The zone of interest is one of the most moving and memorable films released in the past year. It presents a unique perspective on the Holocaust, telling one story with its images and revealing a greater and more gruesome truth with its audio mix. The experience in a cinema is awe-inspiring: the film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director at the 96th Academy Awards, and also received a nomination for Best Sound for sound designer Johnnie Burn and sound mixer Tarn Willers. However, it’s easy to wonder whether the home release could possibly deliver its message with the same force, given the film’s reliance on sound mixing, which varies from home theater to home theater. Burn already has a plan for that.
In an interview with Polygon, Burn explained this The zone of interest uses two completely separate and technically unrelated soundscapes. The first accompanies the on-screen story of the Höss family, as patriarch Rudolf fulfills his role as commander of Auschwitz in 1943 Germany. This issue contains the characters’ dialogue, the score and the sound effects of each scene; it’s what you would expect the movie to sound like based on what you watch.
The second song, however, has the sounds of Auschwitz. It is filled with blaring sirens, frequent gunshots, the roar of chimneys belching smoke, and the screams of prisoners being brutalized and executed. It’s absolutely horrifying – and according to Burn, the entire soundscape has been carefully designed to ensure it never impacts the characters in the rest of the film. Whatever horrible noises are happening in the background, Burn made sure they never seemed in service of the Höss family’s emotions or storyline. Gunshots do not punctuate the family’s statements; they just happen and are ignored, as if from another reality, even though they take place only a few hundred meters away.
Image: A24
The one place where the line between the two soundtracks becomes permeable, according to Burn, is in the ambiguity of certain sounds. He explained that he and director Jonathan Glazer sometimes chose prisoner screams that sounded like trains, or screams aimed at making viewers unsure whether they were listening to one of the Höss children playing or something much more gruesome in the camp.
“The more you blur that line, the more you think: Well, (the audience) can close its eyes, but not its ears” Brand said.
But while all those details are easy to see in a theater, Burn took steps to make sure it came through for home viewers as well. And part of his planning also starts with decisions he made for the theatrical mix.
“One thing that plays in its favor is that we created a very detailed Dolby Atmos mix, with all kinds of sounds around us,” he explained. “It was very accurate and could pinpoint trains behind us and planes above us and all that. But in the end we pulled the bandwidth for that and scaled everything down because we thought it was sensational. Most of the film sound actually coexists with the dialogue, not in the audience, but on the front wall of the screen, because it just felt more documentary and less glossy.”
Going back to the scope of the sounds and centralizing them in a theater’s front speakers is a great fit for the home environment, Burn said: Most people watching the movie at home will use TV speakers or soundbars. That’s not the only design work he did for the separate final home release of the film.
Image: A24
“For the home entertainment versions I did a slightly different mix, where the background noise is a little louder,” he said. “In a cinema it is very quiet and the cinema speakers can play something very loud. So you have a huge range, while everyone’s washing machine is on and the speakers can only go so loud. (…) So you have less to play with in terms of your lowest point or your loudest point.”
According to Burn, this should give viewers an at-home experience as powerful as what theatergoers get, hearing the horrors of Auschwitz behind the everyday cruelty of the Höss family. And in a way, he thinks the home version offers its own take on the film.
“I think one of the real strengths of the movie is that sometimes you’re not sure what you’re hearing,” Burn said. “Not hearing the strange thing is probably not the end of the world. I would much rather do that than overdo it, because it’s almost like the quieter this movie is, the better it works.”
The zone of interest is in theaters now and has been expanded throughout its runtime. The film will open in a new wave of theaters on February 2 for its widest release.