THE ZONE OF INTEREST — Fruitcake Enterprises

Directing: A
Acting: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A
Editing: A
Music: B+

The Zone of Interest is a film that challenges you to pay attention, then makes you uncomfortable, forces you to sit in that discomfort, and regularly reminds you of the ease of complacency. It is within this context that I found how it ended to be one of the greatest endings of a film, perhaps ever.

Jonathan Glazer, who co-wrote the script and directed this film, previously gave us such wildly disparate films as Under the Skin (2014), Birth (2004) and Sexy Beast (2000), certainly takes his time between feature films, and has evidently honed his craft over time. Under the Skin in particular, a film now a decade old, is similarly subtle in both its profundity and provocative themes; it definitely has something to say. And, while it is imperfect, its ideas, its visuals, and especially its tone has me returning to it every few years.

The Zone of Interest is a bit more direct in its challenge, a slight irony given how it shifts nearly all the horrors of the Holocaust outside the borders of the frame. This is a story focused on Rudolf and Hedwig Höss (Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller), and their children, living their seemingly ordinary, every day lives in a home literally on the other side of the fence surrounding the Auschwitz concentration camp. Rudolf is the commandant of the camp, Hedwig is his wife, and in their minds, they are living the dream: everything they want in a home, with an elaborate garden, and a loving family.

The Jewish people loom large in this film, in that to the German family we are following—as well as the rest of their family, friends and colleagues—Jewish people are entirely incidental, no more or less worth considering than generic cargo. Their conscious thought about Jewish people is limited to questions of whether the few of them being used as slave labor on the grounds should be allowed inside the house. Occasionally an unusual consideration punctures their idyllic existence, such as when the ashes of human remains float down a nearly river and reach them while obliviously fishing or swimming. (That image of the ash flowing down the river toward them is not one I will soon forget.)

Glazer is a master of tone, particularly of the deeply creepy sort, but in The Zone of Interest, he quite intentionally does away with tone altogether. The proceedings are generally very matter-of-fact, the same approach the Höss family has toward Rudolf’s work. This only changes in sporadic fits, with Mica Levi’s truly nightmarish score, which reaches occasional crescendos over seemingly mundane images, like flowers growing in the garden. But, there is always something insidious under the surface of any particularly domestic image: those flowers are grown with human remains in the soil.

I might be tempted to call The Zone of Interest the 21st-century answer to Schndler’s List, except Jonathan Glazer is far removed from the kind of populist director that Steven Spielberg is. Even a film like Schindler’s List, which I would still regard as essential viewing, is similarly pointed in how it challenges its audience, but would never have reached the same number of people without the Spielberg name attached to it. Glazer, by contrast, is a longtime critical darling whose films just don’t get widely seen. Even with The Zone of Interest fairly likely to become his most-seen film, it’s never going to get genuinely mainstream exposure.

It’s too bad. The Zone of Interest is the kind of film you don’t particularly want to watch, but which you’ll be glad to have seen. I would hesitate to call it “homework,” but plenty of people would likely see it that way. For those who actively seek it out, and you absolutely should, it is likely to be seen as a profound work of art.

Is it a masterpiece? It’s too soon to tell. I was deeply impressed by almost everything about it—including Sandra Hüller, who also gave a spectacular performance recently in Anatomy of a Fall—but was left with mixed feelings about that jarringly severe score. I could feel differently after some time. And that is a specific thing The Zone of Interest plays with, time: nearly all of it is set in the last couple years of World War II, and that changes briefly only once, in a way that is incredibly effective.

I left this film thinking a lot about “the banality of evil,” and how easily it become part of our day to day existence. Rudolf recounts to Hedwig over the phone how he spent a party thinking mostly how he would gas everyone in the high ceilinged banquet room, and those were all people ostensibly on his side. This is a portrait of people far more concerned with logistics than humanity, and the casual way it invites us into their world is the most frightening of all.