Before you read on, a word of caution. There are some films – many of them – that impress on a first viewing but which start to trickle away, like a handful of sand, the moment you leave the cinema. Then there are others, far fewer in number, that strike like a lightning bolt on a first watch and stay with you, scarring themselves into your psyche and subtly but permanently shifting your movie-viewing paradigm on its axis. Jonathan Glazer’s masterful and chilling The Zone of Interest fell into the second group for me. I left it shaken and stricken; it stayed with me, stubbornly, over the months that followed.
As most film fans will agree, that kind of viscerally intense response to a film is the holy grail of cinema viewing. It’s a vanishingly rare experience, and one that is magnified by the sense of discovery that comes from knowing virtually nothing about a film going in (I knew that it was a loose adaptation of the novel of the same title by Martin Amis, but little else). So with that in mind, to any readers who remain in the privileged position of knowing nothing about The Zone of Interest, consider putting aside this review and watching the film first. Otherwise, read on.
