The Zone of Interest (2023): Extreme Banality

The Zone of Interest is intended as a cinematic exploration of the notion first put forward – or at least named - by the German-American philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt: “the banality of evil”.  Arendt had covered the 1961 trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann – a key organizer and administrator of the Nazi undertaking to exterminate all European Jews at Auschwitz and other death camps, a.k.a. the Final Solution a.k.a. The Holocaust. Eichmann was charged with crimes against humanity, mass murder, and related offenses. His defense was, essentially, that he was a technocrat and just following orders, thus innocent of any crime. He showed no remorse.

As Arendt saw it, Eichmann was neither a psychopath nor an ideologue or fanatic, but a rather a relatively ordinary person who tended to go along with the crowd out of a need to belong, so as to please his superiors, get promoted and be important, which is to say successful. The meaning she ascribed to “banality” in these circumstances does not mean that Eichmann’s actions were ordinary, but that they were the product of an indifference about the nature of the tasks assigned to him. His job was to carry out the Fuehrer’s plans and wishes, and he voluntarily did so unquestioningly and enthusiastically. That this is not so uncommon as you might think, considering the horrendous work that Eichmann was engaged in, was subsequently born out to some degree in a notorious series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram in the early 1960’s. 

In The Zone of Interest, the subject is not Eichmann, but another holocaust villain, the notorious Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss –  and, just as importantly, his wife Hedwig. It is a rather low-key movie about how the Höss family (Rudolf, Hedwig, and their five young children) live a pleasant, opulent life (one that what they consider quite blissful) in their lovely manor house near Auschwitz, where Rudolf works. “Near” is an understatement: directly behind the house is the camp wall, topped by barbed wire, with dark smoke from the crematorium chimney clearly visible a hundred or so yards away, and with occasional gunshots, harsh shouts, and other camp sounds punctuating the Höss family’s otherwise idyllic afternoons. 

The proximity to a place of murder and horror just across the wall does not seem to bother anyone in the family. Nor does the nature of Rudolf’s job. They are complacently enjoying their good fortune and privilege, which is all that seems to matter. We see the kids playing in the yard, Rudolf fishing and the kids frolicking in the nearby Sola River, Hedwig tending her garden, gossiping with friends, making snide jokes about Jews, ordering the household servants (prisoners all) around. 

What we don’t see at all is the inside of Auschwitz – the gas chambers, crematoria, corpses, emaciated slave workers – in short, what is happening there. 

And that is a big part of the problem with The Zone of Interest. Audience members are expected to themselves supply the context - i.e. to come to the picture knowing all about what was going on at Auschwitz – required to understand the point of the movie. The other part of the problem is that the film itself is banal, which is to say trite, trivial, and obvious. More on these observations in a moment. 

The movie had a lot going for it when the project was being put together, starting with an award-winning British writer-director in Jonathan Glazer. Glazer got his start as a successful director of music videos (notably for Radiohead) and television commercials, and then hit it big with a couple of interesting and generally well-received motion pictures, the gangster film Sexy Beast (2000) starring Ben Kingsley as a ruthless crime kingpin and the rather cerebral sci-fi film Under the Skin (2013), which he also wrote, starring Scarlett Johansson as a seductive (and hungry) alien.

The Zone of Interest project also caught the interest of Sandra Hüller, the great German actress [Toni Erdmann (2016)].  Hüller, nominated for an Academy Award in the best actress category for her other 2023 film, Anatomy of a Fall, co-stars in The Zone of Interest with award-winning German actor Christian Friedel. He plays Rudolf Höss; she plays Hedwig Höss. Talented composer, Mica Levi, who worked with Glazer on Under the Skin, and composed scores for Marjorie Prime (2017), Zola (2020), and Small Axe (2020), also signed on. As it turned out, The Zone of Interest won the award for best soundtrack at the 2023 Cannes festival, and its score may be the most dramatic thing about the film.

