Movie Review: The Zone of Interest

I took myself to see an incredibly boring movie 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.

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.