The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest is a film that focuses on the daily lives of Hedwig and Rudolf Hoss: an upwardly mobile German couple raising 5 children in the early 1940s. Also, Rudolf was the commandment of the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Hoss's lived literally right next door to the camp. This is a true story. 

The film, based on a novel by Martin Amis and directed by Jonathan Glazer, has been very controversial in film circles for focusing entirely on the Hoss family and their daily activities while ignoring the death camp right next to their house. But this is entirely the point of the film: it can't be ignored unless one systematically compartmentalizes the genocide they are participating in and benefitting from. The sounds of gunshots, guard dogs barking, and people screaming echo in the distance while Hedwig applies her lipstick. The flames of the crematorium can be seen burning at night (unless you don't look out the window, of course). Prisoners from the camp occasionally come to the house to polish Nazi officer's boots or drop off goods--they are ignored. 

The Zone of Interest is less about the "banality" of evil (although much of what we see is quite banal--some have accused the film of being "boring"), and more about how natural and normal genocide and torture become when you yourself are benefitting from it.

This film, in all it's mundanity and quietness, is incredibly confrontational on a psychological level. It's hard for the viewer to distance themselves from Nazis when the Nazi officer's wife is showing her 18 month old baby the flowers in the garden. When we see not just human behavior, but sweet and kind human behavior from people we've been taught for decades to regard as monsters it signals in our minds--"they're just like us". And of course they are, because the Nazis were all too human. We are all too human.

Rudolf Hoss was a high-ranking Nazi official who was known for running Auschwitz "efficiently" (and yes, I cringe to use any word we associate positively with a concentration camp). In the film, we see him in meetings discussing a new crematorium that will reduce hundreds of dead bodies to ashes far more quickly than previous iterations. This man is despicable. But he's not a grinning, leering, mustache-twirling caricature. He's also a soft-spoken father. This is what makes The Zone of Interest so gut-wrenching to watch. We cannot look away from the humanity of evil people and we have to consider where the line of evil lies within ourselves.

In our capitalist society, we do, in fact, benefit from the suffering of others. And most of us know this. We know, somewhere in the back of our minds, that our iPhones were put together by sweatshop workers and that our purchases on Amazon benefit a billionaire. We know that when we drive our cars, take a plane on vacation, or leave a light on at night, we contribute to climate change which will likely harm people in already precarious countries. Does this make us the same as Rudolf Hoss? Of course not. There is a spectrum of damage we cause to the world and to others, and there's a difference between actively participating in the murder of millions versus kind of passively contributing to the world's many ills for our own comfort and convenience. But we must--we must--resist the idea that we are incapable of great harm to others under the right circumstances. The more we ignore and deny that fact, the less prepared we'll be when the big test comes. 

Jonathan Glazer, a director of dreamy and disturbing films, is the perfect director for this movie. He films The Zone of Interest clinically, but also beautifully. The efficiency and organization of the Nazi war crimes is echoed in the dollhouse-like shots of the Hoss home. The belief that there is a "clean" way to commit genocide is mirrored in the constant churn of chores within the Hoss home. Mica Levi's unsettling score makes the film feel like a horror movie (which, of course, it very much is). The contrast between Levi's upsetting score, the sound design (where we hear bullets and screaming coming from over the wall), and the organized, efficient, clean, beautiful house is chilling. Here are people who have a place for everything, including a place for their love and empathy: neatly sectioned off and saved for their children while hundreds suffer and die right next door.

I'll end this review by discussing the one scene of true human decency in the film. Throughout the movie, there are several scenes, shot in night vision, where a young girl leaves apples for the camp workers. This girl was an actual historical person. Her name was Alexandria Bystron-Kolodziejczyk and she was 12 years old at the time. In the film, she discovers a small box with a piece of paper inside. It is a piece of music titled "Sunbeams" and was written by Thomas Wolf, a prisoner in Auschwitz. After leaving the food, she goes home and plays the music on the piano and we hear the lyrics narrated by the actual Wolf, from a recording he made of the piece in 1960:

"Sunbeams, radiant and warm / Human bodies, young and old; / And who are imprisoned here, / Our hearts are yet not cold,” 

I almost don't want to mention this detail, but we do hear some dialogue about camp prisoners fighting over apples and being sentenced to death for it, which means that Alexandria's act of resistance could be seen as futile. However, I want to posit that while it was the Nazi officer's decision to punish the prisoners for fighting over food, the act of hiding food for desperate, starving people was an act of bravery and good within a situation overwhelmed with evil and hatred. An alternative way of reading this is that the Nazis--and, indeed, all evil people and evil ideas in the world both historical and current--could not completely squash good, hope, love, and resistance. We can walk away from The Zone of Interest crushed by depression and hopelessness, but we can also walk away from it thinking about how we can be that very small, bright spot in a world of evil. So shines a good deed in a weary world. The Zone of Interest implores us to never forget that we, too, are capable of great evil, of great harm, of great selfishness...but we're also capable of hiding apples for people. 

Grade: A