Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jonathan Glazer
Starring: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Daniel Holzberg, Ralph Herforth, Sascha Maaz
Every few years a new acclaimed Holocaust drama arrives and we roll our
eyes. "Do we really need another one of these?" we ask. "Can't Jews just
let it go already?" But then we watch said films and realise that most new
entries into the cinematic chronicles of the Holocaust offer something
new. Schindler's List,
Son of Saul, The Pianist and Jonathan Glazer's in name only
adaptation of Martin Amis's novel
The Zone of Interest could never be confused for one
another. Even the Holocaust films that don't offer anything new serve to
reinforce its horrors, to remind us exactly why Jews can't let it go, and
why they never should.
In recent years the label "Nazi" has lost much of its impact. It's become
a term that's lazily wielded to describe someone whose politics we don't
like, regardless of which side of the political fence we're on. Invoking
Hitler has become the last refuge of the feeble-minded, a comparison
applied to everyone from Donald Trump to Dr. Fauci. It doesn't help that
Hollywood has spent decades portraying Nazis as cartoon villains. Most of
us alive now have no actual memory of the Nazis. For most of us the Nazis
are simply the bad guys of the Indiana Jones franchise. Even the best
films about the Holocaust tend to portray Nazis as one-dimensional
monsters. Perhaps that's all they deserve, but in doing so it lets the
viewer off the hook. Much like how Hollywood movies like to portray
racists as straw-chewing redneck stereotypes, portraying Nazis as inhuman
prevents us from realising how much we might actually have in common with
them.
Glazer's film is unique in that it's a Holocaust film in which Jews are
never seen, despite it taking place at Auschwitz. Instead we spend time in
the presence of real life SS Officer Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), who lives on a plot right next to the infamous camp with his wife
Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their young children. Remove our
knowledge of what his job as commandant of Auschwitz actually entails and
Rudolf seems like a pretty decent guy. He loves his family, is kind to
animals, and gets annoyed when he sees a damaged flower bed. He could be
the dad from a 1970s sitcom. He has no animosity towards Jews, in the same
way a gardener has no animosity towards the weeds they hack down so they
can plant geraniums. He would have to see them as human to feel anything
towards them. When Rudolf discusses a proposed new way of making gas
chambers run more efficiently with an industrialist, they might as well be
hashing out a plan to instal more economical central heating. Mass
extermination is simply a business, and in 1943 Poland, business is
booming.
Glazer dares to take a non-judgemental approach to Rudolf. There's nobody
to tell him he's wrong, because of course there wouldn't have been. The
only moral dilemma he faces is whether to leave his family to take up a
job promotion in a new city. Rudolf hopes that if he impresses his
superiors he'll be allowed to return to Auschwitz. Impressing his
superiors requires finding the most efficient way to rid Hungary of its
700,000 Jews.
Rudolf's indifference towards Jews is contrasted by Hedwig, who seems to
have a genuine hatred of anyone who isn't German or Christian. She admires
herself in the mirror wearing a fur coat pilfered from a Jewish woman, her
smug grin betraying a sense of joy at the elevated status she's achieved
at someone else's expense. When her husband is away she treats her Polish
servants with disdain, even threatening to have one killed for serving an
unsatisfying breakfast. When her mother visits she wonders if the Jewish
woman who employed her as a cleaner is on the "other side of the
wall."
It seems like an odd thing to say about a Holocaust drama, but I don't
think I've ever seen a movie that seems as heavily influenced by video
games as The Zone of Interest. Glazer rigged up various cameras around the reconstruction of the Höss
home, allowing his actors to move around without the encumberance of crew
members. The effect, which sees the screen refresh every time a character
enters a new room, is reminiscent of the aesthetics of video games from
the '80s and '90s. I was so reminded of the Spy vs Spy game that I kept
waiting for someone to electrocute themselves on a wired door knob. The
visual style is also eerily reminiscent of the early '90s game Escape from
Colditz, not just in its setting but in how Glazer adopts night vision for
external night scenes in the exact same manner as that game. Comparing a
movie to watching someone else play a video game is generally a highly
negative critique, but in this case it adds to the maddening sense of
helplessness as we watch history unfold, its controls in someone else's
hands.
Those night vision scenes involve a subplot that sees a young Polish girl
hide apples for the Jewish prisoners to find the next morning on their
work detail. It's a beacon of hope that's cruelly extinguished when her
good intentions later lead to fatal consequences. I'm not sure what
Glazer's intentions are with this subplot, but it comes off as a critique
of liberals, who so often would prefer to make an awful situation a little
more palatable rather than doing something radical to end it. And yet this
little girl is simply doing her best, which is more than most of us can
claim. We all like to think we wouldn't have fallen in line with the party
had we lived in Nazi Germany, but it's hard to find much evidence in our
world to support this thesis. For those of us in the West, much of the
rest of the world is our Auschwitz. Some of us might leave out apples, but
most of us try to shut out the screams and get on with our lives.
The Zone of Interest is on Prime Video UK now.
