The Zone of Interest

How do you choose what movie to watch? Most people want to be entertained. Others want to be educated. British filmmaker Jonathan Glazer’s harrowing Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest – recipient of five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director – falls into the latter category. Loosely adapted from Martin Amis’ 2014 novel, it follows the seemingly mundane lives of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedl), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Huller) and their children who dwell in a comfortable home that’s adjacent to the notorious concentration camp in Western Poland.

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. 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.

Both sensitive and slyly ambitious Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedel) and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Huller), thrive on order and for the former, that’s an ideal qualification for military life. Rudolf quickly rises through the ranks, while Hedwig dedicates herself to being a wife and mother to the two children she quickly bears, Hans and Inge… yes, one girl and one boy, a child to replace each parent. Hedwig keeps an impeccable house, cultivates an impressive garden in which both flowers and vegetables thrive and raising Hans and Inge. Their lovely house would shine in the most competitive American suburb, their dog is adorable… and they radiate an unspoken but clearly shared belief in their own perfection: One that’s based on fulfilling an almost comical ideal of partnership, parenthood and division of labor while the crematorium visible over their back wall is converting enormous numbers of other people into greasy smoke and ashes.