Jonathan Glazer creates a type of film that has never been seen before. The Zone of Interest is not a Holocaust film exploring how Nazis could be right amongst us but exploring what happens after the evil becomes normal. The Zone of Interest lingers in your soul long after the credits and upends any sense of reality you once had. 

The Zone of Interest is not like any Holocaust or World War II film you’ve seen before; writer/director Jonathan Glazer delivers the most powerful film of the year by creating a piece of art that is revelatory and absolutely horrifying. The film is not from the perspective of the prisoners yet it’s also not from the viewpoint of the Nazis; despite all of the screentime only being on one side of the wall that borders Auschwitz, we’re looking at them rather than with them. As Glazer describes the approach, the ‘authorless’ quality allows the characters to act without moral judgement. 

Cinematographer Łukasz Żal creates an environment to present everything just as it is rather than creating an angle to show the real nature of the Höss family. The use of hidden cameras truly allows for no beauty to be added, no matter how many flowers are planted, as every action unfolds just as it would in real life. Nothing from Glazer or Żal’s approach suggests warmth; we are meant to be as far removed from this family no matter how intimate the setting is within their family home. By using cameras operated remotely, there’s an absence of human touch allowing for a further disconnect with humanity. 

The Zone of Interest is not a film that allows for you to escape the horrors of its subject matter; the film forces its audience from the opening in pure darkness alone with the haunting sound design (brilliant work by Johnnie Burn) and an otherworldly score by Mica Levi. Not only can it be taken as a metaphor for how our eyes were once closed and now, we can see but, it forces the audience to be enveloped in an experience that will unease you and command your full focus even outside of just what the eye can see. The film is not full of outrage or indignation, but it examines how the acts of the Nazis continued for so long. 

Glazer slowly unveils an idyllic domestic life for the Höss family striving for the perfect home you might find in the suburbs, but the wall topped with barbwire always visually hiding what lurks on the other side. Even inside the house, Glazer never allows the audience to forget what is happening. Even without the sounds of screaming, gun shots, dogs barking, and Nazis yelling, Rudolf (Christian Friedel) and Hedwig (Sandra Hüller)’s even most mundane actions always remind us of the atrocities occurring next door. Hedwig has created an almost Garden of Eden on the border of Hell. While we never see the dead through their bodies, but through their lipsticks, coats, toys, or gold teeth (played with by the Höss children). Even the garden Hedwig has created and is so proud of is fertilized by the ashes of the dead. 

While Glazer never puts us in the camp, he has us in such close proximity it becomes inevitable given how the Höss family treats the horrific noises almost as white noise as they go about their routines. Even when Rudolf meets with engineers to discuss construction of a new crematorium at the camp, so they can more ‘efficiently dispose of dead bodies,’ the conversation feels so mundane.  As The Zone of Interest becomes more mundane and blander with the routines of the Höss family, it’s easy to become more hyperaware of what we can’t see. The proximity to this evil orchestrated by Rudolf permeates every single frame. 

One of the most horrific scenes in the film is when the Höss family has a pool party in their backyard in the garden Hedwig built for her family to look as perfect as possible. While the children play and splash in the pool, Rudolf looks lovingly at them, but the audience (and assumingly Rudolf, too) can see the smoke from a train arriving full of new prisoners for the camp. The film is asking what is annihilation as it pulls us into the evil created by Rudolf and the Nazis. Glazer’s film is more abstract than the Martin Amis novel of the same name; he creates more of a tension versus a character driven story. In the novel, there’s a fictionalized character at the center of the story somewhat based on the real-life Rudolf Höss. By switching to the real man, we know how his story ends and how the world has reacted to the man and his crimes. 

The Zone of Interest is perhaps examining that the most horrific moments in history were allowed by people who just didn’t see them, but I think it’s more than that. The ending comes to terms with a sort of desensitization required by historians, museum workers, and more to keep their work going in order to remind us of all of the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Something I keep coming back to is perhaps Glazer is exploring not that the people who orchestrated the Holocaust were desensitized because they felt conflicted but because they wanted to perform their plans more efficiently. Throughout the film Glazer has the audience act almost as a voyeur to witness how the Nazis used routine to commit genocide yet within the final moments, he flips this on Rudolf, using time to show him when the world views him as a monster. Yet, Rudolf composes himself and returns to the shadows where he cannot see. 

Seeing a memorial full of shoes, the gas chambers cleaned, and other items of victims of the Holocaust after we’ve watched Rudolf wait for his work to be recognized by the rest of the Nazis. The world will never forget, but will the same behavior come to be? 

Grade: A

Oscars Prospects:
Likely: Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Feature, Best Sound, Best Cinematography
Should be Considered:Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Sandra Hüller), Best Film Editing, Best Original Score

Where to Watch: In Select Theaters