Every generation has to reinterpret histories and stories. No version is set in stone, and when we look back, it's through the understanding gained since. I'm a generation born well within living memory of the war. I say 'the war' as if that is definitive, and another war to end all wars. World War 2 in the '60s and '70s already seemed like a faded past, a sepia photograph in a multicoloured age. Now time has stretched even further, and that time seems nearer. The Zone of Interest is like one of those colourised postcards or home movies which seem to animate the past and make the distant characters seem real, contemporary and relatable.
As a post-war, just into baby boomer child, my childhood was coloured by my father's war stories, endless war films, and The World at War series, revealing the evidence, footage, testimony of the Holocaust. I remember talking to someone I knew, many of whose family had died or survived the Holocaust, and was amazed that, at the time, I knew much more about it than her, as growing up, her parents had tried to shield her from the truth.
Like all the audience for The Zone of Interest, I bring with me all the documentaries, films, knowledge and conversations I've encountered. Whatever you know about the Holocaust you bring to this film. It's always behind the scenes, over the wall, just out of sight. Its constant presence, its incomprehensible scale, seeps into every frame.
It's today's film. We simply observe. Of course these are actors, but they just get on with it, and there is little to reveal their inner life or thoughts as they carry on with their deliciously normal existence while yards away in Auschwitz, hell is going on. I don't need to see another movie for a while, I just need to think about this one.
The sound and the use of sound in this film is a masterpiece.
The Zone of Interest, Director Jonathan Glazer 2024
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