Friday new releases: 23 February 2024

The Zone of Interest, Drive-Away Dolls, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba - To the Hashira Training are in cinemas and Orion and the Dark is on Netflix

While there is no denying that The Zone of Interest is one of the best films of this (or any) year, it still presents us with something of a conundrum.

Jonathan Glazer’s picture (inspired by rather than based on a novel by Martin Amis) is about the commandant of Auschwitz and his family who live next door to the camp, throwing parties, sunbathing, worrying about his career.

The horror of the holocaust are present – in sounds particularly – but they occur either outside the frame or in distance, on the other side of the garden wall.

We know what those horrors are – because we are students of history – and we can’t remain unmoved, despite the subtlety of the presentation.

And the Höss’s know, too, but they don’t care. Or rather, something even worse. They do care, but they care about different things than we do. He cares about the efficiency of his operation. She cares about her garden and her new financial status.

If you are familiar with the history, every scene will resonate with some unspeakable detail. For example, several times we see and hear the industrialists who are being made fabulously wealthy thanks to the forced labour in the camps or the investment by the state in their technology.

But what if you haven’t had access to the truth about that period before, or you have been surrounded by those who would minimise it or deny it? Does the film encourage you to ask questions or do you sit there, bored at all this domesticity, wondering what all the fuss is about?

It’s in the final stages of the film that the big ideas – rather than the conceptuality of it – start to land. Where we are asked to think a little bit more about these people and who they are – who they represent, what they mean – and Glazer’s filmmaking bravura becomes irresistible.

The soundscape is extremely important which means that a distraction-free cinema experience is, arguably, essential to the appreciation of this film.

The Zone of Interest deserves multiple viewings (and multiple interpretations), but it will be a little while before I’m ready to put myself through it again.

On a considerably lighter note, we get to celebrate the return of the Coens. Because, even though Drive-Away Dolls only features one of the brothers, Ethan as co-writer (with his wife Trisha Cooke) and director, it feels like a fully-fledged Coen Brothers film, sprung from the DNA of movies like Burn After Reading and Blood Simple.

It’s also probably the most sexually celebratory movie seen in mainstream cinemas in a long time.