Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest mysteriously begins on a pitch black screen. Unsettlingly loud and booming musical notes blare across the audience as we wait in discomfort for the film to move into a more traditional beginning. Why does Glazer begin the film this way? It could reflect the darkness of the Holocaust, the period in which the film is set. It could reflect the blackness of a person’s soul. It could reflect the hopelessness of the Jewish people at the time. Glazer gives no easy answers on this question or truly on many questions within the film. He leaves it up to the audience to discuss, debate, and ultimately decide for themselves.
If you’re up for that challenge, then The Zone of Interest will work for you. It certainly did for me.
Following the seemingly unending night, the film begins on a sunny pastoral scene. Children splash in a lake while their parents relax in grassy fields. There are gorgeous mountain vistas, and the sky covers it all with an enticing, peaceful blanket of what I would call Carolina blue. It’s an idyllic family moment to which most would aspire.
It’s not until the family goes home that we find out they’re actually Nazis living adjacent to Auschwitz.
No, this isn’t a setup for a wacky Mel Brooks-level Nazi takedown. This is a hard core exploration of what many, many have dubbed “the banality of evil,” which isn’t an incorrect assessment. Glazer presents his characters as if he were filming a documentary, a slice-of-life exposé of those who profit from the evils of the Holocaust. The family gossips over lavish meals. They talk about jobs and promotions. They deal with a sleepwalking child. The father has affairs. Their children fight and play pranks on each other. It’s a very ordinary, commonplace existence, but an existence bolstered by their status as cold-blooded war profiteers.
Early in the film, Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel)’s wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) receives a care package of sorts from an Auschwitz prisoner. In this bundle are shirts, dresses, and a fur coat presumably stolen from Jewish prisoners. The Höss family makes their selections, profiting from the obvious misfortune of others. In a particularly banal yet completely unsettling sequence, Hedwig finds a tube of lipstick in the pocket of the fur coat she tries on. She rubs it on her hand to see if she likes the shade. It’s very likely the original owner of that fur coat and tube of lipstick is now dead of course, but she does not appear to care. Hedwig’s status as the self-proclaimed “Queen of Auschwitz” allows her to construct an admittedly beautiful home for her family, complete with a lush garden filled with gorgeous flowers, lounging chairs, and a swimming pool. At one point in the film, she refers to her backyard as her own “paradise.”
Only once does anyone connected with the family acknowledge the horrors of Auschwitz. After arriving for a birthday party, Hedwig’s mother walks the dark house at night, rooms illuminated by the orange glow of the crematorium fires burning next door. The next day, she leaves without a word, leaving a note for Hedwig. We never see what’s written on the page, but we understand its intent thanks to Hüller’s carefully calibrated reaction.
For me, The Zone of Interest soars on Glazer’s brilliant direction and overall attention to detail. The film isn’t a traditional Holocaust drama. We aren’t presented with the familiar, horrifying images of genocide traditionally associated with Holocaust films. There are, of course, glimpses here and there, but Glazer keeps everything offscreen. But we know what’s happening. Höss family events are constantly peppered with the sounds of gunshots. A family outing by the pool is set against a train arriving at the concentration camp. And, of course, the ghostly images of the house at night filled with the glows from the nearby crematoriums. The focus of the film isn’t the horrific events of the Holocaust. Instead, it presents us with a deeply unsettling and unpleasant look at those who not only turned a blind eye to the atrocities but also profited from them.
And given that, the real impact of the film for me was how easily these scenes could have transferred to other places and time. The American South in the 1800s. Cambodia. Darfur. Russia. Even stories as told in the upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon. The list of genocides seems too long to comprehend. The Zone of Interest focuses on the Holocaust, yes, but there’s a larger theme that could easily transfer to any country in the world during any era. Wherever there is genocide, there are those who will look the other way. There are those who will profit from it. They may have never fired a gun, but their actions damn them still.
That’s where The Zone of Interest hits hardest.
