Jarring is one that springs to mind.
Other ways I could describe the movie are like listening to someone sing out of tune for 106 minutes or scratch their fingernails down a blackboard.
The movie lacks harmony and cohesiveness but I think that is deliberate, given the storyline.
The Zone of Interest, based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, gives a kind of fly-on-the-wall insight in to the life of Rudolf Hoss, commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and his family.
I say fly on the wall because the way the movie was shot from multiple angles, it seemed somehow I was observing the drama from a distance.
Often a movie draws the audience in so they become part of the action.
Not this one.
Hoss and his family live an idyllic existence while next door hundreds of thousands of Jews are killed and their bodies burned.
There is nothing pleasant about this movie except possibly the Polish countryside and the commandant’s wife’s garden but even the scenery is overshadowed by the evil of the camp.
The characters all appear monsters to me, even though they are seen carrying on their everyday lives.
I did not find them personable or relatable.
Even the dog which keeps running in and out of view is annoying.
The soundtrack and sound effects all contribute to the film’s disharmony.
While we never see the Auschwitz inmates, we hear them and we hear what goes on inside the high barbed-wire fence that borders the garden.
Do not be fooled into thinking I did not like this movie.
I did and I recommend you go.
While it is a very clever movie, the subject matter is not for the faint-hearted.
Once again I am reminded it is how we perceive other cultures that determines how we treat them.
The slippery slope to annihilating another culture begins with the idea "my way is the only way".
