The fourth film coming from director Jonathon Glazer is a historical drama called The Zone of Interest. This film is loosely based on a book of the same name by English writer Martin Amis. The story follows the life of Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel) and his family who live alongside the walls of Auschwitz, where Höss served as commandant for most of World War II.
The Zone of Interest is all about the peripheral. How long does it take for violence and brutality to become a regular part of life and fade into the background? The entirety of the Höss family remain unperturbed by the constant screams, gunshots, and rising smoke from behind their home. Their desensitised lifestyle is particularly shocking as an audience as the background becomes the primary focus rather than what is in the centre of the screen. There is a morbid desire for viewers to see within the camp, but this is avoided by Glazer. Instead, we are kept to the outside, seeing only remnants of Auschwitz’s horrors that are quickly wiped away before they can leave a physical mark. Seeing does not have to be believing. We are horrified without being visually confronted and the mundane domesticity of the Höss family serves as a nauseating contrast to what we know lies behind the wall.
Glazer does a superb job of challenging our expectations of how the senses are prioritised. Sight is pushed to the wayside and the soundscape becomes far more vital to contextualise the genocide happening out of view. This film features very few head-on shots of the people depicted, instead opting for wide shots with no definitive point of emphasis. The loose, visual focus actually allows us to engage with the noise better as it becomes more prominent.
The Zone of Interest is important, not just as a historical reminder, but also as a study of desensitisation. The Höss family do not see anything wrong with their lives. They wear the clothes of interned or dead Jewish people, they ignore anything beyond the border of their home, and their children play at being soldiers. Upon learning that the family will have to leave Auschwitz, Rudolph Höss’ wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), grows upset and in the typical hypocrisy of settled oppressors she laments being sent away from the place she sees as home. The only character that reacts in any way to the peripheral violence is the mother of Hedwig Höss, who leaves early as she cannot stand to be confronted with the truth of what is happening at Auschwitz.
This desensitisation speaks volumes today as this growing apathy towards war, violence, and genocide becomes a larger societal issue. Today we are inundated with morbid images and videos from across the world. With this comes an exhaustion that is combated by our minds with a creeping indifference. The recent attention on the genocide in Palestine carried out by the Apartheid State known as Israel is an indicator of this. Day after day we are met with the most terrifying possibilities come to life for the Palestinian people. Despite this, there are still people who meet this horror with denial even when presented with fact and brutal imagery to match. The volumes of this sort of content leads to a detachment that proves to be unhealthy and entirely unhelpful as it seems that no amount of recorded human suffering can move those who have become numb to visceral reaction.
The Zone of Interest is a beautifully shot film. The juxtaposition between cosy family life and isolating terror is sharp and is present throughout. The pastoral and idyllic landscape that the Höss family enjoy is a stark and nauseating image. What we see makes us almost as sick as what we know we are not being shown. It is more hard-hitting then if we had been shown every excruciating crime that had been committed. Aware of the audience’s own desensitisation, Glazer paints us the picture from an angle we are unused to, refreshing the horror. Ultimately, this film is a bleak reminder of the eternal relevance of learning the signs of bureaucratic, sanctioned genocide so that we can see the similarities in modern life and fight back before it moves too quickly.
This Film was viewed as part of the Belfast Film Festival 2023
The Zone of Interest releases in Irish cinemas in February 2024
