2024-02-19 08:13:53
It looks like a bourgeois dream here. A natural swimming pool in the river behind the house, surrounded by a garden full of dahlias, flambés and other flowers. What about the fact that the family mansion is surrounded by a high wall with barbed wire, behind which thousands of people die. The film Zone of Interest, which won two prizes at the Cannes festival and will be screened in Czech cinemas from Thursday, shows the happiness of a Nazi family.
Fifty-eight-year-old British director Jonathan Glazer likes big challenges. 11 years ago, he filmed the novel Under the Skin by the writer Michel Faber, who builds his short and longer prose on careful dosing of information and gradual world-building. In doing so, Faber uses the fact that literature – unlike cinematography – leaves hidden everything that is not explicitly written about. That’s why Glazer found his own poetics for Faber’s seemingly unfilmable prose and was rather inspired by the original.
Now, in Zone of Interest, which was created as an adaptation of Martin Amis’ work of the same name, also published in the Czech Republic, he deviates in a similar fundamental way.
The English novelist Amis lived from 1949 to 2023. He conceived the book about the Holocaust as a statement by fictitious Nazis who were in charge of the concentration camp in Auschwitz. Like a sometimes even grotesque verbal performance full of low impulses.
The film differs both in tone and premise. It focuses on one apparently ordinary, happy family: the father rides his bike to work, the children play with the dog in the garden among colorful flowers or in the pool. Except that the father’s name is Rudolf Höss and he commands the extermination camp in Auschwitz.
In itself, this would be a critique of the average, slightly artificial middle-class life. Against the background of what is happening “behind the fence” and what kind of smoke comes out of that chimney, the only object that we as viewers can see from behind the wall, it is, however, an ominously chilling view of what evil can look like.
In the role of Hedwig Höss, Sandra Hüller tries on valuables that the people behind the walls will no longer need. | Photo: Aerofilms
The film does not show the horrors in the form of mass murders that are the order of the day in Auschwitz, it does not delve into the routine of guards and commanders. Only the sound track occasionally conveys everything from behind the wall. Screaming, shooting, it’s more than enough to constantly confront the tension between what we see and what we hear. And what, on the other hand, seems like the protagonists don’t want to hear.
Hedwiga Hössová resembles a mistress whose only concern is material possessions. What about the fact that he doesn’t need to shop so much, because he takes most of the valuables without much excitement from those who will no longer need them behind the walls.
The biggest drama comes when Höss, as a capable manager, is promoted and gets a job in another concentration camp. However, Hedwig does not want to leave the rural idyll, so she stays with the children. She enjoys the comfort of the villa while the father and husband pursue their “corporate” dreams.
In many ways, Jonathan Glazer found an original key to a new look at the difficult topic of the Holocaust. In addition, everything is supported by the way in which this visually expressive creator captures the events in static, well-thought-out shots, as shown by banal postcards from family life, which, however, can have a more frightening effect than some detailed immersion between the walls of the Auschwitz camp.
But it is still necessary to ask: is it enough? Is this tension between the mundane concerns of one family and what historical monstrosities are taking place in the background with its essential contribution, enough support?
The Auschwitz concentration camp behind the wall can be heard but not seen in the film. | Photo: Aerofilms
The British artist bets on a single trick, he is consistent, he would like to be subtle, but isn’t the whole concept a little too much with the increasing minutes? These are legitimate questions, especially in the second half of the film, in which we watch Höss as a successful man who expertly deals with bureaucracy and being among the cream of the crop, but he is not satisfied, as it sometimes sounds from terse phone calls with his wife.
The only worrying sign comes in the form of a medical examination and subsequent moments of nausea. As the footage increases, the idea creeps in whether Glazer – despite trying not to show anything drastic and working with rather subtle tension – is not too literal and, despite the chosen method, rather serious.
The director seems to be scared every now and then that his concept will not be obvious, and he had to clearly indicate that there is a great evil going on behind the wall without directly showing it.
The same applies to occasional, regularly recurring passages, shot with a black-and-white thermal camera and accompanied by an intense soundtrack. As if evil sometimes had to break through to the surface in all its twisted, symbolic, slightly abstract “beauty”. However, it looks more like a superfluous ornament or a stylistic fad.
The Zone of Interest is an uneven, if at times impressive, attempt to once again talk about extreme acts that defy ordinary imagination as something performed with almost mechanical routine.
Plans with a model of new, more “efficient” gas chambers are looked at here as if it were an ordinary design problem. And Höss resembles a successful manager who would apply in any corporation.
Christian Friedel as Rudolf Höss and Sandra Hüller as Hedwig Höss. | Photo: Aerofilms
These are not groundbreaking ideas, the concept of the banality of evil comes from the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who – like many thinkers and artists after her – described the transformation of a monstrous act into something routine. However, Jonathan Glazer avoided operatively inside the camp, i.e. the actual transformation of perverted acts into everyday, mechanized actions. And it follows the rather mundane lives of the Höss family, which would probably look the same if there wasn’t a barbed wire wall at the edge of the property.
Although the director creates many chilling scenes based on this decision, one suspects that he did not make his job too easy. And whether his concept is strong enough for a feature film.
Film
Zone of interest
Directed by Jonathan Glazer
Aerofilms, Czech premiere on February 15.