The Zone of Interest (Dir Jonathan Glazer) 12A 105 Minutes. German (English subtitles)
How can you film the Holocaust?
Synopsis
The daily life of the Commandant of Auschwitz and his family.
Analysis
Although nominally adapted from a 2014 Martin Amis novel, Jonathan Glazer’s movie owes more to the historical record and has been in development for a decade. The questions it raises are “what sort of person could knowingly participate in the Holocaust?” and “how do you film something so grotesque without exploiting the memory of those who suffered?”. The answers provided by this disturbing and brilliant film are challenging and profound. Höss, was one of the most prominent exponents of The Final Solution. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and you can get an idea of his character from this exchange when accused of murdering three and a half million people, at his trial in Nuremberg, Höss replied, "No. Only two and one half million—the rest died from disease and starvation." He was sentenced to death and hung in 1947.
The film follows Commandant Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their family as they go about their daily routines in their house adjoining the walls of Auschwitz, on days out to the country, entertaining friends, dealing with servants and increasingly exploring the management role Höss fulfils as a senior SS officer.
Jonathan Glazer is probably the most stylistically adventurous film maker in Britain. His background was in theatre design, advertising and pop promos, and he has been strikingly original from the start. Have a look at his “Clockwork Orange” inspired promo for Blur’s “The Universal” or Radiohead’s menacing man pursued by car at night “Street Spirit” and you’ll feel an early version of the unease and disquiet he brings to all of his work and which reaches it’s apogee here. He has only made 4 films: 2000’s “Sexy Beast” which reintroduced menace into the British gangster flick, 2003’s “Birth” which plays with ideas of reincarnation and most strikingly “Under The Skin” 2013 where an alien played by Scarlett Johansson seduces young Scottish men and absorbs them to prolong her life. That was his first collaboration with composer Mica Levy and sound designer Johnnie Burn, both of whom contribute enormously to this current movie.
The title is revealing. A zone of interest is the legally defined area of relevance to a legal case. So, here: the holocaust is occurring over the camp wall, almost out of sight, but never out of earshot, but the family life of the perpetrators is relevant to their complicity and liability. Note the shot below. At first glance it is a harmless children’s party, but look at that plume of smoke at the eyeline: it’s a train going to the camp.
This story is not Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil”. These people are banal and evil, but they know what they are part of. Only by dehumanising the Jewish and other victims of the concentration camps can they face themselves. Glazer’s brilliant device is to never (apart from 1 shot at the end) have any of his cast look into the camera. There are no close ups and the camera is always to the peripheral vision of the protagonists. For the audience this is deeply unsettling. By the end of the film you are almost screaming at the actors “look at me! I want to see a response”. The camera rarely moves and when it does so, it does in a slow pan. What this does is both alienate you from them, but question their humanity. Glazer achieved this effect by installing cameras into the fabric of the house so that the actors were often performing in an empty room to a hidden camera, what he called “The Nazi Big Brother House”. It’s an architecturally designed film, filmed in a house next to Auschwitz and you get to know it’s layout extremely well. It does remind me of Jacques Tati’s filming of “Playtime” in it’s distancing and use of mid century architecture.
Glazer, who is Jewish said in his Guardian interview: “To acknowledge the couple as human beings was a big part of the awfulness of this entire journey of the film, but I kept thinking that, if we could do so, we would maybe see ourselves in them. For me, this is not a film about the past. It’s trying to be about now, and about us and our similarity to the perpetrators, not our similarity to the victims.” What he is suggesting is that if offered comfort, affluence, advancement, how deep are our moral scruples?
Both actors are incredible in their roles. Friedel, often looking into the distance, ruminating. He is an emotional blank, except when concerned with his dog, horse or lilacs. Is he looking into his soul when he stands there, or calculating how to kill people more efficiently? Hüller is a narcissistic social climber, an extreme version of Beverley from Abigail’s Party. A slight mistake from a Polish housemaid is greeted with “I could have my husband scatter your ashes across Bratislaw” without barely looking up from her breakfast. It’s always the little details that are telling: Höss will take his boots off before entering the house knowing they are covered in material from the camp, Hedwig has a regular delivery of items from new inmates: coats, lipsticks etc that she tries on, her mother suddenly disappears from the house when she realises the true nature of her daughter’s life.
And always, the sound. The soundscape is incredible: clanking industrial noises, hissing, muffled voices, gunshots, screams and groans are ever present in the background, occurring as they do just over the wall. Mica Levy’s score was pared back so that it effectively only opens and closes the film and in both cases their work is played over a black screen. This is a horror film in which nothing happens. There are references to fairy tales and folklore throughout and this adds to the feeling that you are trapped in the film.
The film stock has a slightly washed out look as if covered in ash. The family dog is like Hedwig, always on the move, almost hysterically active.
2 scenes lift the film from an impressive depiction of horror to something more metaphysical. A young girl is seen planting apples in areas where it is assumed camp inmates will toil. The scenes are shot using a thermal imaging camera, so almost look like a negative, in sharp contrast to the rest of the film. These scenes were based on the actual story of a 90 year old woman who as a child had done this at Auschwitz. They give us some hope, that small acts of kindness are worthwhile.
Secondly is the ending. Höss is leaving work late at night and descending the floors of an empty office building with few lights. He starts gagging and looks into the gloom at a distant pinprick of light. Suddenly, we see modern Auschwitz being prepared for another day by it’s army of cleaners. Cut back to Höss, who for the first time, looks at the camera, at us, the audience. It’s a disconcerting moment and leaves the audience to interpret it’s meaning.
Like, everyone at the screening I saw, it takes time to recover from this movie. By focusing on the everyday perpetrators, the film makers have created an impressive work of art that forces you to engage on it’s own terms. By no means an easy watch, but then it shouldn’t be.