Can You Stomach ‘The Zone of Interest’?
The threshold to justify spending time watching Nazis in a film is incredibly high. The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s latest, attempts to vault over that hurdle to offer the definitive “banality of evil” on film.
Let me stress the emphasis on banal. While the film resides almost entirely on the family grounds next to the Auschwitz concentration camp, the camera never rises above the walls that separate the Höss household and the monstrosity next door.
Commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) rose through the ranks for his logistical prowess and well-placed connections. He and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Huller), created a dream home next to his station in Auschwitz. Hedwig is the self-proclaimed “Queen of Auschwitz,” she holds court over her home with the assistance of live-in staff and delights her guests with gifts and gossip about the officers of the Third Reich.
Glazer won’t shock viewers with anything explicit. The film’s most disturbing moments are watching Hedwig and her children sift through bags brought into the home. Tops, furs, jewelry, whatever Hedwig doesn’t claim, she passes on to her friends, her children, and, finally, the staff. When the housecleaner gets the last item up for grabs, the officer’s wives mock her for grabbing something that won’t fit her. The clothes from the backs of women in Auschwitz gathered and sent next door to enrich Nazis. Later, we observed the children playing with trinkets in bed. When the camera zooms in, the trinkets are gold teeth. It bothers no one in the house that their new gifts were the last belongings of the suffering Jewish occupants next door.
When the Commandant has a meeting with contractors, you would think they were discussing the inner workings of a washing machine. As they explain how the new machinery will increase the oven’s capacity, the ramifications are horrifyingly clear. The results of the Commandant’s efficiency sneak up on him as he and his children swim in the river. A slow-moving cloud of ash races toward them. It only dawns on him what it is as he races to pull them out of the water. Several times during the film, the smell of the camp filtering into the home will make someone rush to close the windows, but they never discuss it. Apart from the gunshots and screams over the fence, you’d assume you were watching CCTV footage of an uninteresting family. Reminiscent of Michael Haneke’s clinical depictions of cruelty, the visuals, even stationary, are no less unsettling.
All the aforementioned scenes are stomach-turning, but after a while, they become routine. Glazer and cinematographer Lukasz Zal (Ida, Cold War) keep the camera at a cold distance, offering no dynamic movement. The average shot in the film approaches six seconds before the cut. Your brain searches the frame for evidence of inhumanity, but your eyes learn to glaze over what happens. Filmmakers in Holocaust cinema must ask themselves if depicting evil acts is a worthwhile venture. Glazer takes the route that it isn’t and can never be. We know the occupants of the Höss home are evil. That they don’t recognize it in themselves is worrying. Mica Levi’s score only adds to the auditory discomfort of intermittent screams and violence off-screen. “There are, in effect, two films,” Glazer explained of his work. “The one you see, and the one you hear.”
Without offering more than “it’s the banality of evil,” Zone of Interest is too cruel to watch. Like Come and See (although less visual in its horror), I’m unable to recommend The Zone of Interest — at least, on its own. As half of a double feature with Under the Skin, this film would be a fascinating mirror of behavior. One about humans comfortable with genocide as long as they advance the upper-class ladder, and the other a story of an alien killing humans for food, who slowly grows a conscience. That only one of those stories is fictional, is terrifying.
