An ear open for echoes of the past

One of the more thought-provoking movies to emerge in the past couple of years, from a Western film industry that thrives on pointless fantasies, redundant remakes and superfluous sequels, was Jonathan Glazer's remarkable recreation of a milieu that is both distant and ever-present.

- MAHIR ALI

The Zone of Interest focuses on the family life of Auschwitz-Birkenau's SS commandant, Rudolf Hoess. They occupied an idyllic villa on the periphery of the death camp in Poland, and wallowed in luxury, turning a deaf ear to the barked commands, howls of despair and grinding machinery of mass extermination echoing from across the boundary wall, and a blind eye to the smoke from chimneys located within sniffing distance.

Amid the contrasting clamour of vibrant life and unavoidable death, Hoess and his Nazi confederates gather to discuss how the elimination process could efficiently be sped up.

That's among the more chilling scenes in a film that only hints at atrocities it does not actually depict.

The protagonists' insouciance has echoed across human history for eight decades.

And the director, Jonathan Glazer, was clear from the outset that his product was as much about the present as about the past.

A couple of weeks ago, the Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, in an article titled 'The IDF's own sickening "zone of interest" in the heart of Gaza', citing a resort set up in the 'cleansed' north of the destroyed enclave where Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) troops could recuperate over a steak and a beer and a massage before returning to the killing fields.