Jonathan Glazer, Łukasz Żal Interview

In the nine years it took to make “The Zone of Interest,” director Jonathan Glazer singles out his visit to the real-life home of Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), the commandant of Auschwitz, as the breakthrough moment the film started to come together.

“It was a very physical experience for me,” said Glazer of standing at the wall separating the Höss’ yard and the concentration camp. The intensity of the feeling would only grow and guide the film’s development. While on the Toolkit podcast, Glazer explained how in recent years his wife Rachel Penfold has helped him start to understand his creative process. “She said it’s like I’m chasing that feeling, to put that physical feeling on screen, and the images and the film is the sort of scaffolding that supports that feeling.”

For a filmmaker whose process rivals Kubrick’s in the years of methodical planning, we think of Glazer’s precise formal choices as being more intellectual than instinctive. Yet Glazer admitted it wasn’t until he was editing the film, while reading philosopher Gillian Rose, that he was able to fully articulate what he was trying to do with “The Zone of Interest.”

“[Rose] imagined a film that could make us feel ‘unsafe’, by showing how we’re emotionally and politically closer to the perpetrator culture than we’d like to think,” Glazer said. “It articulated something for me in a way that I hadn’t been able to for myself.”

By forcing…