Matt at the Movies: Entering The Zone of Interest
Matt highly recommends this beautiful, lived in, and chilling film, giving The Zone of Interest a rare 9.5 rating.
Editor’s Note: Y’all Weekly, in partnership with our sister publication Soccer Sheet, is hosting our first-ever live event at the Independent Picture House on February 20.
The event will start with a reception (cash bar), include the first ever presentation of the Footy Awards, and end with a screening of a soccer movie for all attendees.
You can buy tickets at this link - the first 10 Y’all Weekly subscribers who use the Promo Code “YWSubscriber” when they check out will score a free individual ticket (up to $17 value).
Thanks to the Independent Picture House for hosting! Now, on to the review …
Review: The Zone of Interest
While watching The Zone of Interest, now playing locally only at The Independent Picture House, I couldn’t help but recall my most recent trip to Germany.
The S2 train from the Marienplatz in Munich to the town of Dachau was roughly a twenty minute ride. We rode past a BMW factory as the urban center faded into suburbs. Our destination was Dachau, one of Hitler’s first concentration camps and the longest-running one.
Our guide was an Englishman who previously traveled the world as a jazz musician. He lived in the Netherlands before settling with his German wife in Munich.
He was proud to have such an important job and to be officially sanctioned by the State of Bavaria, which requires extra effort. He spent as much time as he could speaking with survivors still alive and learning the inner machinations that drove the Holocaust. That perspective is vital as the last generation of survivors of the Shoah leave us.
In our four hour tour of the Dachau concentration camp, the guide was precise, careful with phrasing (to avoid false narratives), and reverent towards the grounds we stood on.
There is an eerie feeling of evil that lingers over every inch of the camp, from the courtyards to the barracks to the crematoriums. Dachau was a camp mostly for political prisoners of the Nazi Party, but it was also where officers learned the terrors they would later take to camps like Auschwitz. The maleficence permeates the facade of normalcy.
That horror is omnipresent in The Zone of Interest, but it’s only one half of the essence of today’s film.
The other half shows an idyllic life of family, love, and German culture - albeit with an undertone of dread. This is my experience, sans dread, every time I visit our family in northern Bavaria or travel throughout Germany. When visiting cousins in their small town tucked away in a beautiful wine valley, it's a mirror of my hometown in upstate New York.
It’s funny that my Opa and Oma ended up settling to a similar terrain after emigrating from Germany after World War II. They are always gracious hosts that imbue a sense of familial community, delicious food, and fellowship (along with many digestives and schnapps). It’s what my wife and I miss most when we come back home to the States.
These two conflicting parallels are intertwined and intentional in Jonathon Glazer’s gorgeously shot film that is nominated for five Academy Awards. Let’s take a look at one of the most unique films of the year.
In a Nutshell
The film centers around the Höss family residence, located directly outside the Auschwitz concentration camp perimeter. Rudolf is the commandant of the facility and lives with his wife Hedwig and their five children along with various servants from town.
Their compound features an immaculate garden, pool, and outdoor space that would be the envy of any mansion around my Plaza-Midwood neighborhood. The commander is in charge of the entire camp and is particularly efficient in his role of the extermination and disposal of thousands of Jews daily. He receives Nazi officials from the SS to party leaders at his home while Hedwig and the children carry on with their days. They fish, sunbathe, swim, and ride horseback throughout the Polish countryside while dining on the best food the war effort can offer.
All the while, we are exposed to gunshots, screaming of orders, and barking dogs with newly arriving trains in the purview of their Elysium. The sadistic compartmentalization necessary to live with their choices is a running theme throughout the one hour and forty-five minute runtime.
As Rudolf receives news of a transfer and promotion because of success at carrying out the genocide, Hedwig wants to retain the picturesque heaven she helped create for her family. You see the family's selfish internal struggle to maintain their little utopia within the backdrop of war and death.
To say this whole viewing exercise is chilling would be a misnomer since we are essentially living with the family throughout this window of history. The fluidity between normal conversation with family mixed in with cryptic remarks referencing Jews and death shocks you back to remind you exactly who these people are.
