After three days, when the ongoing Cannes Film Festival appeared a bit gloomy – the showers not making it any easier – except for some star power like Johnny Depp, Jonathan Glazer’s competition title, The Zone of Interest, sparkled. A six-minute standing ovation followed the movie’s world premiere.
“Thank you very much”, Glazer told the crowd after the standing ovation and added, “I’m really overwhelmed by this. It’s a dream. To be a part of this with you, thank you.”
The Zone of Interest is Glazer’s first work to premiere at Cannes. It is his fourth feature after Sexy Beast, Birth and Under the Skin.
Glazer has had long intervals between his works. Nine years separated “Birth” and “Under the Skin,” while it’s been 10 years between “Under the Skin” and “The Zone of Interest.” “Birth” premiered at the Venice Film Festival, while “Under the Skin” was launched at the Telluride Film Festival.
The Zone of Interest narrates in a sombre fashion the story of an Auschwitz commandant and his wife. They live in a dream home, but next to the concentration camp, and the screams and gun shots together with smoke from the gas chambers are terrifying to the couple who, though, learn to live through them.
The Zone of Interest is loosely based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Martin Amis. The film stars Toni Erdmann actor Hüller as the wife of Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz commandant during the Holocaust. The cast also includes Christian Friedel, Daniel Holzberg and Sascha Maaz.
Earlier, the Sean Penn starrer Black Flies, was brutal. He plays a veteran rookie paramedic at the New York Fire Department. “We carry the misery,” a weary Penn’s character says in the film. This seems like an understatement as chaos unfolds in the city that is unforgiving.
Black Flies helmed by Jean-Stephane Sauvaire aims at honouring the heroic deeds and sacrifices of paramedics. The end credits give statistics about the alarming rate of suicide in the profession. But the movie is bit careless about the men and women who need help. Sauvaire appears more concerned with one group’s suffering than the other’s.
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