The Zone of Inter­est review – a tow­er­ing, awful masterwork

Of all the crea­ture com­forts in her family’s home, Hed­wig Höss (San­dra Hüller) is most proud of the man­i­cured gar­dens – she shows them off to her moth­er on a bright summer’s day, high­light­ing the veg­etable patch, and the cheer­ful flowerbeds. There is even a mod­est swim­ming pool for their five chil­dren to play in. ​“This was a field three years ago,” she explains proud­ly. Beyond the bound­ary wall loom the chim­neys of Auschwitz. Every so often, the sound of gun­fire or scream­ing pierces the air. Hed­wig does not seem to notice as she chat­ters pleas­ant­ly about her rur­al idyll.

Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Inter­est, loose­ly inspired by Mar­tin Amis’ nov­el of the same name, depicts a peri­od of rough­ly one year in the lives of the Höss fam­i­ly, who lived next door to Auschwitz from May 1940 until Sep­tem­ber 1944. Their patri­arch, Rudolf (played here by Chris­t­ian Friedel) was the com­man­der of the camp, respon­si­ble for the death of at least 1.1 mil­lion inmates, pri­mar­i­ly Jew­ish peo­ple deport­ed from Ger­many and Poland. These vic­tims are nev­er seen in Glazer’s film, but their pres­ence is still there. It is impos­si­ble to not watch The Zone of Inter­est and feel the scale of the atroc­i­ties that occurred over the wall from the Höss’s lov­ing­ly craft­ed sanc­tu­ary, where they would eat, drink, play, and pick through the pos­ses­sions stolen from inmates, sav­ing the fur coats and fine dress­es. One of the chil­dren plays with a col­lec­tion of gold teeth.

We observe the Höss fam­i­ly large­ly in stark wide shots as they go about their dai­ly lives. The chil­dren race around the house. Their moth­er cooks din­ner and gos­sips with her friends. In a sit­ting room, Rudolf Höss meets with Ger­man engi­neers to dis­cuss the con­struc­tion of a new cre­ma­to­ri­um at the camp, so they can more effi­cient­ly dis­pose of dead bod­ies. This jux­ta­po­si­tion between domes­tic­i­ty and atroc­i­ty is hor­rif­ic and jar­ring – an unflinch­ing depic­tion of what Han­nah Arendt referred to as ​“the banal­i­ty of evil”, yes, but also a test of audi­ence expec­ta­tions regard­ing the Holo­caust in art and pop­u­lar culture.

When we see this fam­i­ly bask­ing in the sun, in the shad­ow of the most noto­ri­ous death camp in the Nazi régime, it’s strange and eerie in its mun­dan­i­ty. In high­light­ing the most triv­ial of con­ver­sa­tions and the bland day-to-day rou­tine of the Höss fam­i­ly, we become hyper-aware of what we aren’t see­ing. One of the young sons, play­ing in his bed­room, hears a noise in the dis­tance. He tot­ters over to the win­dow to look. We don’t see what he sees, but he quick­ly looks back to his toys. In the night, Hedwig’s vis­it­ing moth­er stands at the win­dow, her face half-lit by an amber glow in the dis­tance. What­ev­er it is she wit­ness­es, she’s dis­turbed enough to leave with­out say­ing good­bye to her daugh­ter, who is irri­tat­ed by the incon­ve­nience of her unex­plained depar­ture. The prox­im­i­ty to evil, and the evil that flour­ish­es by way of silence and coop­er­a­tion, per­me­ates every frame.

Dis­cor­dant musi­cal arrange­ments from Glazer’s Under the Skin col­lab­o­ra­tor Mica Levi empha­sise the hor­ror we aren’t see­ing, while cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Łukasz Żal – who pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Paweł Paw­likows­ki and Char­lie Kauf­man – proves his con­tin­ued ver­sa­til­i­ty with a stark, doc­u­men­tary-like approach. There are ele­ments of the uncan­ny, as Rudolf is shown method­i­cal­ly switch­ing off all the lights in the home, and clos­ing every door. In a hor­ror film we might expect some­thing to lurk in the shad­ows, but The Zone of Inter­est is con­cerned with the absence of such. The real­i­ty of what is hap­pen­ing beyond the wall is nev­er lost.

The scale of what occurred at Auschwitz over the course of four years can be dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend, even with the vital work being done by Holo­caust activists and edu­ca­tors to dis­pel the mis­in­for­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da dis­trib­uted by those who con­tin­ue to deny his­to­ry. Glazer’s film per­forms a strange mag­ic trick of sorts; its inten­tion­al omis­sions and stark­ness mag­ni­fy the hor­ror we aren’t see­ing but feel all the same. This is not an attempt to human­ise the Höss fam­i­ly or to present their per­spec­tive on the camps, but to show the cold, unre­mark­able indif­fer­ence that flour­ished — and con­tin­ues to on var­i­ous scales to this day across the world, most recent­ly in Pales­tine — among count­less ​‘aver­age’ Ger­man citizens.

But a late-stage per­spec­tive switch turns the cam­era on both Glaz­er as the film­mak­er and us as the audi­ence. What does it mean to make a Holo­caust film, to doc­u­ment the worst of human­i­ty? Is a fic­tion film an appro­pri­ate space to work through this trau­ma and grief? What do we do with the past, and how we respond to it? The Zone of Inter­est seems to wel­come divi­sion in its respons­es – such a bold, hor­ri­fy­ing­ly eerie work serves as a cat­a­lyst as much as an artis­tic statement.

In the film’s press notes, Glaz­er refers to the work of philoso­pher Gillian Rose, who ​“imag­ined a film that could make us feel ​‘unsafe’ by show­ing how we’re emo­tion­al­ly and polit­i­cal­ly clos­er to the per­pe­tra­tor cul­ture than we’d like to think we are. One that might leave us with, as she called ​“the dry eyes of a deep grief.’” The Zone of Inter­est is a har­row­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of this the­sis — a film that dares us to close the curtains.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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