“The Zone of Interest” Review
On one side of the wall, a German family is enjoying a fun summer day. On the other side, tens of thousands of Jews are being systemically murdered in “The Zone of Interest”, a drama set during The Holocaust.
I consider myself a pretty strong person when it comes to watching films. I don’t shy away from cringey humor, I can watch films where the dog dies and I can even handle films that focus on topics like suicide, substance abuse, rape and violence. I understand not everyone is that way but I have a pretty high tolerance for what I can watch. I say this because watching “The Zone of Interest” was an experience where I came pretty close to an emotional breakdown. This film is truly brutal despite the fact that very little explicit imagery is shown. Instead, “The Zone of Interest” relies on the power of horrific suggestion all while depicting ordinary lives just feet away from one of the most evil places on the planet.
Set in the midst of World War II and Nazi Germany’s stranglehold over the European continent, the film depicts the everyday life of Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), the commanding officer of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and his family. They celebrate birthdays, garden, have family outings and try to build a beautiful life in which they serve each other and their country. However, there is just no escaping that, on the other side of the wall that borders their home, the most brutal acts of history are being perpetrated and that most of the film’s characters are complicit in this genocide.
Written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest” marks his return to cinema ten years after the release of “Under The Skin” which was one of the earliest big critical hits for the then up-and-coming distribution/production company A24. A decade later, with this film also being distributed by A24, Glazer has taken a pretty unique approach to this film depicting the terrors of The Holocaust by not actually showing them. The atrocities we all know about are never shown and we only get small glimpses into the concentration camp like an occasional sighting of a prisoner, a guard tower that can be seen above the wall separating the home from the camp and there are even Jewish women working as servants in the Höss family home.
However, those glimpses are absolutely chilling and all that the film needs to terrify you. The servants move so carefully and never make eye-contact because they know that a broken glass or a poorly polished boot could mean the difference between life and death. For me, the most terrifying image was seeing the dark smokestacks constantly burning because we all know why the chimneys of Auschwitz never stop running.
What the film lacks in gruesome visuals, it more than makes up for in its incredible sound design. Throughout the film, you can hear the sounds of dogs barking, people screaming and guns being shot. These sounds aren’t even that loud but it's enough to conjure the depravity that is associated with Auschwitz. The film is perfectly timed at an hour-and-45-minutes because I’m not sure just how much more of this I could take.
In order to accurately articulate how much this film emotionally affected me, I must go into details about my education. In middle school, my English teacher taught my class extensively about The Holocaust, specifically through literature, for six months. While this unit was the subject of some criticism by those who felt that we were too young to study this subject for such a lengthy period of time, I felt that it was an enriching adult dose that truly left an important impact. In addition, German children learn about The Holocaust at an even younger age while American history lessons (especially concerning the subjects of racism, oppression and our country’s most malicious acts) are more sugar-coated than donut holes.
Because of this education, I have a pretty vast knowledge of this time period. I also knew very little about what “The Zone of Interest” was about aside from the basic premise and even assumed that it was focusing on a fictional German family like “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”. So, when I found out in the first five minutes that the film’s protagonist was Rudolf Höss, who was a real person that was tried and executed for crimes against humanity by a tribunal in Poland, I immediately realized that this film was going to try and be as real as possible. The mere mention of Höss’s name terrified me and I stayed in this state for the rest of the film.
Unlike the film “The Zone of Interest”, the book of the same name the film is based on focused on a fictional SS commander of Auschwitz. The decision to switch out this character with a real monster of history was a massive improvement because you have to spend all of your time with Höss and his family which is a lot to ask of an audience.
As Rudolf Höss, Christian Friedel is incredibly scary because we see him purely as a hard-working family man who loves his children and wants to provide for his family. However, not only do we know what he really does when he leaves the house but the more time that is spent with this man, the worse the picture becomes if that was even possible. At one point, we see him in a room with commanders of several other concentration camps and it's unsettling to be feeling so much evil exuding from one shot. Very rarely does he and his various SS associates even acknowledge the fact that they’re murdering people. Instead, they just act like they’re working normal jobs because, in their minds, that’s exactly what they’re doing. Seeing Höss act so calmly about creating a crematorium or introducing a new method of gassing Jews (Höss was responsible for introducing the use of Zyklon B as the infamous method of mass death at the camp) is enough to elicit fear.
Like her immaculate performance in “Anatomy of a Fall”, Sandra Hüller commands every scene she’s in as Höss’s wife Hedwig because you spend a good chunk of the film wondering how much she knows about what’s happening at the camp. Is she in the dark like her children or is she perfectly aware of the mass extermination and thus complicit in the murder of millions?
When you think of concentration camps like Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Buchenwald, your mind usually sees them in black-and-white either because of the old photographs or because of films like “Schindler’s List”. Like the incredible documentary “Night and Fog”, made just a decade after the fall of Nazi Germany, “The Zone of Interest” is startling to watch because of how colorful the landscape around the camp is. While Auschwitz is never seen, the home next door where the Höss family lives is absolutely gorgeous with a lush garden that perfectly contradicts the pure evil that these characters are emitting. Seeing such vivid close-ups of beautiful flowers while hearing the faded screams of Jews being shot to death was so traumatic that I almost broke down crying in the middle of the theater. How can there be such beautiful things in a place where, according to Elie Weisel’s memoir “Night”, God doesn’t exist?
With “The Zone of Interest” having been nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, it’s not that hard to see why. There have been many great dramas that have depicted The Holocaust in all of its horror, but this film has taken it to a whole new level. It’s a cinematic marvel that I would highly recommend but only for those strong enough to handle it.
