For cinephiles, a new film by Jonathan Glazer, one of the most distinctive directors working today, is always considered a bit of an event. That’s certainly the case with his latest, the deeply unsettling Auschwitz-set drama The Zone of Interest, a movie that stands several universes apart from anything else you’re likely to see in cinemas this year. Nearly a month after seeing it, I find it still rattling uncomfortably around my brain. It’s a work that plenty will struggle with, for various reasons, but it’s indelible in a way few films are.
If The Zone of Interest might be considered an event based on its own merits, its also an event due to how just long-awaited it is. It’s the first film in more than a decade for Glazer, who has never exactly been one to churn ‘em out. The director has released four films since his 2000 debut, Sexy Beast. Compare that filmography with Martin Scorsese who, despite being considered to be in the autumn of his career, has released four films – The Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon – in the time since Glazer released his last one, 2013’s hypnotic sci-fi horror Under the Skin.
