Movie Review - The Zone of Interest

Director: Jonathan Glazer
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 105 minutes
Year: 2024
Starring: Sandra Hüller, Christian Friedel, Freya Kreutzkam, Ralph Herforth, Max Beck, Ralf Zillmann, Imogen Kogge, Stephanie Petrowitz, Johann Karthaus
 
Description: Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden beside the camp.

Review: The ‘Queen of Auschwitz’, what if people called you that? Or even worse: you could be bragging about it to your mother. Hedwig Höss, the wife os camp commander Rudolf, built her personal paradise on the piece of land just outside the thick fence of Auschwitz, an no one will take it away from her.

“The Zone of Interest” is Jonathan Glazer’s film adaptation of Matin Amis’ book of the same name, though you can’t say he’s gone straightforward. The focus is completely on the family. In the book, the name of the family has been changed, but Glazer is clear about who this story is following: the historical commander Rudolf Höss and his men. The filmmaker shows what humanity is capable of.

The camera always stays on the outside of Auswitz. At most, we see furnaces burning in the distance and the plume of smoke from a train pulling. But we here a lot. Rumbling machines, shouted orders, gunshots, cries of pain. Because of the sound design of the film, the Holocaust is always extremely close. No matter how hard the film’s characters are actively not dealing with it. And crucially, we follow the perpetrators.

Glazer explores how people, if they are incetivized enough to tak advantage of extreme human suffering, can turn away from the atrocities we ourselves commit. Directly or indirectly. Hedwig Höss has not merely created a beautiful house with an amazing garden for herself, she is willing to fight for it. For a piece of greenery with a swimming pool, were, admittedly, you can always hear Hitler’s death machine roaring and the ashes of victims gently descending. “This is our home”, she tells her husbans, “exactly as Hitler wanted it for us”.

Both Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller do not seem to acting so much as temporarily living in the skin of the characters. The family is filmed as naturally as possible during everyday actons.
The movie doesn’t really have a story, it’s more an experience. And it’s a very uncomfortable one. Occasionally a character seems to be aware of the inhuman context, everyone else puts it away. And constantly you are made aware of those circumstances.

It’s only a little over 100 minutes long, but it feels so much longer. It’s a slow burn and not an easy watch. It’s the implication of the horror that is going on, on the other side of the wall that make this film so difficult to watch. And it will most likely be your only watch. This film challenges you to understand that these people banish their perception of those horrors from their personal experiences of the here and now. And also to see that some children grow up thinking that such conditions are normal.  

Rating: 4/ 5