Holocaust drama
“The Zone of Interest” – Life in a Nazi family idyll
The horror of Auschwitz behind the garden wall. But the drama “The Zone Of Interest” takes place in front of the wall. photo
© -/Leonine/dpa
Commander Rudolf Höß lives with his family right next to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The Oscar-nominated drama with Sandra Hülser and Christian Friedel finds its own way of telling the story of horror.
It looks so heavenly. The well-kept garden with pool and vegetable patch, birdsong. The unimaginable horror only becomes visible at the garden wall. Because the home of the concentration camp commander Rudolf Höß is located right next to the Auschwitz extermination camp.
Oppressive, disturbing and intense, Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-nominated Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” follows the everyday life of the Höß family. The commander is impressively played by Christian Friedel (“Babylon Berlin”). Sandra Hülser (“Anatomy of a Case”) shines in the role of wife Hedwig.
“The Zone of Interest” is different from many previous Holocaust films: British director Glazer does not show the interior of the German extermination camp where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered. He plays with contrasts – and omissions. Because the horror arises for the viewer through the soundtrack – screaming and barking dogs can always be heard latently as a kind of background noise.
For Hedwig and Rudolf Höß, who have built their own idyll with their children, these are just background noises – as if you live on a busy street and at some point block out the noise. Glazer said at a recent film screening in Berlin that there were essentially two films. “There’s the movie you see and the movie you hear.”
Nominated for an Oscar five times
He tells the story from the family’s perspective – how Hedwig raises the children or proudly tells her mother in the garden that her husband calls her the “Queen of Auschwitz”. The indifference and viciousness of the family is always shocking, for example when Hedwig casually tells a servant at breakfast that her husband could scatter her ashes over the fields. Clouds of smoke that can be seen from the window or the children’s toys give an idea of the horror that is taking place in the camp itself.
“The Zone of Interest” is loosely based on the novel of the same name (in German: “Interessengebiet”) by Martin Amis from 2014. The film, shot in Poland, won the Grand Jury Prize in Cannes and is going to this year’s Oscars is now in the running in five categories – including best film, best direction and best sound. The Guardian described the drama as a “brutal masterpiece”.
Screen black for minutes
The film was shot, among other things, next to the former camp on whose grounds Rudolf Höß was executed for his war crimes in 1947. Höß’ house was reconstructed for the production. A very intense experience for actor Friedel, as he said in Berlin in February. “You are reminded of your own responsibility every day.” Hülser emphasized that it took her a moment to decide on the role: “Because I wasn’t really interested in embodying someone like that.”
You can tell right from the start of the film that Glazer approaches the subject of the Holocaust experimentally: the screen remains black for minutes, accompanied by unpleasant noise that turns into birdsong. Then an idyllic scene on a river in nature – a swimming trip by the Höß family. The focus on their everyday lives with the brutal soundscape makes “The Zone of Interest” a unique drama that lasts long after the movie has been seen.
The Zone of Interest, Great Britain, Poland, USA, 2023, approx. 106 minutes, by Jonathan Glazer, with Sandra Hülser, Christian Friedel