Posted on Dec 22, 2023
Chilling 'Zone of Interest' imagines life next door to a death camp
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https://www.npr.org/2023/12/22/ [login to see] /the-zone-of-interest-review-auschwitz-holocaust
The Zone of Interest begins on a lovely afternoon somewhere in the Polish countryside. A husband and wife are enjoying a picnic on the banks of a river with their five children; they eat lunch and then splash around in the sunshine. It all looks so peaceful, so inviting. But something seems strangely amiss once the family returns home.
They live in a beautiful villa with an enormous garden, a greenhouse and a small swimming pool. But before long, odd details intrude into the frame, like the long concrete wall, edged with barbed wire, and the ominous-looking buildings behind it. And almost every scene is underscored by a low, unceasing metallic drone, which sometimes mixes with the sounds of human screams, dog barks and gunshots.
The Zone of Interest begins on a lovely afternoon somewhere in the Polish countryside. A husband and wife are enjoying a picnic on the banks of a river with their five children; they eat lunch and then splash around in the sunshine. It all looks so peaceful, so inviting. But something seems strangely amiss once the family returns home.
They live in a beautiful villa with an enormous garden, a greenhouse and a small swimming pool. But before long, odd details intrude into the frame, like the long concrete wall, edged with barbed wire, and the ominous-looking buildings behind it. And almost every scene is underscored by a low, unceasing metallic drone, which sometimes mixes with the sounds of human screams, dog barks and gunshots.
Chilling 'Zone of Interest' imagines life next door to a death camp
Posted from npr.org
Poland
WWII World War Two
Judaism
Movies
Reading
Posted 4 mo ago
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."It's 1943, and this family lives next door to Auschwitz. The husband, played by a chillingly calm Christian Friedel, is the camp commandant Rudolf Höss, who's remembered now as the man who made Auschwitz the single most efficient killing machine during the Holocaust.
But director Jonathan Glazer never brings us inside the camp or depicts any of the atrocities we're used to seeing in movies about the subject. Instead, he grounds his story in the quotidian rhythms of the Hösses' life, observing them over several months as they go about their routine while a massive machinery of death grinds away next door.
In the mornings, Rudolf rides a horse from his yard up to the gates of Auschwitz — the world's shortest, ghastliest commute. His wife, Hedwig, played by Sandra Hüller (from Anatomy of a Fall), might sip coffee with her friends. At one point, she slips into her bedroom to try on a fur coat; it takes a beat to realize that the coat was taken from a Jewish woman on her way to the gas chambers.
We see their children go off to school or play in the garden, and some of their more violent roughhousing suggests they know what's going on around them. At night, the fiery smoke from the crematorium chimneys sends a hazy orange light into the bedroom windows; this is a movie that makes you wonder, quite literally, how these people managed to sleep at night."...
..."It's 1943, and this family lives next door to Auschwitz. The husband, played by a chillingly calm Christian Friedel, is the camp commandant Rudolf Höss, who's remembered now as the man who made Auschwitz the single most efficient killing machine during the Holocaust.
But director Jonathan Glazer never brings us inside the camp or depicts any of the atrocities we're used to seeing in movies about the subject. Instead, he grounds his story in the quotidian rhythms of the Hösses' life, observing them over several months as they go about their routine while a massive machinery of death grinds away next door.
In the mornings, Rudolf rides a horse from his yard up to the gates of Auschwitz — the world's shortest, ghastliest commute. His wife, Hedwig, played by Sandra Hüller (from Anatomy of a Fall), might sip coffee with her friends. At one point, she slips into her bedroom to try on a fur coat; it takes a beat to realize that the coat was taken from a Jewish woman on her way to the gas chambers.
We see their children go off to school or play in the garden, and some of their more violent roughhousing suggests they know what's going on around them. At night, the fiery smoke from the crematorium chimneys sends a hazy orange light into the bedroom windows; this is a movie that makes you wonder, quite literally, how these people managed to sleep at night."...
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