The Zone of Interest (2023)

 

The Zone of Interest (2023)

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Stars: Christian Friedel, Sandra Huller

Short Review, no spoilers

A quietly devastating, intelligently made window in to the world that was the household of Rudolf Hoss when he and his family lived in immediate proximity to Auschwitz while the commandant was stationed there. The excellent Jonathan Glazer’s aesthetics of distanciation channel Hannah Arendt’s observations on the banality of evil, as we witness the bizarrely ordinary life of a direct participant in some of the worst atrocities ever to be committed by one set of humans on another.

Full Review (spoilers)

The wait for the next Jonathan Glazer film always feels too long but The Zone of Interest marks an exceptional return to cinema screens for the filmmaker. A vital and valuable addition to works of art that take on the horror of the Holocaust, the film zeroes in on the household of Rudolf Hoss as one small aspect of a time and place in history that was utterly shameful in its acceptance of brutality on an unprecedented scale.

There are many ways to take down monsters – they can be defeated as objects of horror and fantasy, ridiculed as objects of comedy, but perhaps the most uncomfortable is to see them as versions of ‘us’. The Zone of Interest doesn’t tell us what we already (should) know, but instead presents us with the disquieting images of a seemingly ordinary family who live as if blissfully unaware of the war crimes occurring over the garden wall of their house. The opening scene is of a family picnic by the river, where at one point, men and women separate. In one of many pointed ironies, we think of the segregation of men and women as they are divided in to groups of those to be killed and those put to work in the most opposite of circumstances. Next, we see Rudolf’s birthday, but the familiarity with SS uniform entwined with cosy family scenes and colleague deference is disorientating, not through farce but through a disturbing realism that depicts a participant in hellish deeds as the upstanding leader and family man he and those surrounding him understood him to be.

In typical style, Glazer delivers powerfully and purely through the aesthetics of film, refreshingly so in a world that increasingly embraces either the dumbed down literal or hollow fantasy. As such, those that understand aren’t patronised and those that don’t are compelled to look deeper. When Rudolf’s wife Hedwig and her female servants and companions receive a sack of dresses and Hedwig tries on a fur coat and lipstick in the privacy of her bedroom, it is presented as just another regular event in the housewife’s life. However, the understanding behind it is enraging in that we know these are belongings pilfered from murdered prisoners. Even worse is a meeting between Rudolf and engineers discussing the construction of a multi-functioning slaughterhouse/incinerator which will eradicate and dispose of beings with the utmost efficiency, conducted as if it were just the latest in factory mass production.

The arrival of Hedwig’s mother presents an interesting perspective of someone biased by her relationship with the Hoss family and compliance with Nazi ideology however, until now, also never in a situation to see its results at such close quarters. It is a standard motherly visit at first, as Hedwig proudly gives a tour of the home and tells her how they’ve decorated it, before walking mother through her treasured garden with all of its colourful fauna and pleasant gazebo to sit in at the end of it. At one point, Hedwig’s mother wonders if the Jewish woman she used to clean for might be over the wall, an observation that is unsettling in its nonchalance but also illuminating in its acknowledgement of a reversal of fortunes that is as wildly oppositional as it is arbitrary. As benignly as mother’s visit begins however, she is seen to be perturbed when she coughs uncomfortably during an evening recline in the garden, and peers worriedly at the flames billowing from the camp from her bedroom window at night. She leaves abruptly in the night with a note for Hedwig, whose resulting humiliation instigates a calmly delivered threat to the Jewish girl servant who unknowingly prepared breakfast for the recently departed house guest.

The most significant disruption for the Hoss’ however, is the order for Rudolf to be transferred, and Hedwig first reveals her brutality when she erupts at a servant at the prospect of having to leave a home and lifestyle that means so much to her. It is moments like this as well as the general sensory experience of watching the film that cleverly and disturbingly threaten to lull the viewer in to tolerating the Hoss family situation, in a manner that uncomfortably acknowledges human vulnerabilities to acceptance of atrocity, a warning that must never stop being repeated. It takes active participation to snap out of it, to remember that this is not right, to recognise the sounds and sights of human suffering even if they are in the background, and to recognise that a mother’s genuine fight for her family’s future is one built on that suffering – her ideal family home next door to a death camp.

Another dark irony is the notion of sacrifice, as in a husband separated from his family and a scene where Rudolf bids an emotional farewell to his beloved horse. As passionately as Hedwig pleads to be allowed to bring her family up where she believes is best, the reality is shown when we see her endlessly crying baby neglected by both mother and nanny, the latter of whom unhappily endures it by swigging from a bottle. It is as if the Hoss baby’s cries have merely melted in to the sounds of anguish that are a constant in this perverse homestead, as well as the lines of ash clouds that linger permanently on the horizon.

Predominantly, we see the Hoss family from a Kubrickian distance, in this case seeing clearly with our eyes but in ways that do not encourage us to empathise emotionally. We see them acting as ordinary people to thwart any hopes that the Hoss’ were uniquely sub-human, fantastical monsters, but at the same time with a distinct effort to withhold sympathetic identification with them. It allows us to look and study and feel without the guilt of complicity, while also enforcing Glazer’s efforts to depict Auschwitz and the house powerfully but not fetishistically. There are also moments in the film that abruptly break with the objective, Big Brother style surveillance of the house when we see scenes of a little girl hiding fruit in the camp at night filmed with a thermal imaging camera. She is a local girl and member of the Polish resistance, her risky efforts seen stylised in black and white in direct contrast to the Hoss house scenes, which were shot in as natural and unembellished a way as possible. This also expresses Glazer’s given intention to film the resistance girl’s scenes as ones of activated efforts, as ones of hope, in direct opposition to the naturally unfettered ‘bleak’ images of colour employed for the daily life of Hoss’ family in Auschwitz.

Added to the overall impressiveness of the film itself is the dedicated research that went in to making it. Glazer is reported to have spent extensive time researching the project, likewise sound designer Johnnie Burn, who embroiled himself in hours spent and hundreds of pages written on how it likely sounded to live in such close vicinity to a notorious death camp. Admirable work indeed and extremely effective as a subtle aural depiction of hell on earth, quiet but unmistakeable and disturbingly constant. In fact, I’ve never been more convinced of a worthy sound award winner before so here’s hoping he can add an Oscar to his recently received Bafta.

Although clearly a brilliantly constructed film, the film is also indelibly touched by reality. Most movingly is the true story behind the Polish resistance girl, which is well worth looking in to. The final scenes seem to touch on the relationship between present and past, and between fiction and documentary, when Rudolf descends a staircase pausing between abrupt bouts of vomiting, and then stares down a dark corridor. His gaze is directed at the camera, the viewer, and then the film cuts disorientatingly to present day scenes of cleaners in what is now the Auschwitz museum. It is a disarming and open-ended conclusion but notably even more banal than the Hoss house scenes. A warning perhaps? Beware the banality of evil, the evidence of suffering on a disastrous scale becoming everyday objects. Or perhaps remembering that what were once everyday objects to the poor victims have been preserved in the museum to remember how horrifically their meaning was transformed by genocide. Either way, Jonathan Glazer’s immense effort at capturing just a piece of what is an overwhelmingly tragic piece of human history is welcome, important and exceptionally well made.