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.
What’s powerful movie! It exactly illustrates why ordinary Germans at that time can’t plead ignorance of the dreadful mass murder of the Jews. I don’t know if the word ‘holocaust’ is now in the German language/dictionary but it never used to be. ‘Banality of evil’ is probably the most terrifying aspect of anything evil. To live as if nothing terrible is happening just a few feet away beggars description.
It’s really obvious why Jews today are so concerned and frightened that history could very easily repeat itself.
People choose what they want to remember about history and if they choose wrongly, then they are complicit in the desire to commit mass murder. The terrorists in Gaza, and who knows just what percentage of the Palestinian population, are determined to eliminate the Jews from the face of the earth. This is a policy of deliberate mass murder and the godless West are supporting it. Shame on them!!
The Jews have been hated throughout history and they have committed no more wrongs than any other race. The hatred is demonic and it is alive and well today. We Christians are a close second on the world’s hit list. The demonic hates God in us. As has always been all through history, He is the target.
They must have rationalised it away by saying the victims were not human? Or maybe to speak out would be too costly to me…. Mind blowing really. Makes me ask what I would have done….