review: the zone of interest

Movie review: The Zone of Interest

This work of course comes with the heaviest of baggage, especially since Jonathan Glazer's Oscar win. Those issues fall beyond the scope of this review - I’m going to focus on my impressions of Zone of Interest as a work of art. 

The setting is mainly the household of a high-ranking German official in 1943. It is located next to the Auschwitz death camp, separated only by a high stone wall. From the first frames, the cyclical swells of the horrors beyond begin to intrude. These atrocities are unseen. We don’t need visuals. They have been enshrined in our collective consciousness from any number of history books and TV documentaries. We witness them today and every day on the news and on social media. 

The family goes about its everyday business. Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) attends to the logistical challenges of mass incineration, while Hedwig Höss (Sandra Hüller) runs the household, organizing maids, playing with their four children and gardening. 

They are an upwardly-mobile family, Rudolph’s star in the ascendance and provincial girl Hedwig becoming used to the trappings of a new, middle-class life. The party favors them. They have a swimming pool and servants and Rudolph hosts parties of officers who all toast his successes. 

They are a bourgeois family, living in comfort and security, concerned with material things and high standards of living. Hedwig’s mother comes to visit. The couple wrestle with the problem that a promotion (and therefore relocation) would entail. 

Glazer doesn’t spoon feed you anything. When Hedwig gifts her staff new dresses, it takes a second to realize where those clothes came from. Every luxury and amenity they have, from toothpaste to brandy, is drenched in blood. Even as they bask in their affluence, the screams and sinister smoke stacks and the relentless sounds of firing squads intrude. The necrotic waste from the camp begins to physically infest their living space and leisure time. 

The sound design alone makes The Zone of Interest worth the ticket. The drones of anguish filter in and out almost subliminally, with varying levels of intensity. Glazer employs a hidden camera-like cinematography, switching between views in real time as actors move between rooms. It results in a reality TV-like effect, drawing yet more parallels with contemporary life. 

Many reviews refer to the famous “banality of evil” phrase, but although many of the scenes are of regular, quotidian tasks and events, it feels anything but banal. We see all of their personal, social, and sexual missteps. The party does not care for them beyond what they can deliver in terms of corpses - the far right fetishizes individuality, but only until you’re not useful, of course. 

It’s a Holocaust film, but one you haven’t seen before. I believe the bold artistic choices that Glazer makes elevate The Zone of Interest beyond many of its subject-related peers. New experiences in cinema are vanishingly rare these days. This movie delivers one, however uncomfortable, and it will stay with you. (PO)

The Zone of Interest is showing at The Prytania Theatre, Canal Place