Artwork by Michael DiMilo
No Man’s Land: Film Review of The Zone of Interest
By Geoff Carter
The horrors of the Holocaust have been exhaustively documented and dramatized—and rightly so. That shameful and disgusting display of premeditated cruelty, inhumanity, and assembly-line slaughter should be forever on display as an example of exactly what human beings are capable of. We cannot afford to forget it, especially in light of the recent rise of intolerance—particularly Nazism—antisemitism, and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.
Bulldozers shoving dozens of emaciated bodies into lime-filled mass graves, dead eyes staring out from beneath a wooden bunk, walking skeletons in striped uniforms staring emptily at the camera, and mounds of shoes, hair, and jewelry collected from prisoners on their ways to the gas chambers. These images are—or should be—etched into the consciousness of everyone because the ones who perpetrated these crimes are not so different than any of us.
“We were only following orders,” they said.
“We did not know,” they said.
“I saw nothing,” they said.
How different are they than those of us who stand by and say nothing while watching atrocities in Gaza and Ukraine or studiously ignore the undermining of our own democracy?
Unlike other Holocaust films like Schindler’s List, The Pianist, or Night and Fog that explicitly documented the graphic horrors of Hitler’s final solution, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest only hints at the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, skirting the cruelty and sadism and heartlessness to emphasize the willful blindness of those who profited from the Nazi’s final solution—those who lived an idyllic life founded on the very horrors they perpetrated.
Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedel) is the commandant of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. He and his family live on an estate adjacent to the walls of the camp, in a buffer zone between the camp and the prying eyes of the outside world known as the zone of interest, a sixteen-square-mile area controlled by the SS designed to keep the gigantic camp, capable of killing two thousand inmates an hour, isolated. The Hoss family is suspended in a space between their own twisted bourgeois existence and the horrors of Rudolf’s life work which makes that life possible. With his wife Hedwig (Sandra Huller), Rudolf Hoss builds a magnificent home and huge garden complete with pool and are raising five beautiful children in that zone of interest.
The film opens with a black frame with eerie electronic sounds resembling moaning or screaming. The sounds mount in volume and intensity as the audience finds itself teetering on the edge of suspense, waiting for horrific Auschwitz images to appear, but the black screen continues for at least forty-five seconds until finally, the sound of chirping birds and happy picnickers start to flow through the sound. The screen fades up to an idyllic shot of the Hoss family enjoying themselves on a riverbank, framed in impeccable classical composition, a beautiful bucolic overlay built on the horrors which provides their luxurious lifestyle.
The film follows the Hosses as they go home, tuck in their children, and go to bed. They rise the next day. The kids go to school while Hoss starts the workday by welcoming emissaries with whom he discusses an upgrade to the camp crematoria. Hedwig manages the household, including a cook, a housekeeper, and maids. Gardeners and laborers around the estate wear the striped uniforms of the Auschwitz inmates. Unlike the house staff, they are studiously ignored.
During the day, Hedwig receives a bundle of clothes which she goes through before giving it to the staff. She then goes upstairs to try on a full-length fur coat, which she tries on, preening like a schoolgirl. She finds a lipstick case in the pocket and tries it on before fastidiously wiping it away. It seems obvious the clothes have been confiscated from new camp inmates and that being the commandant’s wife does have its perks.
Hoss has had a high wall constructed between his home and the camp, but that reality cannot be completely shut out. All during the film, sounds filter in from the camp. Yelling, screaming, barking dogs, and the occasional gunshot punctuate the peaceful existence of the Hosses. At one point, while hosting a pool party, the smoke plume of an arriving train can be seen over the wall, the significance of which is not lost on the audience. At night, the orange glow of the crematoria fires burn endlessly, sometimes disturbing the sleep of the children. When Hedwig’s mother (Imogen Kogge) arrives for a visit, her daughter proudly shows her the house and the garden, but the mother, overwhelmed by the sight and smell of the camp, departs abruptly, leaving a note for Hedwig, which she burns.
During a trip to the river with his children, Hoss steps on a human jawbone while fishing and then sees ashes floating in the river flowing towards him and his children. He rushes them home where they are scrubbed within an inch of their lives. Yet this disgust does not stop Hoss from forcing prisoners to have sex with him.
Hoss then gets news of a transfer, but Hedwig refuses to leave her dream home, insisting that she must stay with the family while her husband leaves to work at his new post. Their stay is approved. Hoss leaves and, because of his innovativeness and dedication to duty, is promoted to take care of the Hungarian Jews, which, as he proudly tells Hedwig, bears his name.
Rudolf Hoss is obviously complicit in the mass murders of Auschwitz. He was, in fact, the innovator who incorporated gassing prisoners and using crematoria to dispose of the bodies. The degree to which his wife and family are complicit is less clear. Hedwig gets her new clothes, food, and other perks from sources that are never explicitly shown. One of the children is shown playing with human teeth with gold fillings. The screams and gunshots and the roaring of the crematoria never cease. Hedwig’s mother realizes what is happening and leaves in horror. To some degree, everyone is complicit.
Jonathan Glazer’s use of monochromatic screens, the black opening, another sequence in which a close-up of a red flower fades completely to red, and the final frame is emblematic of a camera seeking to go below the surface, to ascertain the reality underneath the façade, or conversely, in the opening scene, the façade underneath the reality. It is a perfect visual metaphor for denial and complicity and one which begs the question of how the horrors of their deeds is processed by the Hosses. At some level, it cannot help but sink into their subconscious.
In the final sequence, as Hoss is leaving work, he stops and retches before, when peering down a dark corridor, he sees a vision of workers cleaning out the Auschwitz Museum and its exhibits of mountains of shoes, baggage other inmate possessions confiscated by the Nazis. Is this a manifestation of guilt or an affirmation of his place in history?
Glazer has created a masterpiece of slow-moving horror. By contrasting the blind ambition and ruthless social climbing of the Hosses with the unquestioned means by which they attain their dreams, Jonathan Glazer has created a portrait of the ultimate middle-class decadence and an indictment of the human capacity for self-advancement. Despite its slow pace, beautiful framing, and relaxed pacing, an aura of horror and tension hangs over this film. The atrocities committed by this family, especially in their willful ignorance outside their zone of interest, are stunning.
Sandra Huller is dead-on in her portrayal of the ruthlessly ambitious Hedwig. She is the perfect portrait of the newly rich matron. When she is treasured with losing her treasures, she is ready to forgo everything, including her husband, Yet Huller injects her with some humanity, especially when interacting with her family. She is, in turns, loving, tyrannical, simpering, and gloating. Frieder portrays Hoss as the paragon of administrative efficiency—all business, stoic, and completely self-contained. His civilized and courteous demeanor seems all the more horrifying as a result.
The Zone of Interest is not a narrative that focuses mainly on events or even character. It is a monumental achievement, a film rooted in people caught in the currents of history, people trading their decency and morality for the currency of self-advancement. It is an indictment of any of us who would stand by and ignore evil, or—worse, live next door to it.