Directed by:
Jonathan GlazerScreenplay:
Jonathan GlazerCinematography:
Łukasz ŻalComposer:
Mica LeviCast:
Sandra Hüller, Christian Friedel, Ralph Herforth, Freya Kreutzkam, Max Beck, Ralf Zillmann, Imogen Kogge, Stephanie Petrowitz, Marie Rosa Tietjen (more)VOD (3)
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The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp. (SF Studios Fin.)
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Though throughout most of the film we don’t see anything other than an outwardly ordinary German family, the layered soundtrack, which mixes the chirping of birds and the murmur of a river with a constant mechanical drone, evokes an almost indefinable feeling from the first minutes, a feeling that something intimately familiar seems strange and oppressive. The resulting effect is best described by the term “unheimlich” from Freud’s psychoanalysis, i.e. uncanny. Zone of Interest is extremely disturbing in its ability to capture the abnormality of the everyday. ___ The unchanging, rigid apathy of the depicted world is underscored by predominantly static shots without artificial lighting and with great depth of field. The cameras are positioned in different corners of the house and garden like in a reality TV show. They record the movements of the actors without artistic stylisation, thus evoking an impression of the distant past. Not even the editing adheres to the principles of standard narrative cinema. The switching between cameras depends on which room a character has just entered. Everything thus seemingly takes place in the present tense. Subjectivity and creativity, or rather the possibility of averting one’s gaze and disrupting the order of things, are suppressed. The tasks that Höss carries out are mindless administrative work. Genocide is a logistical process. ___ If we wanted to locate the source of the tension that pervades the whole film, it would be the clash between what the Hösses are willing to see and what happens outside of their house and garden. Glazer’s distinct style is a form of rejection. He consistently avoids aestheticizing one of the greatest tragedies of modern history. At the same time, he succeeds in using empty space in a way that is far more powerful than direct depiction. Because we cannot see the other side, we are aware of what is happening there. Our effort to fill this gap leads to the fact that we cannot stop thinking about the ongoing violence. ___ Glazer also included night scenes shot with a special thermal camera. This involves a reconstruction of the story of a ninety-year-old Polish woman named Alexandra, whom Glazer met during his research. She became for him a symbol of resistance, a light in the darkness. Taking into account the perspective of those who actively resisted Nazism is one of the few elements that Zone of Interest shares with more conventional dramas about the Holocaust. Where other Oscar-winning dramas offer catharsis and a reassurance that humanity will ultimately prevail, Zone of Interest offers only a disturbing presentiment of things to come. We see that the concentration camp has become a museum where cleaners mechanically vacuum the dust and polish the display cases. A single glance inside the death factory peculiarly does not reveal any atrocities. Rather, it is characterised by the same emotionless routine that we saw in the Hösses’ bourgeois household. We have become accustomed to the presence of the Holocaust in our collective memory and in the media space. Zone of Interest shines a light on the mundanity, banality and elusiveness of the evil to which we contribute merely by remaining indifferent. 90%
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Jonathan Glazer is again powerfully creative and artsy. In The Zone of Interest, we don’t see a single Auschwitz prisoner in the film or any of the atrocities perpetrated behind the walls of the camp. The minimalistically staged but effectively arranged action takes place inside the Hösses’ villa and in their garden, which is bordered by the wall, over which the tops of the concentration-camp barracks loom. Höss dutifully goes to “work” and spends his free time with his family. Höss’s wife enjoys the flowers in the garden. Their children play by the swimming pool. Höss occasionally receives a visitor on business, such as engineers with a design for a more efficient crematorium. Sometimes someone brings them a bag of nice clothes to pick through... The whole time, we hear the distant droning of the death factory in operation, sometimes people screaming, dogs barking, gunfire. Black clouds of ash fill the sky. The Höss children’s perception of the world outside the house is also evident in small nuances. The little girl’s nocturnal dreams in black-and-white inverted images are the most impressive of the artistic ornaments with which the film is packed to the maximum satisfaction of the festival viewer. The scene with Höss on the stairs with the dark empty corridors is brilliant and the highlight of the film in my opinion. The Zone of Interest is a different view of the Holocaust, with the most unpleasant music you have ever experienced accompanying the closing credits. This puts Jonathan Glazer in the company of masters like Michael Haneke and Yorgos Lanthimos. [Cannes FF]
