Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival
Attending a gala screening at the Cannes Film Festival is a strange experience. No matter what movie is playing, men are in tuxes and women are in formalwear. Pop music and oldies blast on the red carpet. Cameras snap celebrities in Chopard jewels and occasionally random attendees who have put on something absurd to catch photographers’ attention.
I walked into the Grand Lumière on Friday night in awe of the bizarre pomp but also eager and a little nervous for what I was about to see: Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. All I knew about the Under the Skin director’s first film in nearly a decade was that it was about Nazis living just outside Auschwitz and that it was based on a Martin Amis novel but was apparently vastly different from its source material. I also was aware that Glazer, known for films like Birth and Sexy Beast, makes strange and exciting work that defy expectations.
And sure enough you could feel an uneasy chill descend on the enormous theater full of people who had just gawked at the likes of Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman, when Glazer’s film began with an extended sequence of a black screen as Mica Levi’s disorienting score blared. At one point, there was a smattering of applause as the blackness continued, as if that corner of the audience thought there was something wrong and wanted to urge the movie to actually start. But it had already.