Time Is Money, Why Should I Go?
There are many superbly made films about the atrocities of the Holocaust. The “lived in” experience of those who profited most from this horror is a novel way of creating audience participation that is just as haunting to watch. It has a cinéma vérité aesthetic with modern conventional movie making technology.
You constantly feel the camp's presence while not actually seeing the terrible acts behind the walls. With Glazer choosing with intentionality what not to show us makes it an even harder film to process, especially with the family's life becoming all the more grotesque as the film progresses.
This experience was mesmerizing and is best viewed on the largest screen possible.
Spill the Tea
Director Jonathon Glazer received a Best Adapted Screenplay nod this year for bringing Martin Amis’ 2014 novel of the same name to life. Glazer stated the film is as much of a look into our society in 2024 as it is into the second World War, with the rise of fascism as present as ever.
Glazer has only created four feature films in his near-thirty year career, but has been seen as a favorite within the awards voting community. Sexy Beast featured amazing individual performances, while Under the Skin is a cult classic.
He chose to film on location in Poland and at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, while also opting to keep the dialogue in German. It was chosen by England as their submission for Best International Feature. It’s a finalist for both Best International Feature and Best Picture at this year’s Oscars ceremony.
Star of the Show
This type of film comes to life through what we see and listen to in a variety of contexts living with the Höss family. Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn received an Oscar nomination for their sound work that provides much of the ominous terror in the film. Screams, executions, the mechanical humming of crematoriums, incoming trains, shouted orders, and barking dogs litter the otherwise serene landscape of Poland.
Glazer often uses still cameras to make us feel like we are watching an episode of The Real World or Big Brother to immerse us in the family's life. He makes tonal switches bleaching out the screen in bright colors or using infrared views to show the local Polish residents planting food secretly for workers to eat throughout the day. These shifts constantly break our gaze from the utopia back to the real world circumstances they are actually living in. It may not work or seem like a cheap artistic ploy for some, but I felt it worked to break up the story while setting clear distinctions in the narrative.
Don’t Sleep On
Sandra Hüller (Hedwig) and Christian Friedel (Rudolph) star as the head of the Höss family. They are loving parents and see the genocide as way up the social ladder of success for their family. The two have always dreamed of living in their current status and bringing up their children in a traditional German setting the way the Hitler envisioned for them in the acquired eastern territories.
Hüller is having an amazing year, securing a Best Actress nomination for her stellar work in Anatomy of a Fall, my #4 movie of the year. Her dynamic with Friedel is engrossing as they ignore the atrocities, which Rudolf is directly causing, to move up into the upper echelon of Nazi society.
Best Ten-Minute Stretch
When Hedwig’s mother comes for a visit, she marvels at her daughter's current station in life, going so far as to call her the “Queen of Auschwitz.”
She wonders if her Jewish neighbors that she once cleaned for have been brought to the camp and remarks about losing out on their lovely curtains in the state sale of their property. As she goes to sleep that night she sees a heavy orange glow with a steady mechanical hum in the background. It hits her that the spoils of war her daughter and their family are enjoying are coming from the center of death only a few hundred feet away from the window. She leaves the residence without notifying anyone, leaving just a note that Hedwig immediately throws in the wood stove.
Oscar Bait Ranking (out of 5): 🏆 🏆 🏆 🏆
Best Picture, Best International Feature, Adapted Screenplay
Matt at the Movies Score - 9.5
Highly Recommend - beautiful, lived in, and chilling
Coming Soon to Matt at the Movies
At this point, we’ve viewed all the major films nominated for above the line awards at the Academy. There are still a few international features to catch including Fallen Leaves, which is also playing at the Independent Picture House.
Finally, my Oscar partner Dana Gillis is wrapping up her required viewing and we will create our second annual “Oscar Exchange” in the coming weeks before the Academy Awards on March 10th.
Thanks for being a loyal reader and see you next time at Matt at the Movies!