If you somehow started watching Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest without being familiar with the premise, it might take a good 15 minutes to begin to understand what's really going on. Loosely adapted from Martin Amis' 2014 novel, Glazer's Oscar-nominated film focuses mostly on the mundane everyday life of the Höss family. Father Rudolf (Christian Friedel) and mother Hedwig (Anatomy of a Fall's Sandra Hüller) take their five kids down to the nearby riverside to play, tend to the lush garden behind their home, and manage their busy household schedules.
Also, Rudolf is in charge of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.
That key piece of information comes off almost as an afterthought for the characters, who maintain a seemingly effortless sense of normalcy as the sounds of torture and death surround them at all times. The Höss home is directly adjacent to the concentration camp, separated only by a wall, but it might as well be on another planet, and the family members treat Rudolf's responsibilities as just another job, one with stresses about transfers and internal politics.
Glazer presents constant reminders of what's really happening next door, though, thanks to the brilliant, elaborate sound design by Johnnie Burn, which layers in gunshots, screams and the ever-present churning of the incinerators that are working overtime to cremate the bodies of murdered prisoners. If the Hösses reference the camp, it's only to divide up the belongings confiscated from dead Jews or to discuss technical improvements that will make the disposal of bodies more efficient. When Rudolf realizes that runoff from the incinerators has contaminated the river during a peaceful fishing trip with the kids, he rushes them home without explanation, scrubbing them clean of ashes in the bathtub.
The intention is to capture the banality of evil, but too often The Zone of Interest ends up curiously bland, a dull family drama punctuated by history's greatest atrocities just offscreen. Although the Hösses are based on real people, Glazer isn't interested in their inner lives or in giving the audience a greater understanding of their desires and motivations. The children have no distinctive personalities, and their parents are only slightly more developed.
The most extensive interaction between Rudolf and Hedwig is a scene in which they argue about an impending promotion that will send him back to Berlin, while Hedwig is determined to maintain their idyllic family life at Auschwitz. It sounds like any other argument a married couple might have over career plans, only the boss that Hedwig insists Rudolf appeal to about his promotion is Adolf Hitler.
Glazer maintains that distance from his characters both emotionally and visually, often utilizing the same static camera set-ups and eschewing most close-ups. That gives The Zone of Interest a sense of clinical detachment, closer to a museum exhibit than a drama, which can make it more numbing than affecting. In the final act, Glazer mostly leaves Auschwitz behind to follow Rudolf on his new administrative assignment within the SS, and the movie loses much of its unique perspective.
Still, that unique perspective makes the movie powerful, and it's impressive that Glazer can find a new way to present material that's been so extensively dramatized for decades. He's a meticulous filmmaker who's directed only four features since 2000, and every frame of The Zone of Interest has clearly been composed with the greatest care. Such fussiness may rob it of the visceral impact of a more accessible movie like Schindler's List, but the cold, calculating approach reflects the truth about how such horrifying acts were perpetrated with such impunity.
THE ZONE OF INTEREST
