"Zone of Interest"
by K.G. Kline
You will never unhear it
A mother plays with an infant in her garden. Flowers are blooming. Behind her stands a tall concrete wall topped with barbed wire.
A family gathers in their yard to celebrate a birthday. Children slide into a swimming pool. The air is filled with laughter. In the distance thick black smoke billows from a tall chimney.
A group of Army officers gather around a low table quietly discussing a circular crematorium that allows workers to load bodies continuously around the clock
.
A prisoner pushes a wheelbarrow to a house, making his delivery, careful not to speak.
Throughout Jonathan Glazer's "Zone of Interest" the sound of dogs barking and the occasional gunshot can be heard coming from inside the camp's plain concrete walls. Those sounds remain long after the film has ended.
It's a bold statement to say that "Zone of Interest" isn't about the Holocaust. It isn't. The film shows nothing inside the camp's massive concrete walls. It's a visual and audio montage of the mundane coexisting alongside the obscene. It's a minimalist warning about power at an unspeakable price that asks us to examine where our own limits lie? It's a film that challenges us to put ourselves in these positions then ask how far we would go for status and glory.
It's a question that has been asked repeatedly throughout history, usually without a (good) answer. Rudolph Hoss (Christian Friedel) is the commandant of Auschwitz. A middle-aged, self-made man who the film suggests likely rose from poverty to his current position of power and authority. Hoss has made his mark by successfully overseeing the design and construction of numerous Nazi concentration camps. His intellect allowed him to rise in position and status among the Nazi military elite by finding ways to efficiently "eliminate" the hundreds of thousands of Jews flowing into Poland from all over occupied Europe - victims of Hitler's "Final Solution". Auschwitz is Rudolph's masterpiece. As a reward, he's built himself a spacious house and gardens just outside the camp walls. It's a home befitting a top German officer, just yards from the greatest atrocity in Human history.
Luxury has made his children immature and his wife vain and selfish. Women are brought to his office for his pleasure. He receives invitations to grand Nazi galas held in opulent palaces far removed from the smoke and death surrounding his camp. Still, even here one senses Hoss is an outsider among the German high command, having risen from the lower classes. Friedel skillfully underplays his careful maneuverings through a sea of imposing German officers.
Rudolph's wife Hedwig (Oscar-nominated Sandra Huller, "Anatomy of a Fall") has no such reservations. She basks in their wealth, showing off their home and gardens to her visiting mother, who comments "You certainly have landed on your feet." She admires herself wearing a confiscated fur coat. Its owner probably now deceased.
In the film's only real climax Rudolph must inform his wife that he is being promoted and transferred to a military installation where they won't have the slave labor, fur coats, and gold-filled teeth to profit from. Hedwig throws a tantrum, demanding that she and their children be allowed to remain in their mansion while he relocates alone. Given the choice between luxury and supporting her husband there is never any doubt which Hedwig will choose. What's going on just beyond the walls never enters the discussion. Never at all.
Glazer's film bears no resemblance to the many excellent Holocaust films that preceded it. It's not a story in the traditional sense so much as a collection of sights and sounds. Glazer shoots in wide angles, keeping the figures small and distant. There's a disconnect between the viewer and the characters that Glazer maintains, allowing us to study them instead of identify with them. He forces us to look inward and to question ourselves. Glazer demands us to ask, could this be me? Could this be anyone? Is there a line that can't be crossed, and if so, can we recognize it before we cross it?
Holocaust films hope that in some way they are helping to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again. Let us hope that the sight of people sleeping comfortably in their beds while the sound of dogs barking, people screaming, and gunshots filling the night air, remains with us long after the film is over. "Zone of Interest" received an Oscar nomination for Best Sound Design, and it's well-deserved. In many war films the sound of gunfire is empowering. In this one it's terrifying.