The picture also was awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2023 and is nominated for five Oscars including best picture, best international picture, and best director. Most critics have lauded the film. In my view, however, most of the praise is misplaced.  Typical is reviewer Robbie Collin of The Telegraph: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”, Theodore Adorno famously wrote. Glazer’s film gives us the prosaic, refashioning it into the darkest, most vital sort of art it might be possible for us as a species to produce.

Sounds good, but what does Collin actually admire about the film? He likes just the things that I disliked!  He praises Glazer’s tactic to show us nothing about what is happening on the other side of the wall as “a bold and brilliant choice.”  To understand this tactic, here’s what the director has said about he was aiming for:

        What the film is trying to do is to talk to the capacity within each of us for violence. Wherever you're     from. And to try and show these people as people and not as monsters was a very important thing to do.     The great crime and tragedy is that human beings did this to other human beings and it's very                   convenient for us to try and distance ourselves from them as much as we can because obviously we           think     we can never behave this way and we don't behave this way; but I think we should be less            certain [about] that.

Remember, Glazer does not show us anything about the Auschwitz death camp itself. We’re supposed to
know about the violence, the crimes and the tragedy already. Those of us who do understand what was going on there are expected to be aghast at the Höss family’s blasé attitude and to remain so scene after scene for the length of the movie.  As if we had never thought about the people who ignored the horror they or their fellow citizens were committing at the time, as if we had never contemplated the banality of evil before. 

But let’s be honest, eighty years after the fact, while most moviegoers presumably have heard about the holocaust, if only from history class, fewer know much if anything about Auschwitz, and fewer still are well informed about it.  Yet, for the conceit of this picture to have much of an effect, viewers must bring to the experience a vivid understanding of the inhumanity of Auschwitz – the barbarity, the terror, the wholesale murder of tens of thousands of innocent people daily, the heinous treatment of those assigned to work camp, etc. etc. 

So, Glazer’s decision to not depict the death camp itself seems to me to be a bad one. Trying to evoke the banality of evil without showing the evil is a bit like trying to make strong tea with a used teabag.  Given Glazer’s oblique approach to the subject matter, his one note narrative theme - focusing exclusively on the banal, complacent life of the commandant’s family - does not sustain us over the course of a 105-minute movie. Simply put, the film packs no punch.

Perhaps aware of this problem, Glazer has attached a few scenes near the end of his film showing Rudolf in meetings with other Nazi brass, clinically discussing how to most efficiently transport hundreds of thousands of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz and dispose of their remains after gassing them. It’s like, in case you haven’t gotten the point, here is some red-meat evil for you: mass murder being discussed as if it were a waste management problem. 

After this Glazer made one final addition to The Zone of Interest that really got me steamed. A few concluding scenes are tacked on to convey the enormous human tragedy of the holocaust,  lest viewers are confused about that. These scenes do not show any events on the other side of the Höss’s back wall, or the masses of murdered human beings, or mourning families or even a survivor recalling what it was like in the camps. Rather, we get to see present day people visiting the Auschwitz museum and some of the exhibits there, like a large pile of victims’ shoes and another pile with victims’ luggage, both at a remove behind large plate glass windows. More obliqueness - representing a genocide with a pile of things. 

There are many movies about the holocaust, perhaps too many, a number of which are on the cheesy, melodramatic side, milking our sympathy while trying to make a buck. But at least they evoke our compassion. However well intended, The Zone of Interest seems to me to be a sterile exercise, more intellectual than evocative and not particularly educative. It’s a hollow film about an important subject. Those who know little about Auschwitz or the holocaust more generally will learn nothing from The Zone of Interest. Those better versed in this history will understand the film better but will gain little from the experience.

There are much better movies about the holocaust out there that are both informative and emotionally affecting. Films such as Night and Fog (1956), Schindler’s List (1993), The Pianist (2003),  and Son of Saul (2015). Despite the PR blitz citing The Zone of Interest  as an “important” picture, feel free to give this one a pass.

1 hour 45 minutes

Grade: C

In theaters. A digital edition is available for purchase ($19.99) on several streaming platforms.  No VOD (rental) release date has been announced, but The Hollywood Reporter estimates “sometime in April or May”.