WWII drama disturbing but thought-provoking
The Zone of Interest Reviewed by James Croot (M, 105 mins) Directed by Jonathan Glazer *****
In his first feature, it was just one word – No. For his second, it was a single shot – a camera slowly moving in on Nicole Kidman that reminded us that, damn Skippy, the former BMX Bandit could act. Come the third and it was the whole conceit, Scarlett Johansson as an alien driving around in a van picking off unattached and downtrodden blokes; a kind of thinking-man – and woman’s – version of Kiwi Roger Donaldson’s somewhat lurid Species.
Now, roughly a decade after the last of that provocative, evocative and truly memorable trio of Sexy Beast, Birth and Under the Skin, English writer-director Jonathan Glazer is back with one of the most haunting and disturbing World War II dramas you’re ever likely to witness.
However, we’re not talking Tarantinoesque visceral horrors, or the Holocaust in graphic detail. No, what’s truly disturbing about The Zone of Interest is the mundanity and understatedness of it all.
It’s all about what you don’t see here, but get hints of, in both the overall soundscape and the ominous backgrounds and edges of the frame. This is a domestic drama played out in the shadow of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. A tale of a German couple seemingly living the dream, until his work demands he transfer to another role within the Third Reich.
Yes, it’s 1943, and Rudolf Hoss’ (13 Minutes and The White Ribbon’s Christian Friedel) commute consists of walking out his front gate, there’s a large garden and pool for his five children to play in and a nearby river to fish and swim in.
Wife Hedwig (Anatomy of a Fall, Toni Erdmann’s Sandra Hüller), meanwhile, keeps herself busy with the glasshouse, what housework the servants don’t attend to and sorting through the latest offerings she’s received from “Kanada”.
“I’d like to go to the spa in Italy again,” she requests of Rudolf, unaware that he’s been harbouring the truth from her. Despite all his best efforts – and work on the new, state-of-the-art crematorium – he’s earmarked for the post of deputy inspector in Oranienburg, near Berlin.
When he eventually musters up the courage to deliver the bad news, he’s in for a shock of his own – Hedwig has no plans to give up her current home.
Although loosely based on Martin Amis’ 2014 novel of the same name, Glazer has made a key alteration that truly makes all the difference. Rather than the British author’s fictional protagonists Paul and Hannah Doll, Glazer decided to depict the real-life people they were modelled on and apparently spent two years researching their lives.
That and the decisions to shoot on location in Poland and confine Mica Levi’s (whose dissonant, nightmarish score was integral to Under the Skin’s atmosphere of dread) latest composition to mostly just the entry and exit point of this “experience” in preference to recognisable, distant noises that are guaranteed to conjure up images and emotions, give this an unnerving and immersive quality that even the likes of Schindler’s List and Downfall just cannot match. And when, like Steven Spielberg, Glazer briefly puts the events into a modern context, the result is truly devastating.
It feels perhaps almost glib or cliche to say, but The Zone of Interest is the very evocation and depiction of Hannah Arendt’s famous “banality of evil” (a term she used to describe Adolf Eichmann during his trial for war crimes in the early 1960s).
It’s also a reminder of the power of the art form that is cinema and surely the must-see movie of the year so far.
In German with English subtitles, The Zone of Interest is screening in select cinemas nationwide.