“The Zone of Interest”: Hundreds of thousands are gassed behind the garden wall

Poland, 1943. The word that electrifies Rudolf and Hedwig is called ‘continuous operation’. So 24/7. Continuous operation is an achievement of German engineering, so beautifully thorough that Rudolf begins to dream of bringing into continuous operation not only the “loads” intended for combustion, but also others. One load includes 400 to 500 people. Dead people. The new cremation ovens make mass cremation easy.

The fireplaces smoked day and night. And day and night there is a diffuse background noise, a mixture of factory noise, barking dogs, shots, screams in the distance. The sounds also define Rudolf and Hedwig’s lush paradise garden. Between the ovens on one side and the greenhouses full of flowers and crops on the other side is a wall reinforced with barbed wire.

This is Auschwitz. The largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp. His commander’s name is Rudolf, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), he is an SS-Obersturmbannführer, married to the blond, fertile Hedwig (Sandra Hülser) and father of five children. He calls his wife ‘the queen of Auschwitz’, they both rule over their work areas, he over the camp, she over the house and garden, both have many subordinates to boss over, both believe terribly in authority , whatever. Hitler says this is their command. And the ubiquity of the destruction carried out on Hitler’s behalf is its aphrodisiac.

But actually everything is very banal in the daily life of the Höss family. Dad opens the garden gate in the morning and goes to work, mom stays at home and in her free time she goes fishing, swimming or having garden parties. Only the topics of conversation are different than elsewhere. And when mother puts on a fur coat in front of the mirror and becomes a diva, the fur is of course not hers, but comes from a gassed Jewish woman. And of course the garden is fertilized with the ashes of Auschwitz, the secret behind its splendor. It’s the normal banality of the bad guys. Only Hedwig’s mother cannot bear it all and leaves early.

‘The Zone of Interest’ from director and screenwriter Jonathan Glazer (‘Under the Skin’, ‘Birth’) will make your blood run cold and your heart wither. Not because you would see unbearable images from Auschwitz. And not because you’re being hit again with the Nazi concept kitsch hammer or the sentimental club that becomes victim and becomes hero: unfortunately, the associated image factory is becoming less and less stable as contemporary witnesses continue to disappear. Productions such as the current Berlinale entry “Treasure”, the film “Stella”, the Netflix series “All the Light We Cannot See” and “Transatlantic”, the Disney+ series “Deutsches Haus” until the great fall from grace “ Our mothers, our fathers remain inflationary.

Glazer chose the opposite. For a glacier view. The Jewish director worked on this film for nine years, conducted research in Auschwitz and had a house built outside the camp walls that resembled that of the Höss family. Let Hedwig’s garden grow and grow until it is beautiful enough, in stark contrast to the house, which is essentially cold and impersonal, and therefore a perfect fit for the icy hearts of Rudolf and Hedwig.

You cannot say that the Glazers are immoral; rather, they are amoral and lack any capacity for compassion, even humanity. His passion is fulfilling duties. Rudolf Höss, under whose leadership Auschwitz became the performance camp par excellence, was one of Hitler’s most willing enforcers. And Auschwitz is Hedwig and Rudolf’s great love. Their pride, their home. When Rudolf is temporarily transferred to Oranienburg, Hedwig does not want to follow him: ‘This is how we had to live according to the Führer. Advancing to the East. This is our living space!”, she says to her husband, who of course cannot argue with that.

Glazer found the creative impulse in Martin Amis’ novel of the same name, but what he made of it has only a local and minimal atmospheric connection. Glazer’s story is a different story, that of a couple whose daily lives resemble something. from a photo album from the 1940s, if it weren’t for the barbed wire over the garden wall, the roofs of the storage buildings and the smoking chimneys. The way Sandra Hülser and Christian Friedel play it is horribly normal, naive and irrelevant; you just have your own conversation topics, but without any pathos, pause or self-reflection. You just are who you are. People whose compass is pointed towards extinction and fascism.

In just a few scenes, Glazer slips into a nightmare world that is difficult to interpret. A sleepwalking girl places apples on a mound of dirt at the edge of the camp, but it’s not that clear, it’s recorded with a thermal imaging camera, the girl and her apples seem to glow, little flashes of humanity perhaps.

Mica Levi places an eerie musical framework around the film, it is a condensation of the ubiquitous background noise of Auschwitz, and for Levi it ​​is a labor of love, a memory of his own grandfather, a Jewish musician who, through much luck, managed to get out of a camp escape.

How you interpret this film, which is definitely worth seeing, as an unrevealed look at the past, as a warning against the rise of fascism or as a detailed look at a murderer like Putin, is up to everyone. The important thing is that everyone sees it. And understand something of the abyss into which you fall if you submit too smoothly and without question to a totalitarian power.

‘The Zone of Interest’ has been nominated for an Oscar in the categories Best Film, Best Director, Best International Film, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound. The film can be seen in cinemas from February 29.