The Zone of Interest

[peter]

I am seriously struggling as to know how to begin this review, such is the impact that this Jonathan Glazer directed masterpiece effected upon me.

The Oscar nominated film released this year following 10 years in the planning, tells the story of Auschwitz Commomdant Rudolph Hoss and his wife Hodwig, during a short period of their lives while living adjacent to the camp proper, in a house lovingly created and developed within sight (and more importantly in the case of the film, sound) of the industrial killing edifice just beyond its walls.

I mention the sound because Glazer deliberately did not want this to be a film about the atrocities of the camp itself, but rather one examining the capacities of the humans involved, to exist in the parallel universes of domestic normality and absolute horror. To this end the film never depicts any scenes of that horror, concentrating instead, exclusively on the idyllic life the Hoss's were trying to build for themselves within the walls of their lovingly created home.

The children swim in the nearby river, play in the pool, while Hedwig Hoss, Rudolph's wife works on her beloved garden, training roses up the walls, atop which the razor wire sits and from beyond which, 'the other film' is heard. The other film. Or as Glazer has said, in fact probably the film. Because in essence, this what it is. The sounds of the camp, going about its daily functions, are always there. A continuously sinister monster, lurking just beyond vision and created to absolute perfection. The research put into creating this sound score was equal in its exhaustiveness to that of creating the house and gardens themselves. The different types of machinery, furnaces, parade grounds and dormitories, were all researched as to their positions relative to the house, how the actual sounds would have been when they reached the house, in an attempt to recreate the actual sound experience of living there. And this absolutely shows in the finished product. It's eerie hauntingness will stay with me for a long time to come, as will the overall effect of this banal chilling masterpiece. I think I can say with complete certainty where the Oscar for best sound effects score will be going.

And on to the house itself.

The name of the film (which is actually a reworking of the Martin Amis novel, itself depicting a fictionalised version of the Hoss household) refers to the zone surrounding the camps at Auschwitz which fell under control of the SS, and access to which was limited to authorised personnel, in order to hide the atrocity from the local population. The house is a rebuilt facsimile of the original (which still stands, but is a private residence) within the grounds of the Auschwitz Museum, and the gardens were planted some years before filming commenced, in order that they be in full bloom during filming. Filming itself was carried out over a 55 day period under less than usual circumstances.

Unlike usual films where the director and crew are a continuous presence on set, in this case the film was shot by continuous filming on hidden cameras, placed within the walls of the house, rather in the manner of a 'Big Brother' reality film set. Natural lighting was used, and though the actors were working from a script, they were essentially left to free-roam in respect of their movements, whilst they acted out the same. This method gives the finished product a sort of naturalness, a spontaneity, that is just.....I don't know......like nothing else you have seen in film before. The whole thing is just eerie in this most natural way.

And the actors! They examine treasures that have been brought in from the sorting processes within the camp - fur coats and the like - checking the pockets and trying out the lipsticks found therein. They live in this surreal world and ignore the ominous clanking and distant shouts that come from across the wall. They direct their servants, they who once served other people - even those on the other side of the walls - themselves, with a thoughtless normality that only rarely breaks out into the snarling hatred of their true selves.

Of the story itself, there is little to say. It concerns the day to day lives within the house, over a period where Hoss might have to leave the property and be transferred elsewhere. Hedwig is angry and unconsolable, and begs not to be taken from her beloved house. Hoss successfully attempts to get permission for her to stay, while he briefly leaves to attend his new position, but he is soon back home having been given the role of overseeing the 'treatment' of the 400,000 jews deported from Hungary in a few short weeks. During this period Hedwig has her mother to stay, who, while initially impressed by the house and situation her daughter has built for herself, finds that she cannot ignore what is going on around her, particularly the sounds and sights (not to mention the smells) from the distant furnaces burning at night. She flees, leaving a letter which the angry Hedwig burns (an act that has a significance that elsewhere would not be apparent). In rage, Hedwig rounds on her Jewish servant, threatening to turn her into ash and thereby revealing her true inner savagery.

Of the two main characters, it is Hedwig's that is the most compelling. Perfectly acted by Sandra Huller, she bleeds a sort of thoughtless selfishness, together with a willful ignoring, that holds one far more intensely than the technocratic Hoss himself. If Huller doesn't receive the Oscar for best actress I'll be very suprised indeed.

As a sort of dream sequence interlude, we have a negative frame sequence or two, in which a local polish girl sneaks into the Zone and leaves apples hidden for the camp workers to find, and this is cleverly put alongside scenes of Hoss reading bedtime stories to his young children which bear a passing comparison with the actions of the girl.

In another short series of scenes at the end of the film, we are treated to some real footage of cleaners working within the camp, carrying out there duties sweeping the dust from the gas chambers or polishing the doors of the ovens, after the days visitors have left. This is absolutely brilliant. Determined not to include any scenes from the actual inside of the camp during the period of its operation, the director has rather included the only internal shots from the camp (and absolutely necessary shots to the film) from today, after the events have passed into history. And the way the cleaners are doing their job, with probably the same detached thoughtlessness, minds a million miles away on their own everyday lives and only rarely coming back to the present of what they are actually doing, and even then just seeing it as a job - no more, no less, and probably just exactly as those people probably did their terrible work all those years ago - just normal people doing normal jobs.........

The brilliance of it leaves me speechless.

I cannot get over how good this film is; it goes beyond normal film making into something else altogether. It's exactly the counterbalance to the brilliant Schindler's List. The one deals in the horror, presented as banality itself in the form of Amon Goeth, this one deals in humanity and its infinite capacity for balancing the unbalancable - in this case the domestic normalcy and the industrial horror, residing side by side in people just like you and me. Except not quite. Because the film quietly makes the point of the backgrounds of the people who were chosen for these roles and we cannot in honesty ignore it. The Hoss's were from uneducated agricultural stock, the mother a domestic servant. The brutality that oft-times comes with ill-education was not lost on the minds that planned this darkest of chapters in our history. To date.

Because in essence, this is not so much a film about the Holocaust, as a film about us. About who we are and what we are capable of. The you's, the me's, the all of us's. This is the warning that history sends down to us from the annals of the past. The importance of never once for a moment turning our backs on ourselves, for what we are capable of in those unguarded moments, those times when we least suspect ourselves, is too terrible to contemplate.

I cannot urge you strongly enough to see this film. I make no apologies for the small spoilers of this post: this film is not a story as such and I think information such as that surrounding the dream (like) sequences will make the film more comprehensible. (I was confused by these and only got them on reading the YouTube entry on the film.)

This is a unique and special event in the history of film making - whether it gets an Oscar or not is irrelevant. It simply goes beyond that. See it. See it. See it.