After the title card reveal, The Zone of Interest lingers on a long period of blackness. In adapting a novel by Martin Amis, writer and director Jonathan Glazer creates an unusual kind of overture. Mica Levi’s score and distorted sound effects start to creep in, a shrewd way to prepare audiences they should rely on their ears, perhaps more than their eyes. A protracted black image also creates a kind of mental separation, a way of internalizing that we are about to say is different than a typical film. Once the action begins, you get a sense that Glazer’s overture is a necessary choice. There is no other way to tell this story than the way Glazer prefers, a synthesis of elements that leads to devastating clarity. Perhaps more importantly, cinema is the only medium that could convey this message. Anything else would be too outraged, or too direct.
There is little plot to the film. The characters live their lives, and have minor domestic squabbles. We see pool parties, formal dinners and fleeting moments of domestic tranquility. So why is this material so devastating, a piercing moral argument? Glazer sets his film during World War 2, just outside the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Nearly all the characters are Nazis, and the most radical departure in The Zone of Interest from other World War 2 films is how Glazer declines to depict violence or war crimes in any direct way. Those who are suffering in Auschwitz are just behind a tall concrete wall, heard but never seen. Together with sound designer Johnnie Burn, we get hints of the atrocities happening just outside the camera. Remember that sound from the overture? It sounds a lot like the churn of the ovens. Sometimes we hear distant gunfire, screaming, or a train whistle. No one in the film, not the Auschwitz Commandant (Christian Friedel) or his wife (Sandra Hüller), acknowledge what is happening. For them and their family, life must continue.
On top of the sound design, Glazer’s camera placement adds to the constant, gnawing sense of cognitive dissonance. He places static cameras all around his set, almost like the reality TV series Big Brother, and tells his cast to move through the space like they are always in character. Not only is his approach a significant burden for his actors, who are used to commands like “action” and “cut” to separate themselves from their character, but it creates a feeling of realism. A static camera gives the illusion of objectivity, and that illusion deepens the culpability of all the characters, even the children. Sometimes there are disturbing images, but even then they are only implied, not shown directly. There is an early scene where the Commandant takes his children for an afternoon in a nearby river, a vignette of pastoral bliss, at least until the runoff from Auschwitz leaves a long trail of grey scum – undoubtedly human remains. Industrialized genocide is meant to create a separation between the perpetrators and victims, and yet there are vestiges of truth that serve as a sick joke for those who pretend everything is normal.
Glazer’s desire to separate himself from his cast also leads to more audacious sequences. There a handful of vignettes shot in near-total darkness, where Glazer and cinematographer Łukasz Żal opt for infrared photography to show a lone figure running through the night. The Zone of Interest declines to explain scenes, another of saying they are open to interpretation. Are we seeing something real? Or does the infrared simply allow a convenient way for Glazer to discreetly photograph someone in the dark? Sometimes we hear children being told the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel” before bed, so maybe these scenes are dream sequences for kids who fill in the visual gap with their everyday surroundings. Enigmatic and provocative, these scenes are the closest thing the film offers to a reprieve. When we finally learn the identity of the lone figure at night, there is a slight inkling of compassion, and yet that spark does nothing to curb institutional immorality.
Since his debut film Sexy Beast, Jonathan Glazer has stood on the balance between the mainstream and art house experimentation. Sexy Beast is a character study masquerading as a tough gangster film, while Birth is a “what if” fantasy with no traditional payoff, and Under the Skin is an abstracted sci-fi allegory about womanhood and misogyny. In that sense, The Zone of Interest is his most audacious feature, an attempt to take what is familiar and distort it until we think and feel about it in an entirely new way. His is a lofty goal, not just in cinema but in all art, and Glazer accomplishes it through the relentless, undeniable logic of his sensibilities. I have not read Amis’ novel, although others have observed the film is a significant departure. It must be, since the limits of literature mean that the author can focus on one thing at a time. Not unlike parts of 12 Years a Slave, it is necessary that Glazer’s true subject cannot be seen, except sometimes in the small corners of the background. To look it at directly would betray the whole thing, a reminder of a common lie we all must sometimes share: that everything is fine.
Glazer does not offer comeuppance for his characters, at least not directly. There are only two scenes where we get a sense the Nazis’ abject failure, and both happen late in the film. The first is a physical response, a callback to the documentary The Act of Killing insofar as Glazer imagines that relentless denial takes its toll in the body. The second is another quasi-documentary vignette, the only time the camera goes within the walls of Auschwitz. Once again, we see the power of routine, and how familiarity smooths any shock toward our conscience. Glazer does not condemn cognitive dissonance, so much as he observes the banality of it all. In that sense, The Zone of Interest is an act of compassion and rage, one that sees our inevitable path toward annihilation and persists, anyway.
Photo courtesy of A24
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