A frequent topic of conversation within film circles is the worthiness of a film, not only as to whether any given feature deserves the audience’s time, attention and energy, but whether or not it warrants a cinematic exploration. It’s often a politically charged conversation that considers who the film is being made for, whose voices such a platform amplifies, and what it is attempting to say. It is one source of contention that has faced Jonathan Glazer’s otherwise acclaimed holocaust drama, The Zone of Interest which, in contrast to other World War II-centered pieces, positions us with Nazis.
The commandant of a Nazi concentration camp, Rudolf Hoss, and his wife Hedwig, seek to build a dream house for themselves and their family, sitting in the shadows of Auschwitz. Glazer’s first film in ten years, this disturbing and cerebral experience is bolstered by a strong ensemble, featuring Christian Friedel and Sandra Huller.
The Second World War is arguably the most explored event in human history. Multiple films a year seek to explore the circumstances of the deadliest war, with our cultural resonance to the war still strong today. The Zone of Interest discovers a fascinating angle to explore it from, stranding it with the oppressors. We spend most of our time exploring the luxuries of a family basking in the wealth and privilege, visiting their flower gardens and listening to their first-world issue and love affairs - all the while, Auschwitz imposing over them in the background, plumes of smoke hinting at the horrors behind the gates.
Positioned at the edge of the frame, we are never far away from the stark reminder of the atrocities the people we are narratively conjoined to are upholding with their involvement, directly or indirectly. Łukasz Żal’s cinematography is masterful, visually striking and thematically crucial work that enriches the film's themes and messages in the most shattering way. Utilising wide and unnervingly still camera angles and shots, there’s a foreboding creepiness reminiscent of predator focusing on prey - reinforced further by an aspect ratio that only increases that feeling of entrapment central to our discomfort.
Director Johnathan Glazer manages to uphold this harrowing violence despite avoiding any explicit depiction, realising that it’s not at all needed, our own understanding can fill in the blanks: the horrors happening just outside of the shot do not need spelling out, instead so much of the discomfort is borne out of the devastating juxtaposition between the genocide unfolding in the camps with the idyllic comfort around them. Whether every technique Glazer employs serves the film in such a strong way - a strange decision to repeatedly employ block-coloured screens or to invert the colour on specific images - he nevertheless lays out such a clear vision for The Zone of Interest that ensures his unique perspective offers something compelling to a story we are sadly familiar with.
As expected, The Zone of Interest is a haunting, brutal watch. A deeply solemn experience which takes on a new level of pain through the heartbreaking perspective it offers, this is a new type of war film that deals with apathy and mundanity which sheds a sobering light on the subject. With Zone, Glazer intends to make us uncomfortable: placing us alongside a group that symbolises such hatred that (hopefully!) does not align with our own views is going to be painful - but so much of the film's success is in how this unique perspective offer us; it's a side we have rarely (if ever) seen before, sickening and devastating in its apathy, with the agony grounded further by the shadow the camps cast over the entire piece - never forgotten by the viewers, no matter how little significance it has in the lives of those who homes are overlooked by Auschwitz. Devastatingly uncomfortable and unflinchingly powerful, The Zone of Interest deserves your attention.