Jonathan Glazer’s groundbreaking The Zone of Interest offers a contemplative and haunting lens on the Hss family and their distortedly idyllic home.
Released in theaters in December after a buzzy premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Glazer’s new directorial effort follows Nazi commandant Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel), his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and their children as they live their lives next to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Hedwig’s mother, Linna Hensel (Imogen Kogge), comes to stay with the Höss family during the film, but she abruptly leaves, writing a note to her daughter.
Glazer explains why Hedwig’s mother departs so abruptly during the story, clarifying that it’s certainly not due to any moral outrage over what’s going on next door in Auschwitz.
According to the director, Hedwig leaving is not meant to indicate any sort of redemption for the character.
“It’s just the proximity. It’s no different, to someone like her, to buying your steak at Sainsbury’s and going to an abattoir. You know where that steak comes from, but you don’t really want to be around a cow being slaughtered or the smell of it, or have the blood running over your shoes .
There’s no pang of conscience, no redemption. There’s no salvation in this film, and there can’t be. These characters end the way they start.
“Primo Levi talked about how they were made of the same clay as the bourgeoisie in any country. They really were Mr and Mrs Smith at No 26. They were our neighbors, and our neighbors would say they were us.
Those were the basics of what I got from the archival research: how grotesquely familiar and ordinary they were.
“What they were interested in: status, family, health, holidays, possessions are no different to the things most people want . . . The Hösses weren’t born mass-murderers. They were teenagers in love with ideas about the future. That’s how they started. And look where they ended up. There’s a warning in that.”
Movies like Spielberg’s Schindler’s List and Roman Polanski’s The Pianist have been praised for their depiction of the Jewish experience during the Holocaust, with both films exploring the intense emotional impact on individuals who were involved.
The Zone of Interest, however, takes a different approach, dealing with the horrors of the event from a unique German perspective
