The Zone of Interest
The Zone of Interest
Starring Christian Friedel, Sandra Huller, Ralph Herforth, Daniel Holzberg
Directed by Jonathan Glazer
In 1943, commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedel) lives with his wife Hedwig (Sandra Huller) and their five children in a lavish home next to the camp. While the sounds of screams and cries echo in the air, along with gunshots and shouts, the family lives an idyllic life. The kids play and frolic in the fields with no thoughts as to what's happening next door as the smoke billows from the smoke stacks and the putrid stench of death permeates the environment. Rudolf approves a new crematorium and is tasked with heading up an operation that'll transport hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz to be killed. Hedwig meanwhile celebrates her home by hosting lavish parties and welcoming her mother as a way of showing off how far she's come. She takes the belongings of those killed at the camp, as do her children, who don't seem to know any better. It's the picture perfect family life, one that many people aspire to - and in this case, it's a family of real life monsters.
The Good:
"The Zone of Interest" is a unique film centering on the Holocaust in a way that hasn't been done before. It doesn't sensationalize the brutal murder of over a million Jews. It doesn't show the comeuppance that the German monsters received. It didn't do anything other than focus on the Hoss family and their perverted sense of normal family life as literally tens of thousands of other lives were snuffed out on the daily within walking distance. The parallels are truly shocking.
Although we don't see Auschwitz full-on, it always exists in the peripheral in both sight and sound. Cinematographer Lukasz Zal always kept the camp in the foreground, and often we see smoke billowing from the smokestacks or the smoke of an oncoming train carrying a load of new innocent Jewish prisoners to the camp, and the visual between that and the lush, green garden with colorful flowers and a well-kept home is jarring to the utmost degree. He also installed ten cameras in and around the house and kept them running so there wasn't any crew on set, which allowed the actors to improvise and experiment during filming. To add to the aesthetics they only used practical and natural lighting that made the film feel all the more real. The emotional toll also hits when we see servants use the ashes of human remains to help the flowers grow. It's nauseating.
On the sound side, sound designer Johnnie Burn compiled events at Auschwitz including witness testimonies and a map of the camp so he could properly equate the distance and echoes of the sounds being heard. He spent a year building a sound library including manufacturing machinery, crematoria, furnaces, boots, gunfire, and, most hauntingly, human sounds of pain. This is a film that's heard rather than seen, which in a way leaves the audience more unnerved because we perceived what happens in our minds due to the sounds being heard, and without visual cues it's always worse in our imaginations.
Christian Friedel and Sandra Huller have the most daunting roles in their studded careers: playing real-life monsters (I keep saying that term, and they truly were, and so much more evil than that) without a shred of humanity or likability. They never have a decent moment, there's never a hint of humanity in their cold unfeeling eyes, and you just want to go through the screen and strangle them (their characters, not the actors themselves). Friedel plays Rudolf as a ruthless psychopath who calmly talks about annihilating Jews while giggling with his wife, or taking his kids horseback riding or showing off a new boat he got. When he finds human remains from the camp in the river his kids are playing in, he pulls them out and has his servants (who are captured Jews themselves) clean them off - again, a jarring juxtaposition between this and the horror happening literally feet away. When he's praised for his promotion when he's given the task of transporting hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews to their deaths (which was actually named after him) he talks to his wife about the party and saying all he can think about is the best way to gas the room as calmly as if he's asking what she wants for dinner.
Sandra Huller is having an amazing year, being nominated for Best Actress for "Anatomy of a Fall" and also starring in "The Zone of Interest" - both Oscar-nominated films for Best Picture. Her role in "Anatomy of a Fall" and "The Zone of Interest" couldn't be any more polar opposite, as she goes from a doting mother accused of the murder of her husband to a cold-hearted monster in "Zone" without a hint of remorse or empathy. She shows off her flower garden like she's Poison Ivy, berates her Jewish servants (let's just call them what they were...slaves) by threatening to throw them into the furnace, and, most haunting of all, takes belongings that belonged to the Jewish prisoners who were murdered and treats her kids and friends with them. She even tries on a fur coat and models it, knowing full well it belonged to a woman who's no longer alive, and finds a tube of lipstick in the pockets and puts it on. Huller is downright diabolical in this role, and one that also should've gotten recognition at the Oscars (although it did get her nominations for Best Supporting Actress at the British Academy Film Awards, Chicago Film Critics, and many others).
The Bad:
Anyone who's sensitive to the Holocaust would probably want to steer clear of a film like this, because it'll bound to trigger you in unhealthy ways. It doesn't shy away from the atrocities that occurred, but thankfully doesn't sensationalize it by literally showing it - but in a sense it's all the more terrifying in that it doesn't.
It's not an easy watch, as no one in the film is the least bit sympathetic. Even the children are groomed to be monsters, as they play with toys of the kids murdered, and the one son even plays with the golden teeth extracted from the Jewish victims.
Conversely, it's also a film where nothing really happens. There's no excitement on screen or anything that demands your attention other than spectacular performances and the mental strain of what's happening. To that end, it could come across as boring for most people, especially if you're not in the mood for it.
The Summary:
Offering a distinct and different look into the biggest atrocity in human history, "The Zone of Influence" is a dark, unrelenting, horrifying tale masked in colorful beauty that masks the horrendous events taking place feet outside its pristine walls.
The Score: A+
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