The Zone of Interest

The three minutes of prelusive black screen that open Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest serve to tamp down outside thoughts, the gradual choral music on the soundtrack attuning the viewer to the film. It’s a method of conditioning, cinematic shorthand that roughly translates to “prepare yourself.” The film then cuts to an idyllic riverside, a family picnic in progress: swimming, picking berries, walking back to the car, the ride home, and then lights out. A nice, relaxing day for Rudolf Höss (Friedel), his wife, Hedwig (Hüller), and their brood. Tomorrow, it’s back to work for Höss, commanding the Auschwitz concentration camp, the walls of which are right next door to the family’s home.

Much as he did with his previous film, 2013’s Under the Skin, Glazer has adapted a novel but has pulled from it only the material that suits his vision. Here, it’s Martin Amis’ 2014 novel of the same name, and what Glazer has taken is tone. It is the tone of business, the tone of Teutonic efficiency. In overseeing this place of mass murder, Obersturmführer Höss speaks of loads and pieces. In discussing architectural plans for a new extermination facility, the main concern is the expedience in which a chamber can be turned around, or “reloaded,” for the next delivery and what method of production will result in the highest yield per day. The systematic eradication of the Jewish population along with other undesirables has been distilled to its most dehumanizing essence. At home, Frau Höss rules the roost with a stern hand, but she’s not above letting her maidservants pick out some clothing for themselves among the sacks of seized items that arrive daily to her house from the camp (although she keeps the fur coats for herself). When she’s not gossiping over coffee with the wives of the other German officers, she can be found tending to her sprawling garden, complete with greenhouse and swimming pool. A visit from her mother provides further distraction. Glazer dares us to emotionally invest in the drama of the Höss’ family life – potential promotions and reassignments, domestic quarrels, the desire to live a happy, fulfilling life.

Apart from a handful of tracking shots, the film is a series of middle-distance static shots, giving us the same detachment the Höss household possesses living next to a concentration camp. But The Zone of Interest’s coup de grâce is never showing any activity within Auschwitz itself, allowing only the sounds of the camp to be a constant, nerve-racking presence. Woodpecker or machine gun? Crying baby or dying woman? The horrors of the camp are utterly ignored by the family as we, the audience, can think of nothing else. It is a brilliant tactic, this brazen display of indifference and complicity, because it pointedly reflects our own. Glazer helpfully includes an extended fade to black at the film’s end to give us some time to reflect on this.