Alright, I’m counting on sleuths here to do some investigating. I have not be able to confirm this intel, which I only received 24 hours ago, but I figured it was worth reporting on.
After some back and forth, I can reveal a few things that I’ve heard about Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.”
Firstly, this is another person telling me that ‘Zone’ was an unusual shoot for an assortment of reasons. Glazer shot many versions of different scenes over and over. Different screenplays were being used throughout the shoot. This, more or less, confirms our previous reporting that Glazer was toying with the idea of different versions for the film, told via different perspectives.
Now, here’s where I need more sleuthing. A person close to the production is telling me that Ben Kingsley and Scarlett Johansson appear in the film, although it is not for certain if their parts will be kept in the Final Cut given the various different versions of the film. One thing’s for sure: Kingsley and Johansson are not the leads.
In fact, this same source tells me they don't believe the film has any leads. The screenplay was both in English and Polish, with a mosaic of characters entering in and out of the frame.
Supposedly, Glazer also hired additional tech crew from the U.S. to help the Polish team better understand the 360-degree cameras and the advanced lensing.
Glazer was trying to be very accurate with the era of the film. The result was an abundance of precisely meticulous art direction with period-specific recreations of streets from that era, not just indoor locations.
It’s quite clear, as if we didn’t know this already, that Glazer is a perfectionist. He is said to have had a thick book full of photographs of images from the era that he presented to the cast and crew for aesthetic purposes. He would go over this book on a frequent basis during the shoot.
All I can tell Cannes boss Thierry Fremaux is: please, for the love of God, try your best to have this movie as part of this year’s official selection. You have until Thursday to convince Glazer to bring his film to Cannes.
This is the adaptation of the nonfiction book by Dan Schilling and Lori Longfritz. It wrapped production in February and has been in post-production ever since. The film test-screened a few months ago.