The Zone of Interest

Jonathan Glazer keeps the camera on the commandant’s side of the garden wall, yet the other side is not entirely unseen: the closing sequence cuts to the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum today, staff cleaning the display rooms. That cut carries everything withheld until then. The house is a rebuild: a derelict property a few hundred yards from the real Höss home, converted over months, its garden planted ahead. Glazer and cinematographer Łukasz Żal embedded up to 10 cameras in and around it, running them at once with no crew in the rooms: Żal in the basement, Glazer in a container beyond the wall. Lighting is natural and practical only. Sound designer Johnnie Burn spent a year building a library before filming and compiled a 600 page document of camp events, mapping distances so each sound sits at the right remove. The girl leaving food comes from a Polish resistance member Glazer met before her death in 2016; her own bicycle and dress are on screen, shot with a thermal camera. It won the Cannes Grand Prix, then 2 of its 5 Oscar nominations: international feature and sound. A good fit if you will sit through the opening black screen and let the wall tell it. Not for anyone waiting to follow Höss through the gate; the film stays in the garden.