THB #417: The Zone of Interest
Jonathan Glazer’s 4th Feature film - following Sexy Beast, Birth, and Under The Skin - is perhaps the most challenging and the most accessible.
It is also unspoilable… so don’t fear what is coming on this page. The movie is about the experience of the movie, not about the details of the screenplay or story.
On the surface of it, The Zone of Interest is a Jewish Holocaust film. It is centered on Rudolf Höss and his family. They happen to live next door to the Auschwitz death camp, which he is in charge of for much of the movie.
That may sound glib, but that is really the heart of this magnificent film. It’s a movie about the normalcy… the banality of life, even as this family lives close enough to constant death to see (and presumably smell) the smoke, hear the gunfire, and be aware of the trains delivering people to their doom.
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