Zone of Interest
I have frequently been moved at the cinema; I have been fascinated, sometimes outraged; but I have never emerged from a screening feeling as battered as I did after seeing Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. Though praise is not unanimous (you may consider Manohla Dargis’s review in the NYT, but I think she missed the plot), the film has earned great critical acclaim. There is a substantial body of commentary emerging. Sean O’Hagan calls The Zone of Interest ‘a study in extreme cognitive dissonance’. It is also an account of deliberate, self-induced moral paralysis. I have never experienced such a profoundly auditive film. The drama unfolds at two simultaneous levels: the level of what you see and the level of what you hear. It made me think of the Book of Revelation, in which sight and sound are frequently in contrast, but intelligence of the whole comes from what you hear. The sound design is by Johnnie Burn. He has remarked: ‘even though you don’t ever see the horror, it is by far the most violent film I have ever worked on’. To call this film timely is an understatement. It is necessary. I urge you to see it.
