The Zone of Interest (2023)

A reflection on the Jonathan Glazer film based in Auschwitz. Spoiler warning.

The Hoss family residence.

If there is one element that characterises the films of Jonathan Glazer, it is definitely tone. In his previous outings Under the Skin (2013) and Birth (2004), Glazer manages to evoke an atmosphere that is unsettling yet compelling. His latest film The Zone of Interest is no exception. Set in Auschwitz at the height of World War 2, we are brought into the daily life of the Hoss family whose patriarch Rudolf is the commandant of the notorious concentration camp. The family resides in a beautiful house located adjacent to the camp, close enough to hear and partially see some events occurring over the camp wall. The house is kept meticulously clean by Jewish maids and servants; it is a paragon of order and familial serenity.

Director and screenwriter Glazer is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and has Jewish ancestors from Ukraine. Other ancestors, who fled the Russian Kishinev pogrom in the early 1900s, settled in the UK. The film is based on the 2014 novel of the same name by the late Martin Amis. Amis’ novel was loosely based on the Hosses changing the names of the family members. Glazer however made the narrative decision of depicting the real characters using their real names. The film was filmed on site in Auschwitz. The house was completely recreated only a few hundred metres from the actual site which has been a private residence since the war ended. This close proximity to the camp must have had a significant impact on the production of the film as well as the performances of the actors, the horrors of the 1940s still haunting every scene.

The film opens with a couple of minutes of black screen, the otherworldly yet ancient sounding music by composer Mica Levi suffuses the blackness with an even deeper sense of foreboding. Glazer counters this with an opening scene depicting a pastoral idyll. The Hoss family and friends spend a day on the banks of a river, swimming and eating a picnic. It is a scene abundant with life, the life of a family. This is a family ensconced in nature absorbing all its benefits. Hoss cradles his newborn child and very carefully walks through the overgrown grass and reeds. The scene in some ways humanise the family. Glazer wants to remind us that these were in fact real people with real families and real human needs and desires.

The manicured garden across the wall.

Glazer relies on the viewer’s knowledge of the well documented Holocaust of World War 2. Visual and auditory cues are used with brilliant effect throughout the film to alert us to the occurrence of those crimes of humanity of which we are already very familiar. Those ingrained images from previous films or documentaries are accessed and almost exist as a silent parallel film, made up of scenes and photographic images of the mass murder of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis. The majority of the film comprises static interior shots of various rooms in the house, characters walk in and out of shot when entering or exiting a room. Glazer described this visual approach as ‘Big Brother in the Nazi house.’ This slightly glib description does however convey the immediacy of the effect of the static filming. We get caught up in the daily bustle of a busy German family.

The viewer hears the gun shots, the shrill Nazi orders, the trains arriving with more Jews, as the characters hear them. We become complicit in the greatest example of cognitive dissonance, not wanting to truly accept what is going on across the dividing wall. Glazer is careful to include instances where the facade drops. Hedwig Hoss’ mother spends a few days with her daughter celebrating how far she has come in her life living in such a beautiful house with such a powerful husband. Over the course of a few days she starts to learn of the true nature of what is happening across the wall and leaves abruptly.

It is the absolute banality of the middle management meetings and procedural nature of the interactions between the Nazi officers that has the greatest impact. Rudolf Hess reels at his impending relocation to a different concentration camp and how this will affect his family. If the film was not dealing with the Holocaust, it could be any job or any father. But it is not. The devil is in the details and in The Zone of Interest, he lurks and skulks in the most banal and commonplace corners of daily life. The film is a stark reminder of the capacity of man’s inhumanity to man, our self assurance that we could never get caught up in such heinous acts is gradually eroded. The film is a clarion call for us all to be on the watch. Events over the last year have taught us that the lessons of history are often forgotten. It is for this reason that The Zone of Interest should be mandatory viewing.