John Maguire on Film: The Zone of Interest is uncomfortable and essential viewing
Composed with chilling precision, superbly staged and acted, this engrossing and disquieting film distils the essence of evil into the everyday
Jonathan Glazer’s multi-Oscar nominated new film, The Zone of Interest, loosely adapted by the director from the novel by Martin Amis, uses the lives of the family of the commandant of Auschwitz as a vehicle to reexamine our understanding of the Holocaust.
Composed with chilling precision, superbly staged and acted, this engrossing and disquieting film distils the essence of evil into the everyday.
Glazer opens with a daring two minute overture from Mica Levi (who scored his last film, Under The Skin, a decade ago), that plays against a black screen; a wasp’s nest of whispered groans and mechanised rumbles so bleak it makes Mahler’s 6th sound like Kylie Minogue. We have been warned.
