Could this be the best movie we’ll see in 2024?
Our film critic, Mark Walsh, in a column sponsored by the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, discusses some thrilling January films.
The Zone of Interest
Maybe your first thought of a successful writer about the Holocaust wouldn’t be someone born four years after the end of the Second World War II and who spend some of his school years at the Cambridgeshire High School For Boys, but Martin Amis’ novel about the a Nazi officer at Auschwitz was one of the most acclaimed of his career.
Writer/director Jonathan Glazer has taken the novel and reworked it into a devastating examination of the banality of evil during one of the most significant and tragic chapters of the 20th century.
Glazer has worked on some of the most famous commercials and music videos of all time, but has chosen his film projects carefully, from casting Ben Kingsley as a sociopathic gangster in Sexy Beast to Scarlett Johansson as a curious alien in Under The Skin. For this adaptation, he’s moved away from the fictional characters in Amis’ novel to a story centring around the real Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller).
The events that unfold in themselves are domestic and undramatic: moving house, the challenges of a day at work, a party with friends. But the idyll of the home that Rudolph and Hedwig have created is inescapably in the shadow of Auschwitz, and Glazer ensures that even as they attempt to live lives in wilful ignorance of the unspeakable terror just a few feet from their doorstep. It’s an undeniably difficult watch but also an essential one, which strikes at the very heart of the nature of evil.
The Zone Of Interest previews from 19 January and opens on 2 February.
All of Us Strangers
Magical realism can be a tricky style to pull off, asking the viewer to suspend disbelief that the world they’re accustomed to is changed in unbelievable ways.
When that change works most effectively, it’s in service of a story that explores our humanity in surprising ways, and Andrew Haigh’s adaptation of Tachi Yamada’s 1987 novel is a work of astonishing, yearning beauty that is already a strong contender for my film of the year before the first month is over.
Adam (Andrew Scott) is a London screenwriter living alone in a block of flats; he rebuffs the advances of one of his few neighbours, Harry (Paul Mescal), and instead attempts to find solace by visiting his childhood home. Although they died in an accident when Adam was just 12, he finds them (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) living in the house, having not aged a day and having no knowledge of world events after their death. Adam takes the opportunity to have the conversations with them that he never thought possible.
While their concerns for Adam are grounded in their own knowledge, they embrace him as he discusses his sexuality and his life, and his conversations also begin to form his developing relationship with Harry.
All Of Us Strangers touches on themes featured in Andrew Haigh’s previous films, including Weekend, 45 Years and Lean On Pete. Fans of his work – and I would count myself firmly in that category – will know that he’s no stranger to deep, insightful character work flecked with melancholy, but he’s taken that to another level, supported by a quarter of wonderful performances.
While Foy and Bell are excellent as the parents displaced in time, it’s Scott and Mescal’s dynamic that’s at the heart of the film, and what a heart it is. Three months on from first seeing the film, I’m still a little emotional just thinking about it and I can’t wait to revisit it on the big screen, even though I expect to be a blubbering mess by the end.
All Of Us Strangers opens on Friday, 26 January.
Pet Shop Boys: Dreamworld
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe formed their partnership more than 40 years ago, and in that time have become the UK’s most successful musical duo. Their number ones include West End Girls, Always On My Mind, It’s A Sin and Heart, some of more than 20 singles which have made the UK Top 10, they’ve won three BRIT awards and even appeared in The Archers. Now a chance to see them on stage at their glorious best is coming to the Arts Picturehouse screen.
Playing all of their greatest hits at the Royal Arena in Copenhagen last July as part of the Dreamworld tour across the UK and Europe. David Barnard, whose work as a director of live documentaries ranges from Radiohead and Gorillaz to the Moody Blues and a Pavarotti tribute, employs 14 cameras to capture the band and their support musicians and the sold-out audience in the Danish capital lapping up every moment.
Cinemas represent the next best alternative to actually making it to a gig, with the chance to be intimate with the action and to enjoy the music through one of the best possible sound systems. For fans it’s a chance to live or relive the highlights of their greatest hits tour, and for newcomers an ideal opportunity to see what has made the Pet Shop Boys one of the most enduring and successful acts in British music history.
Pet Shop Boys: Dreamworld is screening on Wednesday, 31 January.
American Fiction
Comedies typically struggle when it comes to awards season, but satire is more of an attention grabber and Cord Jefferson’s adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel Erasure is likely to get nominations in a number of categories this year. That includes for Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, the exasperated professor and novelist who can’t get his latest novel published as it’s not “black enough”.
A meeting with another author (Issa Rae) at a literary seminar plants an idea in his head, and later in an outburst of frustration he writes a new work entitled My Pafology, playing into all of the most clichéd stereotypes of black culture and society. When his new work is an unexpected success, he’s forced to create a persona of the book’s “author”, and his attempts to sabotage his own success backfire spectacularly. Wright’s commitment to every aspect of his author’s frustration and Jefferson’s pointed script make this one to watch during the busy Academy Awards and BAFTA season.
American Fiction opens on 2 February.
