Jonathan Glazer for “Area of Interest,” Anti-Semitism – The Hollywood Reporter
Jonathan Glazer is one of the first favorites of the Cannes Film Festival area of interest, which received a warm audience reception and glowing reviews from its Friday night premiere. The film is loosely adapted from the novel by Martin Amis which tells the story of Rudolf Höss, commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and his family living a rural life above the wall.
“You never really know why a topic should be tackled. It’s not something I planned. It’s an ever-evolving journey. It’s an ever-evolving journey,” said writer-director Glazer, whose work includes: sexy monster, birthAnd Under the skinDuring the press conference for the film. In saying that two years after the release of his last feature film Under the skin He was reading about the Holocaust and eventually visited Auschwitz: “It was a very profound week in our lives.”
He began to think about the wall that enclosed the camp, Glazer said, saying, “That wall becomes a manifestation of what we tell ourselves. We are being divided into pieces for our convenience.” The director worked with researchers who reviewed testimonies from survivors, who provided the director with any mention of the Höss family. Production designer Chris Audi visited Auschwitz and the Höss home, and did extensive archival work, largely limited to black and white photographs.
The film, which will be released by A24 in the US after its competition premiere at Cannes, was greeted with a rapturous reception at its Cannes premiere, with a long standing ovation. “At this point, it doesn’t seem like an exaggeration to say that Jonathan Glazer is incapable of making a film that is less than wonderfully original,” it read. Hollywood ReporterMovie review. “The worst thing you can say about the director is that, for such a singular talent, he’s frustratingly uncomposed.”
Lead Actress Sandra Holler, who is best known for her role in the movie Tony ErdmanHe said that playing the wife of a Nazi officer “was never about being good at something or doing something extraordinary. It had absolutely nothing to do with ambition.” She added, “I never felt so familiar with it, but at the same time, I felt like there was no real way to do it right.”
Glazer was asked about his release area of interest In light of the global escalation in anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and white supremacy. “What you’re trying to do is talk to the human potential for violence, wherever you are. Only [trying to] Showing these people as people and not as monsters was a very important thing because the great crime and tragedy is that humans have done this to other people,” said the director. “It is very comforting for us to try to distance ourselves from them but I think we should be less certain of that.”
Glazer recalled a conversation with his father in which they discussed the possibility of making a film about Auschwitz. “Let it rot,” his father told Glazer, or leave it in the past. And the director responded, “It’s very important that we keep talking about it, to try and make it as familiar as possible.” He added, “This is not a museum piece. It must be presented with a degree of urgency and foreshadowing.”