banal kind of evil, and it's hard for me to get my head around it.

Christian Friedel and Sandra Huller give sensational performances as the commandant of Auschwitz and his pampered, spoiled wife. The film demands full attention from its audience, as frequently the most important thing happening on screen is happening in the background, or up in the far corner of the frame. We'll see a column of crematorium smoke hovering in the distance, or see some hazy ash floating by as the Nazis wander around their flower garden that they're so proud of.

In the film's final moments, we get a glimpse of what might be a conscience in the commandant, a hint that he might not be as utterly indifferent to what he's doing as he appears throughout the rest of the film. It's a haunting scene to cap off a haunting movie.

And can I just say that reading about the making of this film makes it all the more impressive. Everything happening on the other side of the concentration camp wall is visual effects projected onto green screens. Now those are the kinds of special effects that really impress me.

Grade: A.

The Zone of Interest takes a unique angle in approaching the Holocaust. Certainly an angle I haven't seen before in a film. This different approach gives the film a really sinister quality that frames the evils of the Holocaust in a new and terrifying way.

It achieves this approach through stark juxtaposition. It compares the relatively banal, matter-of-fact homemaking of the Hoss family against the utterly horrendous tragedy being perpetrated just over their garden wall. By doing this, it is not an overly graphic or in your face film. Instead, the violence and evil is primarily heard and not seen, as the horrifying sounds of the camp constantly bleed into the Hoss family home. It is in this way that the film makes its mark. To have such tragedy and horror ignored by this family and their guests. To normalise the mass murder over the garden wall. The glib and matter of fact way it is treated by them all. That is where the horror lies.

Whilst this is all a very effective way of framing the horrors of the Holocaust, I do think this film lacks any storytelling merit. There is no real plot to speak of, so once the point the film is making has been made it is easy to want it to be over so as not to sit with these evil characters and horrendous events for too long.

Then again it is a tricky point because I think this is definitely a story worth telling. Looking at the Holocaust from this angle to understand how normalised it became to certain people is vital to reflect on, but I'm not sure if a feature film was necessary to convey this.

So overall, I thoroughly appreciate what this film was doing and the angle it took. The direction is class in creating this juxtaposition and drilling this point home, but beyond it's core message there is nothing in this film to get stuck into. No real plot. No characters you want to understand or connect with. As a result it feels like it overextended itself as a film, but delivers it's message nonetheless.

This incandescent film portrays the idyllic life that the family of Nazi commandant Rudolf Hoss enjoyed in a sumptuous house right next to the concentration camp in Auschwitz right in the middle of the Holocaust. There is very little soundtrack and it all unfolds at a deliberate pace that is in keeping with Jonathan Glazer's slow-burn, disquieting style. A rigorous sense of order and calm is prevalent throughout.

We never actually see any of the Holocaust taking place even though it's right next door. The barbarism and butchery are only apparent from the screams in the distance or from fires at night or smoke during the daytime. The pristine, lush surroundings of this family bely the mass extermination that is taking place in the immediate vicinity. It's a masterful work in which conveys horrible events by leaving them to the imagination.

A repeat viewing might be helpful as subtitles in this film are sometimes rapid-fire. But overall, this is an extraordinary and memorable film from start to finish. Recommended to everyone, without exception.