The Zone of Interest (2023)
Country: US/GB/POL
Technical: col/1.78:1 105m
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Cast: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller
Synopsis:
The wife of the Commandant of Auschwitz keeps a well weeded garden, but things rank and gross in nature make their presence felt from over the wall, nevertheless.
Review:
This re-envisioning of Martin Amis's novel, which he only just lived long enough to see traduced, shields us from the horrors, while allowing us to glimpse them adumbrated in the attitudes of the all but idyllic family living the Hitlerian dream of unlimited lebensraum. Far from despising her husband and loving another officer, the wife is here a model of Nazi fidelity and fecundity. At times the Mica Levi score obtrudes deafeningly, or Glazer indulges in a flourish of black and white negative exposure, bringing the horror closer to us than the distant sounds of gunshots and screams are able. But by and large the camera is permitted only to gaze steadily in long shot at the ordered geometry of these 'humans' for whom nothing is unimaginable save the prospect of being moved away from their perfect home beside the very gates of Tartarus. It is ultimately a stiflingly affectless experience, from which conventional drama is absent (nothing conventional here), and the closing tableaux of the Auschwitz memorial seem oddly redundant.
Country: US/GB/POL
Technical: col/1.78:1 105m
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Cast: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller
Synopsis:
The wife of the Commandant of Auschwitz keeps a well weeded garden, but things rank and gross in nature make their presence felt from over the wall, nevertheless.
Review:
This re-envisioning of Martin Amis's novel, which he only just lived long enough to see traduced, shields us from the horrors, while allowing us to glimpse them adumbrated in the attitudes of the all but idyllic family living the Hitlerian dream of unlimited lebensraum. Far from despising her husband and loving another officer, the wife is here a model of Nazi fidelity and fecundity. At times the Mica Levi score obtrudes deafeningly, or Glazer indulges in a flourish of black and white negative exposure, bringing the horror closer to us than the distant sounds of gunshots and screams are able. But by and large the camera is permitted only to gaze steadily in long shot at the ordered geometry of these 'humans' for whom nothing is unimaginable save the prospect of being moved away from their perfect home beside the very gates of Tartarus. It is ultimately a stiflingly affectless experience, from which conventional drama is absent (nothing conventional here), and the closing tableaux of the Auschwitz memorial seem oddly redundant.
Country: US/GB/POL
Technical: col/1.78:1 105m
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Cast: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller
Synopsis:
The wife of the Commandant of Auschwitz keeps a well weeded garden, but things rank and gross in nature make their presence felt from over the wall, nevertheless.
Review:
This re-envisioning of Martin Amis's novel, which he only just lived long enough to see traduced, shields us from the horrors, while allowing us to glimpse them adumbrated in the attitudes of the all but idyllic family living the Hitlerian dream of unlimited lebensraum. Far from despising her husband and loving another officer, the wife is here a model of Nazi fidelity and fecundity. At times the Mica Levi score obtrudes deafeningly, or Glazer indulges in a flourish of black and white negative exposure, bringing the horror closer to us than the distant sounds of gunshots and screams are able. But by and large the camera is permitted only to gaze steadily in long shot at the ordered geometry of these 'humans' for whom nothing is unimaginable save the prospect of being moved away from their perfect home beside the very gates of Tartarus. It is ultimately a stiflingly affectless experience, from which conventional drama is absent (nothing conventional here), and the closing tableaux of the Auschwitz memorial seem oddly redundant.