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I have a bit of a complicated relationship with director Jonathan Glazer. I like some of his films a lot, others practically not at all, and I'm glad Zone of Interest falls into the former group. I'm also happy that it ended up looking a little different than I expected. Glazer's Holocaust drama is very much built on working with sounds, but mostly with the viewers and their knowledge. You have to know what family you're looking at all the time, who Rudolf Höss was and what atrocities he committed. Zone of Interest doesn't explain anything, you could say that we learn practically nothing about the protagonists, because there's no need to, and Glazer is counting on you paying attention in history class, or at least reading the synopsis before entering the cinema. This allows him to focus solely on establishing atmosphere, combining hints of the horrors happening behind the walls of the family home while showing the ordinary little Nazi domestic bliss of the Hösses and their children. They come across as extremely ordinary, and that they are cynics and human monsters is something you have to surmise from their actions, as they balefully ignore the hell they themselves have unleashed or are willingly profiting from. Perhaps my only complaint is that I would have expected Zone of Interest to make it a little harder (like, say, the new Scorsese) and more uncomfortable for me as a viewer. On the other hand, Glazer's attempt to merely chronicle the family life of two monsters who tend a greenhouse, organize family get-togethers in the garden, and invite a loving mother to their home, only to occasionally subtly remind us who we're actually dealing with, works well too. An original and compelling drama capable of being very uncomfortable at the right moments.
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Zone of disinterest. One of those films that the teacher puts on in history class, but 80% of the students would rather pull out their cell phones and scroll through Instagram because it's almost as boring as regular class. The film is completely empty in terms of information, so it doesn't even serve an educational purpose. We follow the banalities of the daily life of a concentration camp commander and his family. We learn nothing about the characters, the dialogues are cut down to the minimum, Auschwitz is not shown, so again a film for book readers, where the viewer has to figure everything out (fck you!!), it has no script, the atmosphere doesn't work at all, there’s no build-up, no tension or escalated drama between the Nazis, the emotions below zero, and in the end, instead of showing a pile of corpses, they show only shoes. The film is so empty, slow and boring that even if you skips twenty minutes, you won’t miss anything crucial. Son of Saul was thematically similar, but somewhere else. An intimate arthouse of the highest order. 3/10.
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A formally interesting experiment (being created concurrently with the book of the same name by Martin Amis), drawing attention to a topic that we should have already processed. Many fundamental questions concerning the primary human attitude, such as "How could the main commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Rudolf Höss, calmly sleep, go home every day, and peacefully have dinner with his family...?" should not be posed for the first time by a co-produced film. Similarly, the everyday life of Höss's wife, Hedwig, should not surprise or fascinate us for the first time. On the contrary, we should have a rich knowledge of the reality of the war and be able to work with it. Many prominent women from this time have written memoirs, which in many ways only repeat, complement, and explain to us what and why happened in their lives. They serve excellently as memories, especially the memoirs of secretaries Traudl Junge, Brunhilde Pomsel, and Louise Fox. The question of obedience to authorities and blind fulfillment of orders was thoroughly analyzed by Hannah Arendt in her series of reports "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil". Furthermore, we should be immune to demonizing the German language itself and always remember that the Third Reich existed for only 12 years and is primarily the language of Goethe, Schiller, and Rilke. It is absurd to what extent the current public is not interested in the new film Terezín, but the Oscar-nominated The Zone of Interest naturally appeals to moral values and interest in the matter. However, if this trendy film brings some understanding even to those viewers who only watch new titles, this concession can be accepted.
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