Jonathan Glazer's new film "The Zone of Interest" received excellent reviews at the Cannes Film Festival. It attempts to portray the Holocaust through a family living a seemingly idyllic lifestyle in close geographic proximity to Auschwitz. But unlike many other films about the Holocaust, the film doesn't portray on-screen violent atrocities committed by the Nazis. Instead, the focus is more introspective and psychological, attempting to comment on the banality of evil and how people that benefitted from the Nazi regime's evil sense of power were complicit in crimes against humanity. The patriarch of the family, Rudolf Hoss, is a high-ranking Nazi official running Auschwitz. The thesis and intellectual argument present in Glazer's film is summarized by the glaring juxtaposition of the upscale and austere lifestyle of the Hoss family with horrifying sound effects of Auschwitz in the background. The film is relatively brief in duration at 106 minutes, but the pacing doesn't always work as well as it should. The primary characters could have been better-developed, and there's relatively little plot of narrative substance (instead, the film could be considered more of a "slice of life.")
Glazer's command of the technical aspects of filmmaking is commendable, through the use of wide and long takes and unnerving sound design. Yet the relatively mundane scenes of the family celebrating, having guests, or strolling along in their garden mixed with implications of what is happening right next door start to become less effective as the film goes on, since these scenes and sounds are portrayed so frequently and similarly. The film is still undeniably well-made in a general sense, its performances are generally strong, and you can clearly pick up on Glazer's adherence to stylistic tendencies of European arthouse cinema. Yet, while having many strong qualities and centering on such an important and tragic topic, it's not quite as profound beneath the surface as Glazer's initial intention might have been. Recommended. 7/10.
Note: I saw the film in The Big Show, Alamo Drafthouse's premium large format screen. The picture and sound quality were good, especially the sound design.
Glazer's command of the technical aspects of filmmaking is commendable, through the use of wide and long takes and unnerving sound design. Yet the relatively mundane scenes of the family celebrating, having guests, or strolling along in their garden mixed with implications of what is happening right next door start to become less effective as the film goes on, since these scenes and sounds are portrayed so frequently and similarly. The film is still undeniably well-made in a general sense, its performances are generally strong, and you can clearly pick up on Glazer's adherence to stylistic tendencies of European arthouse cinema. Yet, while having many strong qualities and centering on such an important and tragic topic, it's not quite as profound beneath the surface as Glazer's initial intention might have been. Recommended. 7/10.
Note: I saw the film in The Big Show, Alamo Drafthouse's premium large format screen. The picture and sound quality were good, especially the sound design.