Talk about timing.
Martin Amis, “The Zone of Interest” author, has died. Just over 24 hours after Jonathan Glazer’s very loose adaptation of the novel premiered at Cannes.
The New York Times reports that Amis died of esophageal cancer, as confirmed by his wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca. Amis write 15 novels in his career.
You wouldn’t know it by the US reviews, but Glazer’s film isn’t as universally loved at Cannes as you might have read. I spoke to many detractors today. Here’s the interesting part, all of them are not American. Many are French and Italian.
The critics over at Cahiers du Cinema are not down with it. They loved Glazer’s previous film “Under the Skin” as it even cracked their decade top 10. It’s also not doing that well in the Chaos French poll. Ditto Le Film Francais’s grid.
US/UK critics have had the opposite reaction. As it currently stands, ‘Zone’ has a 95 on Metacritic. It’s universally loved by the Anglo-saxons. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Let’s see how it does when more mainstream critics get to see it.
The film is technically masterful, but it is a very cold film, plotless, in fact, that more or less assumes that you will be engrossed and that chilled to the bone in watching its Nazi family live a cozy home life as an unseen mass extermination occurs right next to their home.
I don’t know if this film can win the Palme d’Or, maybe it can, but will it convince Ruben Ostlund’s eclectic jury? However, I can definitely see Glazer winning the Best Director prize.