With 2 essential films, Cannes finds haunting new prisms on the Holocaust

Even before it entered its first weekend, the 76th Cannes Film Festival had claimed its first critical triumph and competition standout with "The Zone of Interest." An implacably chilling, entirely mesmerizing portrait of a family living in the shadow of the inferno, the movie was greeted at its Friday night gala premiere with rave reviews, crass Academy Awards speculation ("Has Director Jonathan Glazer Finally Hit the Oscar 'Zone' With 'Interest'?" wondered a Variety headline) and the usual meaningless gush about its lengthy standing ovation. The sustained applause was deserved but also, I suspect, a little incongruous. I'm glad to have seen Glazer's movie at a morning press screening that was noticeably absent any claps or cheers; as we stumbled out of the theater, silence seemed the only sane response.

Silence also feels appropriate following the news that the author Martin Amis, whose formidable oeuvre includes this movie's 2014 source novel, died Friday at the age of 73. Glazer's "Zone of Interest,"