The Zone of Interest (2024)

Jonathan Glazer is more Terrence Malick than Terrence Malick these days. This is only Glazer's fourth full length feature film in the space of nearly a quarter of a century, and his debut back in 2000 (Sexy Beast) has this year been adapted into a television series; although why you simply wouldn't want to re-watch Glazer's film instead, I don't know. Some have argued that Malick has long since disappeared up his own backside, that his output has become more frequent and much less important, whereas Glazer is still very much comparable to early Malick. His last feature was over a decade ago, and Under the Skin (2013) was released to rave reviews, a piece that explored toxic masculinity, cultural resistance and xenophobia through the prism of Scarlett Johansson's alien. Glazer's much talked about (and Oscar nominated) latest release, The Zone of Interest, also portrays similar themes, and actually recalls Malick's gorgeous A Hidden Life (2019). Loosely based on Martin Amis' 2014 novel of the same name, the film is set almost entirely on the border of Auschwitz, where the commandment of the camp Rudolph Höss lives with his family. Their garden is quite literally bordered by the wall of Auschwitz, and Höss's wife Hedwig (the truly brilliant Sandra Hüller) appears to be completely oblivious to the goings on just the other side of the wall as she tends to their extensive garden. The Zone of Interest's focus is the Höss family and their attempts to build a dream life for themselves on the camp's border, but Glazer's success in transporting the backdrop of their idyllic home to the forefront of our minds despite never seeing the inside of the camp or the horrors of what's unfurling, is astonishing. He's helped no end by Mica Levi's haunting score which opens the film with a couple of minutes of complete blackness on the screen, ensuring that the audience is thrown into a sense of unease from the offset. The sparsely used work from Levi makes it all the more effective, popping up and violently throbbing during spectral night vision thermal imagery that jar us from the vapidity of the Höss family life. Such an accusation of prosaicness might seem unfair considering Hedwig's efforts to ensure the best for her five children, but the aberrancy of the family unit's situation comes to the fore when Rudolph is ordered to relocate to Oranienburg near Berlin, and Hedwig refuses to leave- insisting that Rudolph persuade his superiors to allow her and the children to remain at Auschwitz, because they're happy, healthy and building a life. This conversation sums up the atmosphere of Glazer's film perfectly. It's a married couple having a frank discussion about relocation due to a new job, with one wanting to stay and continue the work of raising the family in their dream setting, a place that is concomitantly heaven and hell. The exchange takes place on the edge of a river to which Rudolph has escaped during a children's party taking place in their house, and the camera follows Hedwig as she runs after him having just received the bombshell of the imminent move. It's almost impossible to describe the eeriness of this sequence; Hüller's distress is so prominent that one is cognizant of her feelings, but the audience also has the broader picture, quite literally as she runs along the road past SS guards and alongside the wall. The Zone of Interest reminded me of László Nemes' sublime Son of Saul (2015), (a film that is set entirely inside Auschwitz) for obvious reasons. However, the fact that Glazer's film is equally as horrific stands testament to his film making; everything visually is suggestion, playing on the audience's knowledge of what's happening beyond the wall. The continuous sounds that permeate the Höss residence are horrifying and yet we see family members looking out of windows at night watching the glow of flames with seeming indifference. There's also plenty of throwaway comments about the Jews within the household; matter of fact degradation in passing conversation that's quietly terrifying. Indeed that feeling of appalling evil at what the Nazis did trickles down in distinctly disturbing fashion during one particular scene where Rudolph and Hedwig's two sons are playing in the garden. The eldest one suddenly picks up his younger brother and carries him into the greenhouse, locking him in before jokingly making the sound of hissing gas. It's a chilling moment, and is par for the course during The Zone of Interest, which is almost suffocating in its sense of dread. Johnnie Burn's immersive sound design pumps out constant horrors from the camp, meaning that it's impossible to escape, and yet spending the duration of the film with the Höss family you'd think there was nothing beyond their walls except majesty and splendour. That's arguably the most frightening thing of all in this quite brilliant piece of work, one that Glazer ends with a cogently ghostly flourish. 8.4/10