The Zone of Interest

This movie gave me the shivers in a big way.

I don't even know how to articulate my thoughts on this film. I didn't really think it was possible to show me a story about the Holocaust that felt like something I hadn't already seen, but Jonathan Glazer manages to do just that with this film. I tried to read the Martin Amis novel this is based on and got almost all the way through it, but I bailed with about 50 or so pages to go. Just couldn't force myself through that last bit. But I read enough of it to know that the film is a very loose adaptation. It's more like Glazer took the general idea and then made his own story out of it.

I had just watched "All the Light We Cannot See" shortly before seeing this film, and I was so irritated in that series that the Nazis were all portrayed as such cartoonish villains. Every single one was a ghoulish monster who monologued while terrorizing whoever they happened to be in the room with. My problem with that is that it makes the Nazis look like aberrations rather than as normal people who were somehow brainwashed into thinking that what they were doing was on the right side of history, so it's easy to dismiss the Holocaust as something that couldn't happen again. But in "The Zone of Interest," Glazer does the exact opposite. The Nazis in this are banal, ordinary people who tend their gardens, bicker about the things spouses bicker about, spend the day bathing in the river with their kids. It just so happens that literally outside their backyard is daily mass murder which they can conveniently ignore because it's out of sight. We hear the screams, gunshots, the trains bringing in fresh batches of people to be slaughtered, but we don't ever see it. The film creates a portrait of the most banal kind of evil, and it's hard for me to get my head around it.

Christian Friedel and Sandra Huller give sensational performances as the commandant of Auschwitz and his pampered, spoiled wife. The film demands full attention from its audience, as frequently the most important thing happening on screen is happening in the background, or up in the far corner of the frame. We'll see a column of crematorium smoke hovering in the distance, or see some hazy ash floating by as the Nazis wander around their flower garden that they're so proud of.

In the film's final moments, we get a glimpse of what might be a conscience in the commandant, a hint that he might not be as utterly indifferent to what he's doing as he appears throughout the rest of the film. It's a haunting scene to cap off a haunting movie.

And can I just say that reading about the making of this film makes it all the more impressive. Everything happening on the other side of the concentration camp wall is visual effects projected onto green screens. Now those are the kinds of special effects that really impress me.

Grade: A.

The Zone of Interest takes a unique angle in approaching the Holocaust. Certainly an angle I haven't seen before in a film. This different approach gives the film a really sinister quality that frames the evils of the Holocaust in a new and terrifying way.

It achieves this approach through stark juxtaposition. It compares the relatively banal, matter-of-fact homemaking of the Hoss family against the utterly horrendous tragedy being perpetrated just over their garden wall. By doing this, it is not an overly graphic or in your face film. Instead, the violence and evil is primarily heard and not seen, as the horrifying sounds of the camp constantly bleed into the Hoss family home. It is in this way that the film makes its mark. To have such tragedy and horror ignored by this family and their guests. To normalise the mass murder over the garden wall. The glib and matter of fact way it is treated by them all. That is where the horror lies.

Whilst this is all a very effective way of framing the horrors of the Holocaust, I do think this film lacks any storytelling merit. There is no real plot to speak of, so once the point the film is making has been made it is easy to want it to be over so as not to sit with these evil characters and horrendous events for too long.

Then again it is a tricky point because I think this is definitely a story worth telling. Looking at the Holocaust from this angle to understand how normalised it became to certain people is vital to reflect on, but I'm not sure if a feature film was necessary to convey this.

So overall, I thoroughly appreciate what this film was doing and the angle it took. The direction is class in creating this juxtaposition and drilling this point home, but beyond it's core message there is nothing in this film to get stuck into. No real plot. No characters you want to understand or connect with. As a result it feels like it overextended itself as a film, but delivers it's message nonetheless.

This is one of the most unsettling films I've seen in a very long time. Rudolf Hoess was the Kommandant of Auschwitz, and oversaw the murder of around three million people.

At the same time, he was a devoted family man, who lived with his wife and children in a large house just outside the camp. The camp itself is hinted at but not seen. Instead, we see Hoess taking his children on picnics, boating trips and horse rides. His wife and her mother talk about how wonderful the garden is, oblivious to the sound of gun-shots and columns of smoke rising from the crematoria just beyond the garden wall.

Christian Friedel's Hoess is nothing like Ralph Feinnes' Amon Goeth in Schindler's List. The latter radiated sadistic evil; the former is terrifyingly normal. He sees the running of a concentration camp as a job and nothing more; a series of practical problems to be overcome through hard work and organisation. The Hoess children seem terrifyingly well-adjusted as well. The worst that can be said of any of them is that one boy can be mean to his younger brother.

There's no real plot. The only significant events are Hoess' wife becoming upset because her husband's transfer might lead to her losing her idyllic house and "idyllic" lifestyle; and Hoess' later re-appointment to Auschwitz. Thanks to that nice Mr Google, I can reveal that these events took place in November '43 and May '44. The film ends shortly afterwards. We see nothing of Hoess' trial or execution. Just a family man with an odd haircut.

It's easy - all too easy, probably - to regard Hoess and his ilk as one-dimensional villains; evil in the way that Bond villains are evil, or Darth Vader is evil. Nothing to do with us at all. The Hoess we see here IS like us. He can oversee the deaths of thousands of people during the day (and off-screen), then come home to read bed-time stories.

Nor are Hoess and his ilk firmly in the past. For all I know there are Israeli politicians and leaders of Hamas who think nothing of bombing their perceived enemies, yet who love their children and are loved in return.

Towards the end of the film there's a scene shot in the Auschwitz of today - but even here expectations are defied. We see the early-morning cleaning shift arrive before it's opened to visitors. It's a place of horror, but there's still a need to sweep the floors and clean the windows. Why? It's a very human contradiction.

The message of the film is simple but profound - and also terrifying. We're ordinary people, but so was Hoess, at least on one level. That thing we call civilisation is a wafer-thin veneer. If we don't look after it, we'll lose it.

It's rare that I say this but 'The Zone of Interest' is a film where the more you know going in, the more you will likely enjoy it. I always try my best to know as little about a film going in as possible, however I think that really hurt my enjoyment of this film. I kept waiting for a story to develop, for some kind of conflict or plot or just... something. In hindsight I now see what the film was going for and if I had known that I think I would've enjoyed it a lot more (or at least a little more).

I had to watch a few explanation videos to fully grasp what they were going for. This is clearly a very intelligent and well thought out piece of cinema, but it certainly isn't going to be for everyone. Watching those explanation videos made me realise that I myself am nowhere near smart enough to fully appreciate a film like this on a single viewing.

I think I like the idea of 'The Zone of Interest' more than the actual film itself. This one won't be for everyone, however if you are able to grasp what they're going for and connect with it, I imagine it could be quite a special experience. 6/10.

There's a house that looks and feels like any other, with a mother and her children who are brothers - and there's a wall around this plot, the other side people are not, and they will not get the chance, to rediscover. As the father is the commandant of death, responsible for taking their last breath, though he lives without a care, just like his wife who loves it there, and it's clear they're very proud, of their success. After all, you have to have a certain mind, to exterminate a race of humankind, and then live a normal life, without guilt, or strain, or strife, in a house, with a big wall, to hide behind.