The Zone of Interest

Auschwitz without the gunfire, the wailing and the dying. An original premise, where a lot can be invented, but where there is also a constant risk of boredom without emotions. Jonathan Glazer comes up with a version that in regular intervals shows ideas to illustrate a typical day of the head honcho of the concentration camp at the gates of Auschwitz. Although there are no downright deaf spots, as a whole, however, the film, in all its ordinariness, fails to be fully engrossing. All credit goes only to some excellent scenes, notably the Sunday fishing or the imprisonment in the greenhouse. (02/08/2024)

Yes, I understand that Jonathan Glazer wants to be different and make the usual stuff at least a bit special, and yes, I understand that he wants to experiment, but at what cost, for God's sake? Because this is a very soporific film without a single minute worth praising, and it is without question the worst 100 minutes of my life. Nothing happens at all, and the concentration camp connection is only on paper, as we don't get a single look behind the walls of the main Nazi's house, we don't get a single shot of Auschwitz, and all we get are occasional sounds and gunshots. I've never been so bored in a cinema, and realistically watching people fidgeting around, waiting for the end credits and looking at their watches every five minutes was far more entertaining than the film itself. This for me is a total waste and a wannabe arthouse pseudo-film that offers nothing at all, really nothing at all. If anyone praises this, I want whatever they are taking that made them flip out on while watching, otherwise I absolutely cannot explain why anyone would praise this shit. I understand that the director wanted to offer a view of the subject matter from the side of Nazis as "regular people", but I could have read this in one sentence and not had to watch 100 minutes without any technical, filmmaking or acting value added. Because if someone serves us literally eight minutes of a scene where the wife talks about her kohlrabi grows, or the final five minutes with a cleaning lady sweeping the floor in the camp, and deems it a thing worthy of admiration on screen, there must be something really wrong. Now, come on, you drooling critics. (02/08/2024)

Jonathan Glazer is again powerfully creative and artsy. In The Zone of Interest, we don’t see a single Auschwitz prisoner in the film or any of the atrocities perpetrated behind the walls of the camp. The minimalistically staged but effectively arranged action takes place inside the Hösses’ villa and in their garden, which is bordered by the wall, over which the tops of the concentration-camp barracks loom. Höss dutifully goes to “work” and spends his free time with his family. Höss’s wife enjoys the flowers in the garden. Their children play by the swimming pool. Höss occasionally receives a visitor on business, such as engineers with a design for a more efficient crematorium. Sometimes someone brings them a bag of nice clothes to pick through... The whole time, we hear the distant droning of the death factory in operation, sometimes people screaming, dogs barking, gunfire. Black clouds of ash fill the sky. The Höss children’s perception of the world outside the house is also evident in small nuances. The little girl’s nocturnal dreams in black-and-white inverted images are the most impressive of the artistic ornaments with which the film is packed to the maximum satisfaction of the festival viewer. The scene with Höss on the stairs with the dark empty corridors is brilliant and the highlight of the film in my opinion. The Zone of Interest is a different view of the Holocaust, with the most unpleasant music you have ever experienced accompanying the closing credits. This puts Jonathan Glazer in the company of masters like Michael Haneke and Yorgos Lanthimos. [Cannes FF] (05/21/2023)

I have a bit of a complicated relationship with director Jonathan Glazer. I like some of his films a lot, others practically not at all, and I'm glad Zone of Interest falls into the former group. I'm also happy that it ended up looking a little different than I expected. Glazer's Holocaust drama is very much built on working with sounds, but mostly with the viewers and their knowledge. You have to know what family you're looking at all the time, who Rudolf Höss was and what atrocities he committed. Zone of Interest doesn't explain anything, you could say that we learn practically nothing about the protagonists, because there's no need to, and Glazer is counting on you paying attention in history class, or at least reading the synopsis before entering the cinema. This allows him to focus solely on establishing atmosphere, combining hints of the horrors happening behind the walls of the family home while showing the ordinary little Nazi domestic bliss of the Hösses and their children. They come across as extremely ordinary, and that they are cynics and human monsters is something you have to surmise from their actions, as they balefully ignore the hell they themselves have unleashed or are willingly profiting from. Perhaps my only complaint is that I would have expected Zone of Interest to make it a little harder (like, say, the new Scorsese) and more uncomfortable for me as a viewer. On the other hand, Glazer's attempt to merely chronicle the family life of two monsters who tend a greenhouse, organize family get-togethers in the garden, and invite a loving mother to their home, only to occasionally subtly remind us who we're actually dealing with, works well too. An original and compelling drama capable of being very uncomfortable at the right moments. (02/08/2024)

Zone of disinterest. One of those films that the teacher puts on in history class, but 80% of the students would rather pull out their cell phones and scroll through Instagram because it's almost as boring as regular class. The film is completely empty in terms of information, so it doesn't even serve an educational purpose. We follow the banalities of the daily life of a concentration camp commander and his family. We learn nothing about the characters, the dialogues are cut down to the minimum, Auschwitz is not shown, so again a film for book readers, where the viewer has to figure everything out (fck you!!), it has no script, the atmosphere doesn't work at all, there’s no build-up, no tension or escalated drama between the Nazis, the emotions below zero, and in the end, instead of showing a pile of corpses, they show only shoes. The film is so empty, slow and boring that even if you skips twenty minutes, you won’t miss anything crucial. Son of Saul was thematically similar, but somewhere else. An intimate arthouse of the highest order. 3/10. (02/22/2024)