Mark Kermode reviews The Zone of Interest - Kermode and Mayo's Take

let's talk about a movie that is at this week yes this is a film which you've seen and about which you probably know more about the subject matter than I do so this is the zone of Interest which is the new film by Jonathan Glazer who made sexy beast we recently reviewed the uh the TV series the TV prequel to sexy beast which I said is very very unlike the film sexy beast birth under the skin that extraordinary science fiction film with uh Scarlett Johansson this is Loosely adapted from a 2014 uh book by Martin Amos which I haven't read have you read the Martin okay fine so Christian fredel plays and correct my pronunciation Rudolph hus well is Rudolph H yes because it's it's an o with an and then because a lot of people go do you mean Rudolph H completely different person rudol H Who real life SS officer who was the longest serving comment down at aitz was executed in 1947 so the film takes place around the edges of the Holocaust is the probably a way of describing it it doesn't ever take us inside the Concentration Camp it takes place in this house next door to the camp this house and garden next door to the camp where Rudolph lives with his family Sandra huller who was uh got a first Oscar nomination for anatomy of a fall so she's got a Best Actress nomination in fact I think she could have got a supporting actress nomination for this plays his his wife Hedrick who is very keen to develop and tend to the dream home in which she now lives she's proud of her house she's proud of the ground she's proud of the gardens she wants her husband to get promotions for their social standing to increase one day mother comes to visit and is impressed by the house in the gardens although alarmed by the proximity to the camp here's a clip that's from it's a very brief clip but so essentially what they're standing in this garden and she's saying so that's the camp wall so yes it's just there anyway we've been doing all this sort of flowers and stuff and but it's just there oh she's just deflecting the whole time cuz her mom is going really yeah it's really that close uh the film is up for five Oscars for Glazer for best directing and adapted screenplay along with best film uh International Film and best sound the sound is really important because you don't see the atrocities in the camp you hear them you hear them as a sort of background noise something that's happening just beyond the edge of the frame but you don't you don't see it happening Glazier has talked about this and said it's like what's happening in the camp is almost the other film or arguably the film that this is all going on beyond the frame and there's also a very very sparse score by miky and I love their work I think miky is a really interesting composer but they wrote music for the film that was then hugely paired back to the point that what we now have is a sort of prologue we have music at the beginning and some at the end and then we have some sort of sound escapes during the film but the film itself isn't in any way sort of Ador by by music it's a very very sparse very Bleak very kind of chilling you know sound space um I think for the thing that's that's really well I mean there so many things about the film that make it powerful one of the things apparently Jonathan Glazer set cameras in the house he described it like in the way they would doing big brother so that when the people were acting in the house they they could do a lot of it you know moving around quite naturally with within the house so there's almost a kind of documentary feel sometimes to the way that the acting happens but it's also a very very studied very precise the frame is very particular the way in which things are framed it's it's not there's nothing kind of casual or handheld about it it's all very very formal the I think the best way of describing it is it's like it's it's like a study of looking away it is a portrait of life going on in inverted commas normally side by side with something that is absolutely unspeakable and I was reminded of I went to Berlin I'm going back to Berlin quite soon the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin which is this strange thing when you walk into it there are these low walls it's like a like a maze you walk in and and it's the walls very very low down and then suddenly the next thing you know is that the walls are really big and you you you've walked into this thing that you're completely trapped by but you almost didn't notice it was happening and the juer position of kind of quotidian life and unspeakable horror is what's happening in the film it's also a portrait of kind of seeping growing corruption that that you know a man whose whole life becomes the simple mechanics of killing and there's a scene later on in which he talks about you know he he looked at a room of people and all he could think of was you know how how fast could they be could they be killed and it's a film about complicity and the I think the the fact of it's horrible every day quality makes it even makes it worse you know people talk sometimes about you know the banality of evil which is the great pH I don't I don't think this is the banality of evil I think it's the kind of screaming silent horror of indifference or or or or or callousness and I was reminded of when son of Saul came out one of the interesting things about son of Saul is because it's all shot in very close on the central actor's face the atrocities of the camp you do see them but they're glimpsed at the side they to the side of the frame and Claude lansman talked about how that was you know possibly a way of you know the fact that you can approach this subject through through fiction and drama and I think maybe it's maybe you can only look at something this terrible from the side you know it's like sometimes you can't look at something straight on and maybe looking to the side of it is actually more powerful I found it very chilling now you you know about about hus when I yeah unique I did um um I read a u for one of the courses I was taking I I read a book called um it was by Lucy dvit who's one of who's a great Jewish uh historian and it was called the war against the Jews and in there it had a lot of it had a lot of uh comment about Rudolph hurse and he was required to write a diary because he he was arrested and then hanged at nurburg and he wrote and it's because of the his diary that I think this story is there and that this film is is made because in the diary he is completely inadvertedly to animals it is on in that respect a perfectly ordinary life that you can relate to and then as we see in the film he gets on a horse and he rides into ashz and we know what's going on there so I think it's the yes and the horse is a it's huge but strange detail it's it's a um it's very disconcerting but it's a I thought it was brilliant precisely because he was so disconnected and cold about he I mean he on when we see him in his house it's an ordinary house with ordinary kids going you know losing things playing and playing and going in the river and all that and then but it's because we know what he's doing when he goes to work which makes the whole thing increasingly oppressive as we go through can I just ask you about the um I don't know the story books sequences or the kind of the dream sequences yes which in which you see a character sort of coming and hiding food yeah yes yeah I just wonder because people go oh what I wonder what this is going to do well yeah I mean I those sequences are strange but there's some there is something there's something going on there about a kind it's is it a glimmer of is it a glimmer of hope is it a is it a is it a sort of fairy tale I mean I thought it was that you know the during the night time that the the food was being was being PL that is what's what's happening but you see it in almost like a kind of like a sort of sort of semi fairy tale environment I mean I to be honest with you I didn't question it I thought it was I I thought it was just some kind of glimmer of something because it's so oppressive it's so oppressive being in that house with this and as I said I think the soundscape is the thing that no absolutely is you have to listen to what's going on yeah did you have a problem with those with with those sort of story book sequences no I thought it was slightly out of precisely because it had felt very documentary as you mentioned that suddenly it was doing something else which it's quite entitled yeah to do um yeah I mean I don't I I don't I mean they it didn't take me out the so I don't think I was entirely sure exactly stylistically what was happening but I thought that it was it didn't it didn't diffuse the spell of the film for me which is you know which is oppressive and and I think Sandra huller is brilliant I think she's absolutely brilliant in it and I you know I thought thought her performance was utterly believable and and you know quietly chilling also Taps into the conversation which we've had a number of times um about other similar movies about monsters and how you know if you're portrayed as a monster on television or in a movie it sort of isn't good enough because Rudolph HSE is not he does monstrous things but he's not a monster because we see him at home being normal it needs it needs a deeper explanation which you are forced to come out and try and come to terms with also I think we should say because next week Steve McQueen is I think he's coming on the program is that right and uh is coming on to talk about uh his new film occupied city which again is about the Holocaust and I do I do think it's really important that these stories continue to be told and we continues to be brought back into your immediate Consciousness um you know it's zone of interest is not an easy watch nor nor should it be but it I think it is it is right and good that this story is being constantly retold

Channel: Kermode and Mayo's Take

Views: 150,045

Keywords: Mark Kermode, Simon Mayo, Kermode and Mayo's Take, Film Review, TV Review

Id: nIQyyereZjM

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024