A Holocaust film is nominated for Best Picture, and you might not even be awaalare. You need to see it, and in a theater.
THE ZONE OF INTEREST has had an odd, but fitting, marketing strategy: tell the audience absolutely nothing. Euphemisms only. Let them figure it out on their own. The problem is… that audience might shrug and miss it completely, or find it far too late. This is a film that you must not ignore.
“I had moments during this film where I wondered if the projector had broken. Were I in an altered state of mind while watching, I might have wondered if I was hallucinating. It hadn’t, and I wasn’t. I won’t spoil exactly how the film begins from the title card, but I’m confident that many will turn it off in less than two minutes, and that’s in no way due to gore or anything overtly horrific. I won’t spoil how it ends, besides that it diverts in a way I did not expect, which I found remarkably effective.
Matt Weil, ChiTribe Cinema Contributor
The trailer and posters relate a sense that you’ll be seeing something… wrong. The Hollywood Reporter, cited in the trailer, says, “Like an alarm going off.” Per Time Magazine, “It’s about wanting the best for your children, following the rules and working hard, believing that you deserve the best in life, entwined with the unspeakable.” Even the Rotten Tomatoes synopsis is vague: “Dispassionately examining the ordinary existence of people complicit in horrific crimes, THE ZONE OF INTEREST forces us to take a cold look at the mundanity behind an unforgivable brutality.” Unless you look very, very closely as that trailer’s images flash by, it’s easy to miss the infamous fencing in the background and the striking design of the lead’s character’s uniform.
It is, essentially, a meta approach to the title phrase itself. Having taken a few courses in Holocaust history, the phrase “Zone of Interest” set off mental alarm bells. Indeed, this innocuous phrase, typical of Nazi German bureaucratic euphemism, referred specifically to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex and the region surrounding.
Understanding “THE ZONE OF INTEREST”
Like the title, one must infer a great deal of what’s happening, through background noise and tiny visual details. Listen for trains chugging along. Watch for those euphemisms and acronyms. Notice the servants’ state of abject terror, even before Hedwig issues an offhanded death threat while having breakfast.
Matt Weil, ChiTribe Cinema Contributor
The film opens on an idyllic countryside outing, family splashing along a lake, location and date unknown. They’re speaking German and their clothes are dated. Over the next 30 minutes or so, breadcrumb-by-breadcrumb, the film brings that family, and the audience, from lakeside to the deepest heart of the Final Solution.
We are given a look into the day-to-day lives of Rudolf Hoss – Auschwitz’s longest-tenured commandant – his wife, Hedwig, their children, and those that surround them. It shows us a seemingly perfect domestic life built on a logistical genius’s career… problem being that, instead of coordinating the movement of goods, this specific career was built upon the organization and administration of mass murder.
Like the title, one must infer a great deal of what’s happening, through background noise and tiny visual details. Listen for trains chugging along. Watch for those euphemisms and acronyms. Notice the servants’ state of abject terror, even before Hedwig issues an offhanded death threat while having breakfast.
The so-called Queen of Auschwitz, Hedwig, portrayed by Sandra Huller, who also serves as lead of ANATOMY OF A FALL – concurrently nominated for Best Picture, which might tell you something – is one of the most evil characters I can recall in some time. Christian Friedel, as commandant Hoss, is a demon in a perfectly pressed uniform, a man whose precision and efficiency not be out of place in a boardroom today. He orders a slave worker drowned for fighting over an apple, and in what feels like the same breath, admonishes SS underlings for unevenly cutting lilac bushes planted for the guards’ enjoyment.
Eventually, though, it brings us to the very brink of hell. “Relax,” we hear a Nazi official promise a concerned businessman after the leadership of every concentration camp has ended their planning meeting on the deportation of Hungary’s Jews, in one of the film’s most horrifying moments: Hoss “won’t put them all up the chimney.” The company will get their workers. Their slaves.
Matt’s Takeaways on the “ZONE OF INTEREST”
I say we come to the brink of the pit because, as intense as this film gets, we never directly witness a single act of murder on-screen… but through contextual clues, particularly the sound, most of all the sound, we know they’re happening. (Like everyone, I’ve seen OPPENHEIMER, and I believe that the audio within the ZONE OF INTEREST is far superior). Instead, director Jonathan Glazer elicits discomfort and horror through different techniques that I’m less than qualified to detail, so I won’t try. I had moments during this film where I wondered if the projector had broken. Were I in an altered state of mind while watching, I might have wondered if I was hallucinating. It hadn’t, and I wasn’t. I won’t spoil exactly how the film begins from the title card, but I’m confident that many will turn it off in less than two minutes, and that’s in no way due to gore or anything overtly horrific. I won’t spoil how it ends, besides that it diverts in a way I did not expect, which I found remarkably effective.
And so while the title, and the marketing, are borderline perfect for what the film is trying to do, my fear is that, by the time the average viewer who would and should see this film – which I strongly believe includes everyone – hears about it, they’ll likely only have the option to see it at home, on small screens, with tinny sound. Waiting to stream at home would be a serious mistake. Deeply immersive sound, the largest screen possible, and intense focus are all imperative for this film to affect a viewer. I can envision the perfect theater setup: a single-occupant IMAX theater somehow built into a sensory deprivation tank. A viewer should not have the option to turn this off and switch to an episode of Friends or Seinfeld.
Go to the Theater and See this Film!
THE ZONE OF INTEREST is winning all sorts of awards. It’s been nominated by the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best International Feature, and Best Sound. It left me shattered, as much as any other film on the horrors of the Holocaust ever has. It will probably wreck you, too. But this is an Important Film which will be studied and analyzed by film experts and academics forever. Insofar as bearing witness to the horrors of the past is critical to ensure they aren’t repeated, it must be seen, by Jew and gentile alike.
Written by Matt Weil, ChiTribe Cinema Contributor
Matt Weil is a 36-year-old ChiTribe community member who lives in Lakeview. A proud Wisconsin Badger and now longtime northsider, Matt participates in multiple Jewish organizations in the city, and still attends a monthly virtual Codenames-and-Chat night with members of a Shabbat cluster which first started, online, more than three years ago. Matt loves going to the movies and is probably a little too into Letterboxd.
