A review the new film “The Zone Of Interest”
This is a really disturbing film about the greatest crime against humanity: the Holocaust of the Second World War. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name by British writer Martin Amis and it is both written and directed by Jonathan Glazer who is both British and Jewish. It is largely set at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in German-occupied Poland where over a million, mainly – but not exclusively – Jews, were murdered.
I spent a day at the site in the Winter of 1993 and I will be forever haunted by what I saw.
What is so astonishing about this work is what you do not see but what you hear. The narrative is set largely in the family home of the commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and their five children, which is located against one of the high walls of the camp, and much of what we see is the enjoyment of their domesticity.
But, all the time that we are at their home, we hear in the background the unmistakable sounds of the machinery of genocide – the trains, the shouting, the shooting, the screaming – and, at the very beginning and the very end of the film, there is discordant orchestral music which bookends this tale of horror.
The lead actors and most of the dialogue are German; the support actors and the location shooting are Polish; and the funding was American, British and Polish. It has been nominated for five Academy Awards, three Golden Globes and nine BAFTAs. It is a chilling film that you will never forget.