The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)

I really want to see Jonathan Glazer’s latest film, The Zone of Interest, a second time. This is because it’s a rare film where my visceral reaction to the ending retroactively made me appreciate the film as a whole, providing an emotional framework for the film’s formal machinations which I hadn’t previously considered. If you’ve seen Glazer’s previous films (Birth, Under the Skin), you’ll know that he’s one of modern cinema’s great stylists, crafting his work with Kubrickian virtuosity. Glazer’s exacting style is the subject of The Zone of Interest, a film entirely about what’s in and out of the frame. The Zone of Interest is a novel iteration of the holocaust film. Set in Auschwitz, the film is ostensibly not about the horrors of the concentration camp, but the life of its commandant, Rudolph Höss, and his family. The drama of the film is restricted to the Höss family home, which lies just adjacent to the concentration camp, separated from unimaginable horrors by a single wall.

The Zone of Interest doesn’t really have a plot. Instead, Glazer fills the runtime with banal family life, using a stomach-churning soundscape and the occasional metonymy to stand in for the tragedy occurring off-screen. Shooting the family in geometric frames that contort their home into something akin to a dollhouse, Glazer visualizes the family’s cognitive dissonance. For much of the runtime, I was conflicted about this approach. Frankly, I found it a bit obvious. We know about “the banality of evil”, and how complacent humans can adapt themselves to ignore the inhumane. Glazer’s style deliberately dehumanizes his protagonists, and he announces the premise right from the get-go, so there’s no chance of identifying with them for a bait-and-switch (a move I probably wouldn’t have liked either). “It’s an overly-intellectual sledgehammer,” I thought. And isn’t it also a bit sadistic the way Glazer teases the action of the camps? An offhand moment of children playing with teeth, and an extended montage of flowers planted on the ashes of victims struck me as coy verging on offensive, even if I was willing to give Glazer the benefit of the doubt.

At the end of Zone, Rudolph Höss has been relocated to Oranienburg, on the outskirts of Berlin. At a Nazi convention, he learns that he’s to lead Operation Höss, which plans to relocate Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. That night the convention throws a massive party in celebration of Höss. Staying late, he’s the last person to exit the building. Descending an endless staircase in the stark, cavernous hall he begins to retch. As he catches his breath, he sees a pinhole, through which is the present day as employees silently sweep the Auschwitz memorial. Glazer cuts back to Höss, who composes himself, continues down the staircase, and walks into the void.

The two wildly different premonitions of Höss’ future snapped The Zone of Interest’s perspective into place. What I took as intellectual remove instantly transformed into a seething irony. Glazer isn’t just pointing out cognitive dissonance, he’s placing the beauty of the Höss family against our knowledge of history, both of the Holocaust and the outcome of Operation Höss/World War II. The Höss’s don’t know that they’ll be given the death penalty in the aftermath of the war. They don’t know that they’ll be cast out of history while the Jews they murdered will be commemorated. Glazer’s pointedly artificial rendition of the Höss’ lives is an attempt at enacting divine punishment for the most despicable of humans. In retrospect, I’m shaken by the fact that this film is so angry, it foregoes a wider statement on Nazis as a whole to specifically target the Höss family. When one of their relatives comes to visit the house, she is so horrified by the glow of the camp furnaces that she leaves in the middle of the night. These are people who feel no guilt, and in this film, they're inhuman and naive.

The Zone of Interest isn’t a film that’s pointing out the obvious. It’s a chilling, singularly vengeful film, entirely dedicated to its hatred of its protagonists. Unintuitively, this gives Zone a necessary undercurrent of hope. There’s a sense of right and wrong in this world. History will remember.