The Zone of Interest
Originally published on 13/10/23 on Letterboxd
About once a decade, Jonathan Glazer emerges from hibernation to shatter whatever dominant conventions exist in the form of the genre he operates within- be it the revenge thriller or existential sci-fi—and quite simply what the definition of cinematic form even is at that point in time. His latest is no different, at once a Brechtian diorama of the minute procedural adjustments that accumulate into historical atrocity and an indictment of cinema's failure as an instrument of documentation (partly owing to its own complicity in such atrocities. I can’t say I’ve ever experienced anything quite like the sound design (in collaboration with the spare deployment of another bloodcurdling Mica Levi score), which is at once revelatory and obfuscating towards the horrors of Glazer's images.
In spite of the (rightfully so) overwhelming critical acclaim Glazer has received, I’ve encountered quite a few criticisms of this for its sterility and often suffocating formal rigour, amongst which the harshest came from Paul Schrader, who termed the use of the omniscient perspective in the film a mere “parlour trick”. There’s something deeply ironic about that vein of critique, given that Glazer and Co’s multi-camera approach and attention to detail in replicating a facsimile of Commandant Höss’ actual estate right next to Auschwitz are perhaps the closest anyone has come to exemplifying the “surveillance cam” mode of cinema that Schrader outlines in Transcendental Style in Film.
The key differentiator, of course, is that Glazer doesn’t necessarily rely upon the durational quality of the image as an artist like Benning might- instead, his cuts are frequent and deployed with a remarkable sternness, preventing us from remaining in the same room with any of the occupants of Höss’ estate for any longer than the time that they spend within said rooms. The ever-present commotion just outside any given space, from horses marching to the occasional scream followed by gunfire, is instead what maintains a durational consistency that refuses to contort either time or space. When that rigour so clearly gives way to a blurring of the ontologies of these clearly delineated spaces (the most unsettling of which being ashes from Auschwitz drift into the river where Höss’ children bathe), it stresses upon the fact that is is not simply a film concerned with the “banality of evil” (which even a film about the Holocaust like Schindler’s List is necessarily concerned with)- instead, it is concerned with representation as a tool used to stamp out dissent and contort genocide into procedure, of which cinema has so often acted as perhaps the worst offender. It is a film that recognises the monumental failure of cinema to live up to Griffith’s aspirations for the medium, and that in order for these images to progress beyond facile attempts at reconciliation or renegotiation with historical atrocity, the very boundaries that define “form” as something that differentiates cinema from other art forms must be abandoned.