The Zone of Interest Review
Jonathan Glazer’s latest film is an adaptation of Martin Amis’ 2014 novel of the same name. Rudolf Hoss the commandant of Auschwitz during World War II endeavor to give the best for his wife Hedwig and their family.
This may sound like many Holocaust films you’ve seen before, or at least know what to expect from the film. Maybe some explosive scenes of the commandant erupting and horrific scenes of atrocities done to the Jewish prisoners.
However, this is not a conventional Holocaust film. Instead of showing the horrors, Glazer made a family drama about the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz his wife, and their family dealing with the struggles of running the prison camp.
We follow the family as we only hear the horrors of what is happening just beyond the high cement fence topped with razor wire. Through the masterful sound design we hear gunshots, screams, the trains coming and going, and the smoke stacks. We never actually see the murders.
It’s clear Glazer is after something more palpable when it comes to the atrocities of the Holocaust. How evil comes to power. The power comes when everyone accepts the atrocities as normal.
Their screams, the gunshots, when they become ambient noise, it’s easier to accept genocide. That is what we begin to do. As the film moves along it becomes harder to distinguish between the German children’s play screams and Jewish children’s murderous screams.
One of the most difficult films to watch about the Holocaust is Come and See. A Russian film from 1985 about the atrocities committed by the Nazis in Belarus.
Come and See is tough to get through because filmmaker Elem Kimov pulls zero punches as you see firsthand what the Nazis were capable of and what they did to civilians, especially women.
Come and See and The Zone of Interest are two sides of the same coin. Both are pull-no-punch looks at the Holocaust and its atrocities. However, as Come and See puts the horrors in your face, The Zone of Interest doesn’t show you any of it up close.
Which is what makes Glazer’s film more unsettling. Seeing heinous acts committed, there is a level of distance because it’s easy for someone to say to themself “I’d never do that", I’d never rape or murder someone with glee.”
In The Zone of Interest Glazer makes the genocide palpable. There are atrocities committed every day but because they’re not shoved into our faces we can ignore them. Out of sight out of mind.
This film forces you to think about how we see the world and what we can do to make it better. Because it can be all too easy for certain behaviors like racism, mistreatment, and intolerance to become too regular.
In a time when we had a world leader who took joy in being racist, sexist, bigoted, and every other word under the book this film remains scarily prescient. Especially in an election year in which he will be running.
This is not a fun film, but it is necessary and may just be the best film of 2023.
4.5/5 Stars
After some thought this could become a five-star film.
