The Zone of Interest
Does Jonathan Glazer’s highly-acclaimed Holocaust drama deserve all the praise?
Sandra Hüller
Although Jonathan Glazer has made many short films and videos, his output as a director of feature films amounts to no more than four in the past twenty-five years. Nevertheless, his work for the cinema has undoubtedly led to recognition not only as a major filmmaker but as one entitled to be thought of as a true artist. Sexy Beast made in 2000 was an auspicious directorial debut and I admired even more its successor, 2004’s Birth, which also found him collaborating on the screenplay. However, it could be said that the film which gave him international cachet especially amongst those who embrace challenging art was 2013’s Under the Skin. For me, though, the storytelling in it badly lacked clarity and that was only partly compensated for by the wonderful sense of atmosphere that Glazer created aided by the music score by Mica Levi. Only now has Glazer followed up with The Zone of Interest which has been years in preparation but which is already adding significantly to his reputation: it has won over 50 awards including four at Cannes, two at Bafta and two again from my film colleagues in the London Critics’ Circle, in their case one as best film of the year and the other going to Jonathan Glazer as the 2024 director of the year. On top of all that, it is an Oscar contender in no less than five categories.
There is no doubt that many have been deeply impressed by the concept behind The Zone of Interest offering as it does a fresh take on the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. This is a film about Auschwitz which is for the most part set in a house next door to the camp in 1943. That's the main location because this is a portrait of the life lived there by the camp commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) together with his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their five children. The film observes how their home life was carried on in a way that seemed oblivious to the horrors being perpetrated just the other side of the garden wall. Those horrors are indicated here not by footage set inside the camp but through sounds that emanate from it and through images which in the distance reveal a watchtower or a chimney, the latter with smoke rising from it or even flames. As that suggests, there is no risk whatever of this film being seen as in any way exploitative and for many it brings home the horrors indirectly but powerfully (the certificate is 12A).
However, while the novel approach taken by Glazer is clear enough, the exact purpose and value of it elude me. It also needs to be said that the film is not what I would describe as audience friendly. I imagine that most potential viewers will know in advance that it is about Auschwitz and that it focuses on the home life of the Höss family but they may well be puzzled by the title. From reviews I have read I have learnt that the description ‘the zone of interest’ was the euphemistic phrase coined by the Nazis to describe the restricted zone around Auschwitz but the film never explains that. What it does do is to put up the title on a black screen and then to let it fade, after which for a full two minutes the screen is left blank. We know that this is not a technical hitch because we are hearing Mica Levi’s music score establishing an ominous note. But, if you know what the subject matter is, that hardly feels necessary and, if you don’t, it must be puzzling. Birdsong leads into the first visuals which show a family picnic and this is the Höss family introduced with only indistinct snatches of dialogue: we are not told where we are or in what period the film is set. In the same way that we have a black screen at the start, we have one brief shot later that finds us looking at a red screen and at the close of the film it goes black again just before the end credits which, for audiences who stay seated, find Levi’s music at its most effective.
Before long it does, of course, become clear that the film is adopting an observational tone portraying the Höss family’s daily routines which resolutely avoid any reference to what is going on in the camp. In terms of plot, however, little happens. Glazer’s film draws on a novel of the same name by the late Martin Amis which appeared in 2014 but it is apparently a very different work since the film dispenses with additional characters and personal dramas to adopt a much more austere focus. In Glazer’s treatment (this time he is the sole writer of the screenplay) the only aspect akin to a plot concerns the impact when Höss learns that he is to be given a post elsewhere although, as it turns out, after being moved on he is subsequently returned to Auschwitz to resume his work there. What is most striking here is the way in which the strong-willed Hedwig persuades her husband to obtain permission for her and the children to stay on because the lifestyle she has attained in Auschwitz represents her ideal of the good life, something that has fulfilled all her aspirations. There's also a visit by her mother who subsequently leaves mysteriously and that could be thought of as a sub-plot of sorts, but otherwise there is little here that amounts to a story.
Two additional elements come into play in passing. One occurs when out of the blue the film takes time to refer to a poem entitled ‘Sunbeams’ written by a Jew and sets out its text on screen. The other involves night scenes which seem to be linked to Hedwig’s motherly bedtime tales but apparently feature a Jewish house servant hiding food for slave labourers (it is all the more difficult to relate to this unexpected footage because it distractingly utilises thermal photography of the kind seen in nature documentaries where in contrast to this it has a natural place). However, the main concern is what we are meant to make of the Höss family. Considered in context, it could be that we are being asked to see them as akin to the many Germans who claimed to know nothing about the camps, but that doesn't really fit since Rudolf Höss is playing a direct role in the extermination and certain remarks by Hedwig make it apparent that she is indeed fully aware of this even if for most of the time she pretends not to know anything. It might have been meaningful to study through well crafted dialogue the psychology of people capable of living in this way, but Glazer’s observational approach as I have termed it not only keeps us at a distance (there are many long shots in the film and virtually no close-ups) but results in a film with minimal dialogue. With the possible exception of the oldest son, there is little to characterise the individual children and it is often small details that feel meaningful (the shock in this context of one of the young boys playing with tin soldiers; the sense of strong affection exhibited by Rudolf to a favourite horse). As for the wider context, Glazer has claimed that he sees this as a film about today suggesting that comparative apathy for worldwide present-day atrocities links us with the Höss family and reveals our similarity to perpetrators. But, given that this family is so close to the horrors around them, the parallel seems to carry but limited weight.
The Höss house is most believably recreated, the naturalism accentuated by the filming being done by hidden cameras so that the cast can't play up to them. However, the distant viewpoint limits the value of that and, while the splendid Sandra Hüller has the most clearly defined role, we are not drawn in in a way that leaves us with any new insights. Later on, the film does follow Rudolf to Berlin and there military conversations stress the increasing horror of the business-like plans for even greater mass killings in Auschwitz. It's at this stage that the film throws in a scene of Rudolf Höss retching which allows for more than one interpretation. The same section without warning leaps forward to present-day shots in the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau and then just as suddenly goes back to Rudolf for a few final moments.
Some admirers of The Zone of Interest have described it as experimental and for many its experimentation seems to work but, when we already thankfully have so many important and impactful films about the Holocaust, I am surprised that many voices have called for this particular film to be shown widely to school children. They surely deserve something far more readily accessible than this. The awards buzz around the film may well mean that many viewers are people who rarely see foreign language movies so it's all the sadder that the subtitles here are below par – not just the fact of some of them being against white backgrounds but also their not infrequent disappearance before one has had time to read them in full.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Medusa Knopf, Johann Karthaus, Luis Noah Witte, Hele Ahsensneier, Lilli Falk, Anastazja Drobniak, Cecylia Pekala, Kalman Wilson, Imogen Kogge, Stephanie Petrowitz, Martyna Poznanski, Zuzanna Kobiela, Andrey Isaev, Ralph Herforth, Julia Babiarz.
Dir Jonathan Glazer, Pro James Wilson and Ewa Puszczynska, Screenplay Jonathan Glazer, based on the novel by Martin Amis, Ph Lucasz Zal, Pro Des Chris Oddy, Ed Paul Watts, Music Mica Levi, Costumes Malgorzata Karpiuk, Sound Johnnie Burn.
Film4/Access/Polish Film Institute/JW Films/Extreme Emotions-A24 Films.
104 mins. USA/UK/Poland. 2023. US Rel: 15 December 2023. UK Rel: 2 February 2024. Cert. 12A.
