The Zone of Interest, a British, American and Polish co-production directed by Jonathan Glazer, begins with a scene of bucolic bliss: a German-speaking family picnicking on a riverbank on a summer day. The specifics of character and dialogue are less important – you can barely catch the thread of conversation, anyway – than of the family’s mood: peace, tranquility, ease; on the father’s part, a note of concern. There have been a handful of films this year – Tran Anh Hung’s The Taste of Things, Annie Baker’s Janet Planet, Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt – that have excellently refuted the tyranny of story in how we evaluate cinema, emphasizing visual language, sound, rhythm, feeling to hypnotize, immerse and impart. The Zone of Interest is the best of these less plot-predominant films, and to the most nauseating end.
For the horror begins to creep into the frame as soon as the family returns to their house, a stately villa situated just beside a towering concrete wall. There’s a plume of smoke from the other side; a wordless, sickly looking man delivers supplies in a gray uniform. The delivery includes a box of clothing and a luxe fur coat, for the women of the house to pick over. And there is a relentless, churning background chorus of screams, grunts, grinds; the family’s domestic routines are frequently peppered with the sound of gunshots.
