As I get out of the screen I keep the door for an elderly lady so hunched that she doesn’t reach my hips. A tall gentleman in his nineties whom I assume to be her son, or perhaps her grandson, holds her hand. As they pass in front of me, she looks up, gives me a tender smile, and with an accent I can’t quite place, says thank you. While I slowly follow them down the corridor towards the exit, I hear them conversing—she is Polish. My heart sinks to an even deeper level than the film has taken it, and it continues to fall as I write this note on my way home. And if the chilly wind outside has got my eyes wet with shy tears, is not quite for any of the obvious reasons, but for the beauty that art and life just made experience.
By the way, the only thing that doesn’t work in Jonathan Glazer’s long-awaited The Zone of Interest is the green glow of the emergency exit. Everything else is a marvel—exclamation mark.
