**‘The Zone of Interest’: A Film By Jonathan Glazer That Will Leave You Disturbed**
How does life feel when one is constantly encircled by horror? Where do one’s pursuits of peace and life lie when death and brutalization is of merely a wall’s distance? *The Zone of Interest*, directed by Jonathan Glazer, attempts to address these horrifying questions. With five Oscar nominations, this film possesses the most unique storyline among the movies released this past year.
### The Mother of All Evil: The Family Perspective Towards Genocide and Mass Murder
The film, which is based on true events, follows the lives of the Hoss family with the same name as the book credited to the famous Martin Amis. The main protagonist is Rudolf Hoss, who is a Nazi war criminal who lived together with his wife and children. But this perfect family lived in a suburb right next to the Auschwitz concentration camp – a modern and beautiful house enclosing the family of madness, with only a wall between them and evil.
There is a very striking disparity in the imagery and sound which Glazer captures with his himself unique approach. It is the calmness of the lives that the Hoss family enjoys as opposed to all the violence occurring just a few meters away.
In the film, wife Sandra Hüller emphasizes that their house, which is located in a wonderful and calm place, is all they ever hoped for and desired.
But from their perfectly kept yard, theast fires of crematoriums and the whimpering and gun shots of the camp are heard forever. This horror is to the Hoss’s but a humdrum of no ethical authority.
### The ‘Evilness’ Since the Holocaust
Mothers in movies rarely get so much attention in a film as Sandra Huller gets. She calls herself “The Queen of Auschwitz” and successfully represents the chilling sarcasm of the film. It’s not that she looks away from the crimes committed outside her doorstep. It’s rather that she doesn’t think of them as crimes. This sickening fluctuation of reality makes her character tick.
Contrary to Glazer, who has decided to portray the Hoss family as outright monsters, Glazer as always had had a different approach. They are, in all their ordinary disturbing- unease seeking family. By divorcing the sensationalism Glazer brings viewers face-to-face with the question of how horror can stick in the ordinary life.
### Orchestral Instrumental Motion
Also mentioned is Roode, understated sounding wizardry which drives the film and speaks over the calm and beautiful images of the scene as painful despairing sounds.
With every image, the contrasting auditory backdrop of Auschwitz- the gunshots, screams, industrial monotone, comes out loud and clear.
This subdued approach can be seen as a healthy deviation from the conventional ways of portraying the Holocaust, mainstream cinema inclusive, as it does not rely on violence per se. The terror, on the other hand, is intensified and made more real through hints and suggestions, thereby inducing an overpowering sense of anxiety.
### The Dish That Has Shocking Depths
Critics observe that *The Zone of Interest* is relentless in its emotions and never tries to make it easy for the viewers. The plot sticks to the measures of Hoss family whose position is never once exposed to the wall of other peoples’ pain and instead they only witness voyeuristic audacity. For detail, the characters show us feelers of soot in the nose and their original commodities of slaughter combined into something beautiful.
The film’s final scenes transform the context in a cold-blooded manner, and it makes the audience feel discomfort for a long period of time because it doesn’t resolve the plot during the end credits either.
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*The Zone of Interest* is enjoying a theatrical release at the moment.
At Yesmovies, we do not shy from profound and new age narratives in film such as *The Zone of Interest*. If such immersive films, focusing on the dark branches of humanity and humanity’s ability to ignore the truth itself, are of your interest, then this is one film you wouldn’t wish to miss.