THE ZONE OF INTEREST

UK/Poland/US, 2023, 107 minutes, Colour.

Christian Friedel, Sandra Huller.

Directed by Jonathan Glazer.

Discomfit. For this reviewer, the word quickly came to mind for the experience of watching this film. More than just merely uncomfortable.

Steven Spielberg has noted that he considers this film the best on the Holocaust since Schindler’s List. But, it must be stressed, it is completely different from Schindler’s List but is also a harrowing experience. One inside the camps, the other outside.

British writer-director, Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth), writing his screenplay in German, draws on the novel by Martin Amis. The film begins beguilingly, a wonderful summer picnic by the river, parents, children, playful, audiences invited to share the joy. Then the family goes home, a fine house, comfortable, an  extended garden, flowers and vegetables, swimming pool. that a German family might desire.

But this is in the 1940s,, the house is in Auschwitz, adjacent to the camp. The head of the household is Hoss, the commander of the camp. And this is where the experience of The Zone of Interest is the opposite of Schindler’s List. The garden wall of the Hoss house is also the wall of the camp. But, we never go inside the camp (until some final low key looking sequences where ordinary women cleaners enter the camp to sweep and mop). We notice the wall, the guard tower with the guard rising above it, the chimneys and the increasing smoke billowing. We, the audience, know what that means. The Hoss family tend not to notice anything about the camp, make some complaints about the annoyance of the smoke.

And that is the discomforting aspect of the film. On the one hand, we are looking at family life, the ordinariness of it, the wife (the excellent Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall), high demands and expectations for a comfortable life, showing the extensive garden to her mother, plans for the future. At this stage, many in the audiences will reminded of Hannah Arendt’s comment about the banality of evil. It is there in the contrast between the commonplace and intimations of overwhelming evil before our eyes in this film.

Our level of discomfit will depend on our awareness, memories, films and documentaries, the visuals of the Holocaust, the trains to the camps, the prisoners, the Star of David labels, the workforce, the huts, the opens, the gas… For older audiences with memories, this will be very strong. For younger audiences, there may not be this awareness, the film is a challenge.

Jonathan Glazer relies on our supplying the atmosphere of discomfit.

The Commandant, Hoss, seems an ordinary type at first (except for an extreme Nazi haircut) but he is shown discussing with some visitors a new plan for the camp, greater efficiency for heating and cooling the ovens, then at a meeting with a final solution agenda, his being transferred to Berlin (and his wife not willing to sacrifice the house in a move), his logistics for the daily trains to bring Jewish prisoners from Hungary, a scene at a Nazi banquet where he roams up and down, contemplating concentration Issues, speculating how those inside might be most effectively gassed.

Nominee for Academy Awards International Best Film, winner at the Festival of Cannes, highly recommended no matter how much the discomfit.

1. Based on the novel by Martin Amis? Expanded by the imagination of the writer-director? The 21^st-century, audience knowledge of Auschwitz, of the concentration camps, of the atrocities, the Holocaust and the Jews? For older audiences? Younger audiences and familiarity/non-familiarity?
2. The impact for the audience, the focus on the Hoss family, their lifestyle? Very ordinary at home? The initial indications of the concentration camp, the wall, the tower and guard, the sounds, shots, cries, the increasing billowing smoke, flames? They’re not making much impact on the family?
3. Discomfit for the audience, watching the family and its detail, the indications of the violence and brutality in the camp, detail after detail of the family life and their disregard for the camp? The gradual introduction of scenes within the camp, of the commandants of the camps, their meeting, and the social gathering in Berlin?
4. The British perspective on the issues? German language? German cast?
5. The idyllic introduction to the family, summer, the water, swimming, the picnic, playful? The return home? Life at home, husband and wife, the range of children under age, the servants in the house, the treatment of the servants?
6. The portrait of the commander, age, appearance, the haircut, uniform, but mainly seeing him at home, his white suit, at the table, putting the children to bed, the devoted father? Husband? But the later encounter with the servant and his going through the tunnel to wash?
7. The wife, age, Germanic in her commands, the fur coat and its origins, her looking in the mirror, her meeting with the other mothers, their discussions, especially of confiscated Jewish clothes, disappointment at missing out on desired curtains at auctions…? The arrival of her mother, the complete tour of the house and its comfort, the bedroom, the tour of the garden, the flowers, the vegetables, the vastness, the swimming pool? The mother and her joy and success for her daughter? Her later being disturbed by the sounds of the camp, the smoke, her disappearance in the night? Her daughters being slightly upset?
8. The issue of the transfer, the impact on Hoss, not telling his wife immediately, the sequence of his telling her, her reaction, not wanting to leave the house, the investment in it, absence from her husband? His dictating the letters, her suggesting the appeal to Boorman, to Hitler? His transfer, going to the meetings, organising the table and the delegates from the various concentration camps, his agenda? Business, no emotion? No inherent sense of morality?
9. The Hungarian issue, the number of Jews, the government, the logistics for the transfer, 12,000 per day, the trains, the number of passengers, arrival of the camps, selection for work, the gas chambers?
10. The visit of the technician, explanation of the improvements for the ovens and circulation, heat and cold, called objectivity in presenting these death centres? Hoss and his later congratulating them on their ingenuity?
11. Hoss and his phone calls to his wife, the middle of the night in her seeming disregard, the prospect of his return?
12. The banquet and ball in Berlin, his observations, speculation about the possibilities of gassing so many people in this kind of room? His wandering the corridors, being sick? And the insertion of the memories from Auschwitz, the ordinary women cleaners, coming into the camp, vacuuming, sweeping, cleaning the windows with the display of shoes, crutches, and the photos along the corridors honouring those who work there?
13. The cumulative discomfit watching the film, remembering Hannah Arendt in the banality of evil as the family lived their ordinary life, taking Auschwitz for granted, the Nazi loyalties, uniforms, the troops assembling and wishing happy birthday to the commander, the young son and his Hitler youth uniform, the bone in the river and the family having to wash themselves clean?
14. A chilling reminder of the Holocaust, the extermination of the Jews, Aryan ideology, the concentration camps and the terror, and the fears loyalties of the German people to Hitler and the Reich, its philosophy, its extermination?