The Zone of Interest — Silence Across the Wall

Rudolf Hoss is the Commandant of Auschwitz. His wife Hedwig keeps a garden. Their children play in it. Across the garden wall, unseen, history's worst industrial death is happening. Glazer's film commits to an act of radical formal restraint: we never see inside the camp. We only hear.

The sound design, by Johnnie Burn, is what makes the film work. Distant screams become background. Gunshots are part of the soundscape the way traffic is part of a city soundscape. The Hoss family learns not to hear. The audience cannot.

This is not a film you enjoy. It is a film you submit to. It is also, I think, one of the most morally serious films made in my lifetime. Glazer has insisted in interviews that the film is not historical but contemporary — an essay on the human capacity to compartmentalize atrocity.

Canadian engagements at TIFF Bell Lightbox, Cineplex Yonge-Dundas, Bloor Hot Docs, Vancouver International Film Centre. Go during the day — you will want to walk afterwards.