Years ago, I had watched a powerful, unblinking documentary on the Holocaust called "The Night Will Fall" that focused on combat cameramen documenting the liberation of Nazi camps. The footage recorded was beyond shock or horror - it was the very picture of genocide. In addition, the film also addressed how German families were living in homes outside these camps, supposedly unaware of what was happening. Jonathan Glazer's "The Zone of Interest" is not an unblinking account of horror in the margins of these homes, it is an unblinking account of apathetic families living next door to unimaginable horrors that we never see.
One of the worst SS commandants of the Third Reich, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), approaches his job as apathetically as one can imagine - he may as well be working as a gardener doing some yard work. He leaves from his almost palatial home on horseback to the Auschwitz camp next door. In the film's unsettling opening of idyllic scenes near a lake, we see a family cavorting in a tall grass area and swimming in the lake without a care in the world. This placidity is important in seeing how some families are not unlike others. Scenes of domesticity in the house alongside the camps are about as normal as one would expect. Nobody, not Höss's wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), has any opinion on what is happening and we assume, based on her cruel verbal treatment of the Polish maid, that she approves of the extermination. The children who are always playing outside or in their rooms have no visual on the murders taking place other than hearing the sounds of rifle shots and a very clear visual of the smoke from the crematorium - they surely do not understand what unspeakable horrors are taking place. Only Hedwig's mother, who sees the fiery smoke emerging from that chimney at night, decides she can no longer take it and leaves.
"The Zone of Interest" is not for everyone and it surely will not appeal to those who were incredibly moved by "Schindler's List" (count me among them). Glazer's film has more of a standoffish approach, taking a backseat to character development or any colorful personalities and looking in as an observer and often from a distance. Close-ups are not used and there is no deciphering Höss's family's roots or their ambitions in life other than staying close-knit. Still, friction and unease figure into the film's 106-minute run time as Höss tells his wife he is being sent to a different camp - she's upset and refuses to live somewhere else. The prolonged unseen agony and brutality continue and all Höss can think about it is the best approach to killing Jews in huge numbers. There is faint hope in the form of a young Polish girl, shown in stunning solarized black-and-white scenes, where she places apples at the camp for the Jewish prisoners. She resembles a ghost-like angel bringing some solace to the victims and to us, the audience.
"The Zone of Interest" will keep you focused and angry at every turn about one of the worst crimes of inhumanity in the 20th century. Despite its unrelenting sense of doom, there is the added and necessary depiction of tranquility in the Höss family stable despite the very audible nightmare outside of it. It would be a crime to ignore this vivid, uniquely told and vital masterpiece from one of our masters of cinema.
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