The Path to Hell Is Paved with Executive Perks in ‘The Zone of Interest’

The Zone of Interest, selectively and brilliantly adapted by the British director Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin, Sexy Beast) from the late Martin Amis’ 2014 novel, centers on a zealous factory manager and his family comfortably living next door to the 24-hour plant.

If this sounds like an oddly prosaic subject to garner plaudits at Cannes and awards from the Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston film critics’ groups, with Oscar nominations very likely to come, consider that the “factory” is Auschwitz and the “manager” is commandant Rudolf Höss.

Now your expectations have shifted 180 degrees, informed by any number of World War II-related films and television dramas. Cast those aside, as well. The Zone of Interest, opening Friday, Jan. 12 in the Bay Area, is a riveting, risky and relevant contemplation of the moral and social responsibility that comes with an executive job. Höss is an enthusiastic executioner, to be sure, but he is also — like the person ordering coffee in line in front of you, or sitting next to you on the plane, or yourself, perhaps — a functionary and a technocrat.

Did you just nod to yourself and mutter “the banality of evil,” the insightful term Hannah Arendt coined at Adolf Eichmann’s trial to describe the logistical minutiae by which the Nazis deported, transported and gassed millions of human beings? Sadly, the concept has been so thoroughly digested and assimilated in the ensuing 60-plus years of faraway genocides, cable news hand-wringing and drone bombings that it’s lost its power.

With understatement yet extraordinary eloquence, abetted by Mica Levi’s eerie score and Johnnie Burn’s disquieting sound design, Glazer offers a fresh perspective on how we ignore or rationalize the sacrifices made by other, less fortunate people to sustain our standard of living. That is, until we no longer can, whether we make that decision or a Nuremberg jury makes it for us.

The Zone of Interest reclaims everyday barbarity from the realms of both cliché and abstraction without depicting a single act within the camp itself. This is a first-rate example of precision filmmaking, more cerebral than emotional, with ample room for the viewer to infer and interpret both the situation and its consequences.

The film opens with a black screen and an ominous cascade of indistinguishable instruments and voices. This mysterious invocation ends abruptly with a screen-burst of light: a sun-drenched family outing by a river. Back home, we fall into the rhythms and routine of the household, rapidly amassing clues — anguished off-screen yelling, a guard tower in the background, a distant gunshot — that convey exactly where this family lives.

The point of view is deftly executed: We are given access to the family going about its everyday activities, but the film doesn’t invite us to identify or empathize with anyone. We are present and watching, but at a remove. (The Zone of Interest is the exact opposite of David Fincher’s recent The Killer, which gives us entrée to the thoughts and regimen of a hitman.) Glazer doesn’t explain or justify the actions or attitudes of Höss (impeccably played by Christian Friedel) or his wife Hedwig (a pitch-perfect Sandra Hüller), and it neither romanticizes nor villainizes them.

They have achieved — overachieved, really — an elevated lifestyle and status thanks to Höss’ ambition and efficiency and the special opportunities offered by the Third Reich. Heddy is in clover, with servants and swag (like a fur that belonged to a deportee), but acknowledges the pressure of her husband’s job by idly proposing they return to a life of quiet farming after the war.

Höss loves nature, in almost comical contrast to his indifference to people outside his family. He relishes fishing in the river (until he encounters a bit of residue from the “factory”) and riding his horse around the Polish countryside, and is furious with SS guards who damage the lilac bushes he’s planted.

Glazer doesn’t show the workings of the camp or any of the images and acts we associate with the Holocaust. So how does he include the victims other than by their disembodied possessions, and give them dignity without trivializing their suffering? That opening sequence of sound without image instructed us to listen actively to this movie, and the soundtrack is where Glazer has given voice to the Jews (explicitly via a Yiddish song that Joseph Wulf, who survived the war, composed at Auschwitz).

The Zone of Interest, for its part, rarely leaves the grounds of the Höss residence. The arrival of an outsider, however, subtly pierces the bubble that encases the clan. Heddy’s mother comes to visit, taking in the house, garden and modest swimming pool with the requisite pride. Her daughter has done so well!

Late one night, though, staring at the orange glow in the sky on the other side of the camp wall, Mama seems to realize what’s been making her cough. And, perhaps, the price of her daughter’s good fortune. It’s emblematic of The Zone of Interest that Glazer doesn’t spell out why Mama is gone when the household awakes, or reveal the contents of the letter she leaves for Heddy.

Glazer elegantly solves the problem of how to bring the Holocaust into the present with a documentary sequence of workers cleaning the museum cases at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The banality of routine impresses us, even in the most horrific location, culminating in the crematorium, thankfully still and silent.

I was reminded of another masterpiece, Alain Resnais and Jean Cayrol’s poetic documentary Night and Fog (streaming on Max and The Criterion Channel, and on Blu-Ray at the San Francisco Public Library). Filmed at Auschwitz in 1955, the Nazis’ murdered millions are unseen and unheard, but the filmmakers utilize that specific killing ground to illuminate the threat of similar future horrors — and the resistance required to prevent them.

‘The Zone of Interest’ opens in Bay Area theaters on Jan. 12, 2024.