Movie Review: The Zone of Interest
I took myself to see an incredibly boring movie on Friday night — and loved it. Yes, you read that right.
The Zone of Interest is one of the most powerful films I have seen, not in spite of its mendacity, but because of it.
The film focuses entirely on the family of concentration camp commandant Rudolf Höss as they go about their daily lives in the shadow of Auschwitz.
The family’s house is located directly adjacent to the death camp’s high walls.
The key to the movie is that the camp is never directly mentioned or shown. But its presence is a constant feature, lurking menacingly in the background of every scene.
The barbed wire-topped walls.
The intermittent sound of a firing squad
The unceasing cloud of smoke, billowing from the crematoriums.
The ash falling from the sky.
All of these things are ominously in the background, though never acknowledged. You could almost tune them out. And that’s the point.
Juxtaposition
The family enjoy a sunny afternoon in the backyard — kids screaming with delight as they splash in the pool — while occasional rifle shots can be heard in the background as Jews are executed only metres away, but on the other side of the wall.
The gunfire is never acknowledged.
The commandant’s wife is excited each week as she gets to select from the best of the clothes stripped from Jews who, for reasons known to all but never stated by anyone, no longer have need of them.
It is as if the clothes were ordered from a catalogue and arrived from a warehouse located on the other side of the world.
The house-proud wife loves her sprawling garden, which would not be possible without the labourers who come and go, though she is never the least bit curious about where come from or why they rarely return.
She knows the awful truth, of course, but it is never acknowledged. It’s easier not to.
In one scene, a worker spreads ashes on her garden as she watches approvingly.
She knows — as do we — that dead Jews are fertilising the flowers over which she fawns.
I wanted to shout my disapproval. But the narrative had already moved on to yet another mundane interaction.
Men have arrived from Berlin to talk about the construction of new furnaces.
Rudolf Höss and his associates pour over the plans, marvelling at the “efficiencies” and the better use of “resources” to get the best “results”.
Höss’ wife serves cups of tea as her husband calmly discusses the logistics of keeping the furnaces running 24 hours a day.
They could be designing a garage. Or an extension to the patio.
The kids can be heard playing in the background.
That which Hannah Arendt once called “the banality of evil” is on full display. That it was all so ordinary is what made it all so shocking.
___
Originally published at The James Macpherson Report.
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Oh God. What are we turning into! This is so disturbing. I don’t think I could watch it. Just reading this short review undoes me.
Thanks James…..the loud clamour of silence.
I have just finished reading ‘ TheDressmakers of Auschwitz.’ By Lucy Arlington…..the title says it all…..and yes the location is Auschwitz and the inmates sew for Mrs Hoss…….a harrowing read about the almost unbelievable depravity, cruelty , suffering and murder…..that took place in Europe during the 1930’s and 40’s.
This is terribly disturbing, but how can we think it is any worse than what is happening today, in every large town or city of Australia, right under our noses and behind the walls of every hospital?
Innocent little babies, sometimes full term at 9 months gestation, are being brutally murdered, or delivered and left to die, every second of the day, in a variety of horrific ways.
These innocent babies would experience excruciating agony, sometimes for hours if it was slow poisoning, or being torn limb from limb, or being left to die of thirst or starvation – and all this is being accepted as normal by most of the hospital staff, who just carry on as usual on the other side of these walls, or the general public, who know what is going on in these hospitals…..so to me, we are no better than this family in Nazi Germany.