'Zone of Interest' Is a Horrifyingly Brilliant Holocaust Drama

[Celerity]

The new movie, now playing at the New York Film Festival, is a chillingly detached, terrifically acted horror story set in the shadows of Auschwitz.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/zone-of-interest-review-a-horrifyingly-brilliant-holocaust-drama



A Holocaust drama like no other, The Zone of Interest is perhaps the most chillingly detached film in cinema history. Writer/director Jonathan Glazer’s long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s Under the Skin is a tale of terrifying apathy told from an icy remove, such that distance—between us and what’s on screen; between its characters’ daily lives and what’s taking place right next door; and between humanity and inhumanity—proves both central to its m.o. as well as its primary subject. It’s a WWII horror story rooted in separation, alienation and a cold indifference that shakes one to the very core.

A loose adaptation of Martin Amis’ 2014 novel of the same name, The Zone of Interest (showing at this year’s New York Film Festival) is the cinematic embodiment of Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil,” detailing the everyday affairs of Auschwitz concentration camp commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Anatomy of a Fall’s Sandra Hüller), and their bustling brood, all of whom reside in a prim and proper abode located directly on the other side of the infamous death house’s wall. Theirs is a placid life filled with birthday celebrations for Rudolf, get-togethers between Hedwig and other Nazi wives, and children playing in an expansive yard marked by a large greenhouse and a swimming pool with a slide. When Hedwig’s mother visits the clan, she’s naturally impressed by the fruits of their success, evidence of which is everywhere, from their fine drinkware and handsome bedrooms to their doting servants.



What’s also apparent from the outset of The Zone of Interest is that the Höss family exists under the literal shadow of Auschwitz’s dormitories, crematoriums and attendant smokestacks, from which fire and smoke constantly emanate. Glazer shoots his material with deep-focus flatness, the result being a visual dullness that keeps the action at arms’ length, as if viewed through a microscope (or from the heavens). The director makes sure the Hösses are close enough to be studied but he refuses to empathetically engage with them; his compositions habitually foreground bland negative space and situate his characters deep and small in the frame. Disconnection is omnipresent and oppressive, creating a figurative chasm that’s at once unnerving and, in a certain sense, reassuring, given that, while the Höss’ pitiless behavior may be fascinating, it’s best spied from a ways away.

Glazer’s formal detachment echoes the Hösses’ own attitude toward the extermination camp looming over their every waking and slumbering moment. In scene after scene, The Zone of Interest’s characters blithely ignore what’s on their doorstep, and the director underscores their disengagement by habitually setting everyday household encounters and incidents to the background screams of Jewish prisoners, gunfire of Nazi soldiers, and barking tirades of guard dogs. The unthinkable atrocities occurring at Auschwitz are heard but never depicted in Glazer’s film, and that goes for Jews too, who make only brief on-screen appearances, the better to highlight the Hösses’ blasé disinterest in seeing them as real, present people who deserve consideration, compassion and mercy.

snip

[Biophilic]

1. Horrifying.

After reading the article and watching the trailer I found my jaw clenched when I was done. How very appropriate for our time and our country. Damn, will we humans ever learn? Are we any better than they were? Maybe, but I've begun to have my doubts lately. I used to wonder what happened to the Germans, how did they ever end up that way. From watching my own country I'm well aware of how easy it is to slip into that type of mindset. I'm not a Christian and I don't normally pray, but damn I wish it would help. This movie terrifies me because I know how easy it could happen here.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Saw it recently

It is excellent, but terrifying; terrifying not because of violent scenes (we don't actually see inside Auschwitz) but because of the horrifying callousness of the protagonists.