The Zone of Interest                       4 ½ stars

Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is such an unconventional movie it’s hard to compare it to anything we have seen coming out of Hollywood. The subject is of course the Holocaust set in Auschwitz, the concentration camp in Poland during World War II. Holocaust movies have been a staple of Hollywood going back at least to Schindler’s List in 1993, but Glazer has done something with these horrors that we haven’t seen before. The focus is entirely on the day to day lives of the Commandant of the camp, Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel), and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller of Anatomy of a Fall) and their family who live in their house and garden right outside the walls of the infamous camp. We watch as the family goes on outings to a lake or host get-togethers with their neighbors and Rudolph’s colleagues or attends to their children. Throughout the movie we never see any of the victims of the atrocities, but there are constant reminders as we see the walls of the camp in the background, see the smoke belching from the tall smokestacks and hear the sounds of gunshots and dogs barking in the distance. The cameras are set up in fixed positions inside the house making it seem like we are watching a reality show, spying on the inhabitants instead of watching a dramatic movie. There are few dramatic moments and that is the point that Glazer is making. He is showing us just how normal and mundane are the lives of those perpetrating one of history’s greatest crimes. There are scenes designed to make it clear that the family is completely aware of what is going on such as the wives distributing baby clothes and women’s dresses taken from the camp inmates, or when Hedwig threatens her young prisoner servant with execution if she doesn’t perform her tasks better. One son collects teeth with gold fillings. Later on, we see a scene with Nazi officials in a meeting in Berlin calmly discussing plans to send more Jews to the death camps with corporate like efficiency. This all serves to remind us of what is termed the banality of evil, how those involved can become blind to the evil of what is being perpetrated, though it is obvious to the rest of us. As I alluded to before, there is no normally constructed story here, but rather a portrayal of the rationalization of the characters’ actions. Jonathan Glazer has demonstrated how unconventional he can be before. One just has to go back to his previous movie, 2013’s Under the Skin, the “alien invasion” movie in which the alien predator portrayed by Scarlett Johansson lured Scottish boys to its feeding tar-pits. That’s one I will never forget. The same can be said about The Zone of Interest. The movie is nominated for Academy Awards in Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best International Film.