The Zone of Interest (2023)
Commandant Rudolf Hoess lives what seems to be a very normal life with his wife and children. They’ve got a fine house and plenty of help, they enjoy days at the river, they eat well, they dress well. Everything looks bucolic and idyllic until the camera pulls back and we see that the Hoess abode is right next to the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
While the family can hear what’s happening at the camp, it’s doubtful that they care. Hoess’s oldest son looks at teeth taken from dead victims. Hoess’s wife happily passes around clothes to her help that were taken from dead Jewish women and political prisoners, and gingerly uses a lipstick she finds in the pocket of a fur coat. She asks Hoess to bring her some chocolate from the camp. Any kind of chocolate. Yes, the Hoess family looks on Auschwitz, the most notorious and deadly Nazi death camp, as their personal store.
We don’t find out everything about Hoess as the film goes on, but in one scene he seems to peer into the future at present-day Auschwitz, where shoes upon shoes upon shoes are piled up together in a room, only behind glass and with a path cut through them wide enough for a crowd to walk through. There’s also a room full of suitcases and another full of prosthetics and crutches. The gas chambers and crematorium stand as if the Nazis simply walked away from them. Ironically, Hoess was hanged next to the building holding the gas chambers, the spot marked by a plaque. His reason for sending so many to their deaths? He was following orders.
Uh huh. A lot of Nazis said this after they were caught. Us sensible people call BS.
The Zone of Interest is based on the late Martin Amis’s novel of the same name, only co-writer and director Jonathan Glazer decided to stick to true-to-life events, and the result is devastating. Even the music isn’t so much music as it is a cry for help, with distorted chords accompanying, for instance, a close-up of a flower and then a blank red screen, with screams barely audible underneath. The film seems determined to mess with our heads, forcing us to focus on what is right in front of us while we’re also unable to escape the evil that occurred.
This sense of isolation makes Zone of Interest feel scarier and more disturbing than if we were actually watching what Hoess did at the camp, simply because no movie can top what imaginations can cook up, given the right conditions and enough time for reality to sink in.
As a movie, A Zone of Interest is beautifully filmed and compelling. As someone who has studied World War Two for years, although not an expert, I found it to be a different way to present the Holocaust and those who claimed they were just “following orders” while their families joyfully picked through stolen belongings like birds of prey. I went about the next hours feeling extremely sobered and appalled at the willful blindness and indifference of humanity in the face of true evil. I suspect I’ll feel that way every time I think of the film, not to mention it makes what I knew going in that much more appalling.
The Zone of Interest is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.
My grade: A+
Principal Cast: Sandra Huller, Christian Friedel, Freya Kreutzkam, Ralph Herforth, Max Beck, Ralf Zillmann, Stephanie Petrowitz, Imogen Kogge, Johann Karthaus, Marie Rosa Tietjen, Julia Polaczek, Martyna Poznanski, Medusa Knopf, Luis Noah Witte, Lilli Falk, Daniel Holzberg, Nele Ahrensmeier, Zuzanna Kobiela
Directed by Jonathan Glazer.
Written by Martin Amis (novel) and Jonathan Glazer.