THE ZONE OF INTEREST – Review by Liz Braun
The Zone of Interest is a film centered on the domestic life of Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz. This is a timely and terrifying film directed (and co-written) by Jonathan Glazer, and loosely based on the novel by Martin Amis.
It is beautifully made, profoundly unsettling, and it is rightfully heralded as one of the most important films of the year.
The story looks at the daily lives of Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Huller), who are raising their children in a lovely villa right beside the camp — an idyllic setting with a beautiful garden and a river nearby where the children swim. The chimneys belching black smoke day and night are just a little thing in one’s peripheral vision …
This is a Holocaust story that averts its gaze from the carnage next door, just as the Höss family does. Or tries to. The Zone of Interest has an extraordinary score from Mica Levi and the movie starts with a terrible, indescribable sound, a monstrous note; sweet bird song then quietly rises to replace that disturbing noise. The first images are of a family enjoying nature, berry-picking and walking in the woods. Here is Hedwig holding the baby up to smell roses in the garden, and here is Hedwig looking at a newly acquired fur coat, pinching the hem to see if any gold or gems are hidden in the lining. She examines a lipstick she finds in the coat pocket.
It’s all a bit disorienting at first — is that a child playing with human teeth? — but by the time Höss and some colleagues engage in a conversation about exactly how the ovens work, there’s no mistaking the territory.
In previous generations one big question about the Holocaust has always been, “How could people have let this happen?” and The Zone Of Interest, not unlike Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon (2009), is an attempt to answer that question: here are essentially unconscious people becoming inured to horrific things, adjusting to incremental change, looking away.
(Is any such review complete without a statement connecting the history to current events? Let’s hope so.)
Filming The Zone of Interest involved placing hidden cameras throughout the Höss household and letting the actors undertake ordinary daily tasks. Despite the placid visuals, background noises keep the nearby killing machine ever-present, and muffled screams, shots and other sounds of violence seep into every gentle domestic scene. There is no arm’s-length remove provided here by either history or movie-making, and for the viewer, psychologically speaking, there’s nowhere to hide.
Snippets of work life intrude into Höss’ family time. In one happy swimming scene, the children splash about in the river as the commandant pulls something — bone fragment? Bit of human jaw maybe? — from the water. The kids are hustled home for a good scrub in the bath.
This is all based in reality, as are scenes of ash being used as fertilizer in the Höss’ gardens. By the time Höss really had Auschwitz operating at full tilt, about 10,000 Jews were being gassed daily. Incinerating all those bodies created tons of ash and it had to be disposed of somehow.
Höss was a dedicated SS man, quiet and hard-working. He was proud of his achievements at Auschwitz, and later at Nuremberg spoke openly of what he did and why. The performances from Friedel and Huller are creepy good, bringing to life the dutiful commandant, a man who loved dogs and horses, and his proud little wife, who in real life referred to the house at Auschwitz as a paradise.
Like “collateral damage” or “escalating conflict”, the term “zone of interest” (interessengebiet) is a euphemism for killing. It was used by the Nazis to refer to Auschwitz and the surrounding countryside of about 15 square miles, all of it overseen by the commandant.
The area was carefully isolated from the outside world.
