It’s a very complex feeling to sit down at a movie theater and watch a film that you know will stick in your mind long afterward. It’s even more jarring when you realize that you are in some ways no better than the film’s antagonist.
If you’re an avid A24 studios follower or are into the foreign film scene, you may have come across the curious trailer for The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer). As a fan of many previous A24 films, I was intrigued by the initial trailer: flashing through quiet shots of unassuming family life accompanied by a dreadfully growing backtrack sound, I had no idea what the movie was about. A part of me wishes I never looked up a synopsis before heading to the theater, and that I had gotten to fully experience the slow realization of the film’s underlying premise. If you wish to experience the movie untainted yourself, I suggest you watch the film before continuing to the next paragraph.
At its core, The Zone of Interest follows Rudolf and Hedwig Höss and their five children as they acclimate to a simple life at a new home in Nazi Germany. Those who know nothing about the film will realize quickly that Rudolf is a Nazi commander, and their garden shares a wall with the German Auschwitz concentration camp. This movie hinges on its ability to understate, as it rarely confronts this fact outright and the majority of the film’s horror happens offscreen, primarily aided by whatever disturbing information we already know about the holocaust. Director Jonathan Glazer bets on us being able to fill in the gaps, and unwillingly participate in this aspect of the film’s narrative.
Viewers are situated as a “fly on the wall” as static shots cycle across the screen, and we watch characters shuffle about doing a variety of seemingly mundane tasks. While a number of one-star reviews tag the film as “boring”, I would argue that the impact of the movie is in the details you choose to notice. The Höss family remains bafflingly unhorrified by the effects of their unique position—the new fur coat Hedwig is mysteriously given after a group of Jews arrive at the camp, the ashes used to fertilize the family’s thriving garden, and the everpresent closing of windows to mask the smell of the incinerators. The central plot of the film (Rudolf being transferred to a different camp just after the family has gotten settled, causing marital tension) is incredibly and infuriatingly boring, because it’s supposed to be.
The film emphasizes a quiet and prolonged sense of dread for the entirety of its 1 hour and 45 minute run time, during which your irritation and disbelief with the main characters escalates. As a viewer, we know exactly what’s happening on the other side of the wall; yet we watch Rudolf Höss carry his daughter to bed and read her a bedtime story as the sound of burning rages offscreen. How can they not realize?
This feeling is superbly accompanied by the movie’s soundtrack, or lack thereof. The film’s soundtrack totals only a few minutes, mostly at the beginning and end of the film. In between the viewer sits in almost meditative silence, forced to listen to each and every ambient sound: the constant drone of birds chirping, children playing in the garden, the family’s baby crying. Even the occasional round of distant gunshots becomes almost numbing. So much so that when Hedwig Höss’ mother comes to visit, sitting in the garden, and glances at the wall behind her following the soft sound of gunshots, we realize that we had stopped noticing the sound long before. The expertly constructed household scenes add to this, making viewers constantly unable to distinguish the sound of children laughing from distant screams or sounds of struggle.
While there has been a variety of holocaust media released over the years—good and bad—the unsettling levels of silence within this film, in particular, stick in my mind more than other portrayals. The plot may be simple, yes, but it’s what we don’t see and experience in the film that makes it impactful. One of the closing scenes, and perhaps the most discussion-worthy, comes when Rudolf is told he can return to his family after being promoted yet again. He is the last one to leave his office for the day, walking down the dim staircase only to double over and dry heave halfway down. He stops and looks down the hallway, and the scene shifts. The viewer is now looking at a straight shot of the modern-day Auschwitz museum, where a cleaning crew sweeps the gas chambers on display and vacuums the hallways.
One thing that sets this movie apart is the way that it not only highlights how the Nazis and Germans turned a blind eye during the holocaust era, but also it places the film within a present day context. Yes, the Höss family infuriatingly ignored every horror that was happening right outside their door, effectively making them silent monsters. Yet even today Auschwitz is a museum—aimed at preservation, yes—but still we sweep the gas chamber floors, hardly thinking about the atrocities that once occurred there.
Movies are inherently a reflection of their present societies. While I like to think of myself as someone who would never stand for the horrors that occurred in Nazi Germany, I couldn’t help but sit in the dark as the credits rolled across the screen and think about each current world tragedy that I’ve become numb to. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, so many life-changing and horrendous events have happened one after the other, many still raging even now halfway across the world but ever-presently on my phone screen. At some point I stopped being a hard-core young activist for each and every one. I told myself that I was tired of politics, and that I needed to care for myself too.
By the end of The Zone of Interest’s credits I found myself realizing just how many horrors go unrecognized in the present day of my own life. Not just by me, but by everyone else too, looking at phones or endless comedy reruns to escape the horrors of today that are happening just over the wall. We can only hope that something happens differently this time around.
