It’s 2023, and movies are finally back. Hollywood has at last reached the point where the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are barely felt, and the ensuing bounty of film has resulted in one of the best years for the movies in recent memory. This was the year of the Barbenheimer craze that occupied our collective consciousness over the summer months, the year of features ranging from the nostalgic and personal to the unsettling, the harrowing, and the deeply, fantastically odd.
From the very first trailer, The Zone of Interest is instantly captivating. The blips of beautifully crafted shots mixed with the unnerving score interspersed with reviews expressing the film’s urgency. The film is written and directed by Johnathan Glazer (Under the Skin, Sexy Beast and Birth) and is loosely adapted from the novel The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis. The film follows Nazi officer Rudolf Höss and his family as they live a shockingly normal life while sharing a wall with the concentration camp Auschwitz. The Zone of Interest makes us confront the unimaginable; forcing the viewer to grapple with the ability of human beings to ignore the unspeakable happening right in front of their eyes.
Continue reading “Review: ‘The Zone of Interest’: The Horror of Complacency”