The Zone of Interest (2023)
As I expected, the soundscape is central to this film. Maybe not the full experience at home, but still effective enough with how the “background noise” is put at the same level of the sounds of what we see on screen. Overall there is a lot of great filmmaking here. They did their homework with the pre-production. Every shot is neutrally framed but always with a clear purpose. Static and from a distance. Very mechanical. We never get really close to the Höss familiy, but they are not shown as monsters. Which is were we find the truly horrific thing here, which I assume is Glazer’s main purpose - to show the normalization of these acts. We all know what happens beyond the walls, which makes their casual family drama even more chilling. How the mass murder of millions of people is handled like just another engineering problem at the factory - which is exactly what is was. Efficient and methodical. Which is reflected in the movie as well, which is a technical impressive achievement that manages to find a new angle to tell the story of the holocaust from.
Rating: 5