(Photo manipulation by Nathan Rubin)
Unlike many Holocaust films, “The Zone of Interest” displays the mundane daily life of a Nazi. The film focuses on the leader of the camp, rudolf hoess (Christian Friedel). Not once does the viewer see the face of a Jew, nor the faces of notorious Nazis etched in history, such as Adolf Hitler, Adolf Eichmann or Heinrich Himmler. Instead, viewers see Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) trying to maintain the “idealistic” life they have built, beyond the walls of Auschwitz.
The German feature is based on the novel of the same name by Martin Amis. Jonathan Glazer directed the film, and was distributed by film studio A24. ,area of interestIt debuted at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where it won Grand Prix, and hits Atlanta theaters on January 19th. The film was nominated for “Best Motion Picture – Drama”. award At this year’s Golden Globes.
“The Zone of Interest” never enters the concentration camp, instead focusing primarily on the house built by the HOSS, where they entertain guests and raise their children. However, in the background of almost every scene, we hear gunshots and screams from the adjacent death camp. This doesn’t phase anyone in the HOSS family, who ignore the sonic scenario of the massacre in favor of continuing with their lives.
Midway through the film Rudolf tells Hedwig that the Nazi leadership has ordered her to be transferred to a different city. When Hedwig went looking for a reaction to the news, he insisted that she and the children remain at home.
In this scene she says, “This is the life we always dreamed of.”
Perhaps the most frightening character is Hedwig. Unlike Rudolf, whose primary objective is to complete the objectives assigned to her, Hedwig is happy to take possession of the fur coats snatched from the Jews in the concentration camp and shamelessly calls herself the “Queen of Auschwitz”.
The only person who notices any of the chaos going on just outside the HOSS compound is Hedwig’s mother Elfrieda (Medusa Knopf), who visits the family to see what her daughter’s life has become.
Elfrieda first realizes the grim reality of the death camp when she begins coughing from inhaling ashes from the camp’s crematorium. Eventually, she can no longer bear to live next to Auschwitz as she hears people screaming for help and sees high flames rising from the crematorium. Unwilling to tell her daughter that she believes what Rudolph is doing is wrong, she leaves in the middle of the night, leaving only a letter. Apart from Elfrieda, the entire film focuses on the family’s willingness to turn a blind eye to what they hear, see, and smell from the death camp. Elfrieda stands in for the spectators of the Nazi regime, who knew that the Holocaust was wrong but still refused to openly protest the genocide.
While “The Zone of Interest” is classified as a play, what is left to the imagination is horrifying. At the end of the film, an eerie sequence of still flowers is shown, yet in the background, we hear crying, screaming, and gunshots. Glazer uses this comparison to show that even in the darkest days of history, most people didn’t care and simply wouldn’t bother.
Glazer is able to show the HOSS family’s lack of humanity by using zero camera movement throughout the film and employing several long takes from a distance. In this way, he makes us feel distant from characters whose feelings we understand but we are not supposed to sympathize with.
Shot almost entirely in natural light and with a dull color palette, the film makes it clear that these are just normal people doing bad things. Glazer says that the only thing that stops us from becoming monsters are our choices – it’s not something within us that determines whether we’ll be great or evil.
The film ends with a glimpse of the modern Auschwitz Museum being cleaned. The museum, like “The Zone of Interest”, is here to remind us of the tragedy of Auschwitz, but also to warn us of the evil that humans can and still can cause. The film then returns to Rudolph vomiting, pulling himself together, and finally descending the stairs in the dark.
Spencer Friedland (26cc) is from Long Island, New York and is the news editor of the Emory Wheel. He is a philosophy, politics and law major and secondary major in film. Spencer is also part of the Franklin Fellows program at Emory.
