This year’s field of best picture nominees includes epic explorations of mass violence (likely winner Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon), achingly emotional tales of human connection (Past Lives, The Holdovers), sharp satires of race and gender (American Fiction, Poor Things) and an obligatory blockbuster (Barbie).
And then there’s The Zone of Interest, a British-Polish-American production directed by Jonathan Glazer, operating in its own lane. Its plot isn’t so much a story as icy submersion via observance, its characters beyond morally bankrupt, its canvas blanched, rigid, understated. The power is in its elision: what we can’t see but know is there, what we hear – the grunts, gunshots and grind of genocide, as an unceasing background hum. (The film is, among other things, a feat of sound design.)
