The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023) Review

Who would have anticipated that the year 2023 would see the release of yet another film about a subject as hackneyed as the Holocaust? It’s no wonder that the film industry has a strong fixation on this topic, considering how many possible stories can be told under such a premise, and how easy it is to touch the audience’s emotions while condemning the atrocities committed by the Nazis. However, The Zone of Interest avoids this conventional approach by eschewing the usual appeals to sentimentality and the Nazis are evil, look how horribly they treat the Jews! narrative. Instead, this slice-of-life film goes a step further, taking the perspective of the family of notorious SS commander Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) in 1943.

Through Chris Oddy’s impeccable set design and Łukasz Żal’s exquisite photography and cinematography, packed with static and distant shots that capture the sober dialogues, often reminiscent of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Greek era, Jonathan Glazer harmoniously presents the detached and disciplined nature of the Nazis. He humanizes them so effectively that we would forget they were special at all, were it not for the subtle yet powerful details Glazer weaves into the seemingly anodyne lives of the Höss family. No wonder many people bring up Hannah Arendt’s phrase “the banality of evil” when talking about this film.

The core concept of The Zone of Interest, in addition to the aforementioned notion of depicting the “banality of evil”, is the juxtaposition of the family’s sheltered life next door to the hell that was Auschwitz during its operational period. It’s present in visual details like the color contrast between the gray wall and the colorful garden, and in the problems they face on a daily basis, like dealing with the baby crying at night or the dog eating the food on the picnic table — and not much else, since they have an entourage of servants — compared to the executions and awful conditions of forced labor that the Jews suffer. Moreover, the greatest threat to the Höss’s comfort comes when Rudolf returns to Berlin due to his promotion in recognition of his effective approach to commanding the concentration camp. When you put things into perspective and compare this to what the film doesn’t explicitly show us, which is what happens on the other side of the wall, it’s ridiculous to even think of these as problems. Yet Glazer manages to trick us into caring about the family’s situation, so that we unwittingly relegate the pain and screams to a secondary level, just as the Höss do. What’s interesting is that, as the subtitle suggests, the entire film unfolds without overt displays of violence, evoking echoes of Michael Haneke’s meticulous approach in his films. All of this suffering is encapsulated primarily in the sound design, which consists mostly of gunshots and the screams, cries, and groans of the Jews, aided by the visuals of smoke billowing from the chimneys of the mass murder factory. The subject is never directly addressed by any member of the family, though it’s implied in details like the little girl’s insomnia or the departure of Hedwig’s mother (Imogen Kogge).

As the film progresses, Rudolf’s psyche disintegrates — or was he like this all along and Glazer didn’t want to reveal it at the outset? — His habit of turning off the lights at bedtime and his seemingly model behavior are replaced by sleeping with the lights and the stove on in a messy room and having sex with a young Jewish woman. The key moment that epitomizes this, however, comes with the dry retching scene. It’s unknown what the cause is; it could be medical problems not disclosed during the medical examination, or simply the result of drinking too much during the celebration — or perhaps it’s triggered by the sickening thought of the consequences of what he has done and what he will do in his new duty of mass deportation of Hungarian Jews? — Regardless of the origin, there is a sudden ellipsis showing janitors cleaning the Auschwitz Museum in the present. It’s open to many plausible interpretations, and it’s not even clear whether it’s a premonition that Höss sees or something that only the viewer witnesses. The cleaners perform a banal activity without emotion in a place that reeks of death, which is yet another juxtaposition of the aforementioned banality, this time without the evil component. Nevertheless, this illustrates how our modus operandi is similar to that of the Höss family, differing only in scale: we set aside our empathy and emotions in order to deal with our daily tasks and our very existence.

After years of devotion to the Nazi regime for personal gain and badges on his lapel for validation, Rudolf is destined to end up as a mere footnote in a much larger narrative that is not so far removed from how we approach many aspects of our lives, such as work. Although we tend to draw a moral line at the Nazis as evil people blinded by hatred, Glazer demonstrates that Rudolf was just an ordinary man doing his job. We are prone to deny that such evil deeds could be committed by regular people, but The Zone of Interest shows that the cruelties were perpetrated by average minds that had been indoctrinated and/or hypnotized by Nazi propaganda. In the right place at the wrong time, Rudolf could have been any one of us.

As far-fetched and out-of-the-blue as the release of this film may seem, as I alluded to in the introduction, it actually comes at a perfect time as Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine intensifies. We may not relate to the Nazis shown in the film, but we as humanity will always act like the Höss family. We will look the other way and think that as long as it doesn’t affect our security, then everything is fine. However, owing to our cynical nature, we will tweet #freepalestine and rant on social media about the brutalities inflicted upon them to show how aware and concerned we are about the injustices of the world. But very few people, myself included, will do anything substantial to help. Whether we admit it or not, are we really that different from Rudolf’s family?

The following Alice in Chains lyric came to mind after the credits rolled:

If I would, could you?