Repulsing in its relentless viewing experience, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is the perfect depiction of the “banality of evil”, but this masterpiece is anything but banal. With delicate subtlety, the film expresses more about the holocaust by showing less of it.
The theater lights go down and the unsettling and dreading score envelopes you. Letter by letter the title The Zone of Interest fades in and out, and in and out, much like our collective memory about the holocaust. The screen is now black but the sound lingers. This is a demand of the viewers: you must listen, and carefully so, or you might end up another bystander in the banality of evil.
We are thrown into a beautiful, lush lakeside scenery. You think you can smell the crisp, fresh air of the Polish mountains. Seemingly unrelated to the excruciating opening, a beautiful family throws a picnic. This is a Nazi family, with father Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel) commanding over none other than Auschwitz extermination camp.
Rudolph, his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their children living the suburban-dream life that a lot of us would want, with genocide taking place right across the giant garden wall, makes the viewer feel like they are somewhat accomplices to the “queen and king” of Auschwitz, as the couple likes to refer to themselves. This contrast creates unrelenting disgust and unease for the audience, coming together to manifest a harsh and uncomfortable experience throughout the film. I have never experienced anything like it, and it will continue to haunt me for years to come.
The Zone of Interest is the fourth feature film by Jewish-British director Jonathan Glazer, who wisely assumes the viewers’ previous knowledge of Auschwitz and uses it to convey a new layer of meaning to this unordinary holocaust film. Focusing solely on the lives of the Nazi family, it was important for Glazer to present them not as monstrous creatures, but as human beings – well, isn’t that even more terrifying? Though, as a Jew whose grandmother survived Auschwitz, I still debate whether the choice of not showing any Jews at all was the right one. I can’t deny its effectiveness, and yet the question remains.
We get to enjoy the beautiful lives Rudolph and Hedwig have built for themselves, yet be constantly reminded of what enabled those lives. Who they are and what they do can never exist separately, despite Hedwig’s desperate attempts to unlink her beautiful home and the Auschwitz camp wall through her freshly-potted garden.
The camera is always distant and static, lingering on shots of rooms and hallways. Though some might say it is a way to distance the viewer from the family, we believe it allows the viewer to grow familiar with the home and its surroundings. You know the hallways, you know where the light switches are, and you inevitably start feeling at home. You, like the family, try to ignore the train fumes and crematorium smokes and fire – but the camera never lets them go unseen.
At the end of the film, Rudolph’s stress of his workload is juxtaposed with contemporary images of Auschwitz museum as workers clean it for visitors, much like the Polish girls cleaning Rudolph and Hedwig’s home. Glazer decides to cut back to Rudolph after he has “seen” this vision leaving you pondering about how history is doomed to repeat itself, and how simple advocations might not be helpful enough in stopping any future horrors – because, to be honest, so far – they haven’t.
The review was written by Itamar David Leshman, with the contribution of Illy Levi.
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