The Zone of Interest Movie Review: Jonathan Glazer's Unorthodox Holocaust Drama is Immensely Chilling! (LatestLY Exclusive)

The Zone of Interest Movie Review: Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest is a 'Holocaust' film with an experimental edge. Unlike other films of the genre, The Zone of Interest doesn't bother to show the Nazi atrocities, visually that is. Everything feels presented so 'normally', with most of the focus on an idyllic family going on about with their day-to-day lives, while behind their compound wall, some of the vilest atrocities are being meted out to their fellow humans. Some may baulk at this narrative idea and may not be convinced by it; why not show the horrors for what they are? Yet it is an achievement of its storytelling format that The Zone of Interest still comes across as a terrifying film, where the horror lies in the details never shown, and yet the film makes sure you don't miss on reading them. BAFTA 2024: Deepika Padukone Presents Jonathan Glazer With Best Non-English Language Film Award for The Zone of Interest (Watch Video).

Very loosely adapted from a novel by the same name (actually, the movie bears little to no resemblance for the matter), The Zone of Interest focuses on Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedel), a high-ranking Nazi officer, and his wife Hedwig (Anatomy of a Fall's Sandra Hüller... what a year she has had!). When the movie begins, we see the Hosses enjoying an outing near a brook close to their house before we are led into their domestic lives with their kids and servants. The husband, like any corporate employee, seems worried about how to plan his work and delegate tasks, while the wife tends to a beautiful garden outside the house while commanding the help to carry out the household chores. Then, you hear the sounds from beyond the wall.

Watch the Trailer of The Zone of Interest:

Hoss is the commandant of the Nazi concentration camp in Auswitzch, and his house is just next to the camp, separated by a tall wall. The wall may shield those who live in the house from witnessing the brutalities carried out in the camp, but it cannot filter the sounds coming from there. So you hear the cries of the prisoners, the officers shouting at them, the burning fires and other horrible sounds while this family lead their lives with little to no concern.

The Sound Play

The Zone of Interest is a terrific example of how sound design can also play an instrumental role when it comes to 'show, not tell' even when we are not shown much. The film expects a dual reception from the viewer, where you experience the horrors of the camp simply through the noises heard, and then you baulk at the nonchalance of the people you see on the screen.

In one sequence, the ramblings become clearer when an officer orders a prisoner to be drowned in the river while at the Hoss house, a gardener is tending to the plants. When writing this review, The Zone of Interest has earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Sound. I won't be surprised if it wins the statuette over favourite Oppenheimer in this category.

The Wider Picture

Another interesting technical choice The Zone of Interest adopts is mostly telling the film through wide, static frames and in desaturated colours. The frames behave as if they want to observe the Hosses in all their accompanying 'bucolic' scenery. Even when the camera moves, cinematographer Łukasz Żal uses dolly tracking to maintain that wide frame. Anatomy of a Fall Movie Review: Sandra Huller and Milo Machado Graner's Terrific Performances Win The Court in This Extremely Captivating Legal Drama.

The wide frame also allows a couple of interesting visual quirks, such as when it needs to show how Rudolf Hoss's work life accidentally intrudes into his personal life. There is a scene where he is calming fishing in the middle of the brook, we see the burnt ashes from the camp slowly flowing towards him, much to his disgust.

Occasionally, The Zone of Interest also takes on a different visual styling. There are a couple of night-time scenes where the lighting and the colour change, with the film going for black-and-white thermal imaging. The scenes involve a young girl placing fruits near the camp for the inmates to eat, and it feels as if her humanitarian efforts are captured on a thermal vision camera like those intruder cam videos that go viral on the net.

Humanising the Villains

Rarely does The Zone of Interest for a closer frame; when it does, it is simply a mid-shot. Never a closeup or extreme closeup. It is as if Glazer wants us to know these characters well but never too well. Rarely do I get to see a film where I feel completely detached from the set of characters intentionally designed by the makers.

It helps. The Zone of Interest humanises the Hosses, and that's not wrong because instead of creating a cliched, caricaturish image of a cruel Nazi general, we see a very typical family doing typical things. Yet, that makes them even more terrifying. The wife gives the prisoners' clothes to her help and then, at a party at her house, brags to her friends about finding diamonds in the toothpaste packs brought from the camp. A teen couple is shown making out, and the kids are shown playing with the metal dental implants extracted from the dead inmates, now their new toys.

Villains Among Us

When Hedwig's mother comes to stay, even though she's impressed by her daughter's house, she can't stand to hear the daily cruelties the family is used to. This shows how emotionally numb the rest of the family has become. Even when Hoss is in Berlin after a work transfer, his portions there are treated like normal corporate sequences, where the Nazis attend boardroom meetings to discuss promotions and their next big project (which is actually them committing the infamous 'Holocaust in Hungary'), and even have ballroom parties to commemorate the launch of their project. Cannes 2023: Anatomy Of A Fall, The Zone of Interest, Monster, Among Top Winners (See Full List).

It is not Rudolf's family is never influenced by the ongoings that Rudolf doesn't want them to see. Later in the film, the elder son drags his younger sibling and gleefully 'cages' him in their glasshouse while in a uniform. It may be a playful moment for them, but the scene underlines the influence of the camp on these young minds. Gee, I wonder what the director wants to say with these scenes...

The most perplexing scene in the film is definitely the last sequence. I won't write too much about it, but the abstract treatment of the scene still manages to depict the harrowing repercussions of its main character while leaving the room open to many theories. And when the film cuts to black, it lingers. A bit too much for our discomfort.

Final Thoughts on The Zone of Interest

With The Zone of Interest, director Jonathan Glazer crafts a haunting cinematic experience that challenges conventional narratives surrounding the Holocaust. Daringly refraining from visually depicting heinous acts, the film relies on atmospheric sound design and a detached cinematographic gaze to create a chilling sense of macabre. While the deliberate detachment and the seemingly 'mundane' occurrences at Hoss's house may pose pacing concerns for some, the film effectively conveys its message: the most abhorrent actions can be perpetrated by seemingly ordinary individuals, and desensitisation to such violence is not implausible.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 29, 2024 09:39 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).