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The Zone of Interest (2023)

The Zone of Interest was a film that I was looking forward to since I heard about it. The film follows a family that are living next door to Auschwitz. It's a simple premise that doesnt feel it needs to add emotional moments or anything melodramatic to emotional manipulate you. The film doesn't have any names I recognise except for Sandra Hüller who I recently saw in 'Anatomy of a Fall' and she continues to impress me. She plays someone who is almost oblivious to what's going on beyond the wall and is more concerned about making her house as lovely as possible. The film spends a great of time making her seem like she is a loving housewife but there are moments where the mask slips and she is horrible to her servant. 

The interesting take is that we never see inside Auschwitz. However it is present in a lot of scenes because we hear gunfire and then we hear screams and in a few scenes we see smoke billowing from the chimneys. This is far more effective than if we had seen inside there. This doesn't make it less harrowing and the grimness was pitched just right. 

There are a couple of things that don't quite make sense to me. The first being the infrared shots with the young girl. I'm not sure what the point of this portion was but it wasn't something that made the film bad or poorer. The other part that didn't make sense was the part when Rudolf is looking into the darkness and then the film moves forward in time to a bunch of cleaners at the Auscheitz Museum for a prolonged period before the film returns to Rudolph and then the film ends.

The directing is really good in this film. There aren't any close ups and we see things from a distance. There aren't any shaky cam shots at any point which is quite refreshing. There is a scene where Rudolf is fishing in the lake and he is standing there when the water changes colour slightly and he pulls out a bone and if this had been a different type of film we would have had a close up and dramatic music but the film lets horrors like this happen and come across in its own way. 

I really liked this film despite the grim setting. The acting was brilliant and Sandra Hüller continues to show what a good actress she is. The film is currently my film of the year.

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