Movie Review: ‘Zone of Interest’ a Chilling Look at Seeming Normal Life Next to a Death Camp

Years ago, probably a decade ago by now, I remember a thread blew up on Tumblr with unnervingly casual, candid photos of Nazi officers and their families and friends. The original poster wanted to show how real bad guys aren’t movie villains and can come across disturbingly normal at home despite the harm they’re committing in history.

During WWII, German actress Magda Schneider, the mother or Austrian starlet Romy Schneider, lived in the same neighborhood as Adolf Hitler and even attended a couple of house parties he hosted. Did she really support his cause? Was she just trying to save her own skin? Jonathan Glazer’s recent historical drama, The Zone of Interest, focuses on this kind of casual dissociation from the point of view of real-life SS officer Rudolf Höss’ family.

When Höss (Christian Friedel) isn’t living up to his reputation as the most efficient commandant at the Auschwitz death camp, he and wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) are dedicated to raising their family in a private community right next to the concentration camp. They have a nice family dog, a pool in the backyard, a pretty river nearby to enjoy, and servants to take care of their house. But while idyllic on the surface, there is an eerie, chilling reality the parents are complicit to and the children too ignorant to comprehend.

The Zone of Interest is loosely adapted from Martin Amis’ 2014 novel with the same title.

Glazer is one of those filmmakers we only hear from every 10 years or so, but whose projects are always interesting. He directed a bombastic Ben Kingsley to an Oscar-nominated performance in the mob drama Sexy Beast (2000) and cast Scarlett Johansson as a sexy, predatory extraterrestrial in the artsy sci-fi thriller Under the Skin (2013).

Zone of Interest’s Hüller is already getting her own award-worthy praise for Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall from a couple months ago, but she also stands out here very well. Friedel, unknown to most outside of Europe, is effective as the male lead too. But the general lack of star power makes the unsettling tone of Zone successful.

The first half of the film is played completely straight as if we’re viewing any ordinary family in 1943, with only things peripherally reminding us of the context of the family’s background. There’s Höss’ uniform, swastika images occasionally in the background, and both clothing and supplies delivered to the house from the victims at Auschwitz. During a wide shot of a big pool party at the family’s house, we see a trail of smoke that we know is from the cremation of innocent victims.

Two of the few moments from outside of Höss and Hedwig’s perspectives are when a small girl hides food next to a train track for prisoners, juxtaposed by voiceover of Höss reading children’s stories to his kids and Mica Levi’s booming, ominous score. The footage of the local girl is shot with a thermal camera and grey filter, contrasting the intentionally drab-colored cinematography, and recalling the red coat girl of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993).

The second half of The Zone of Interest gets a bit more transparent with its messaging as we see more of Höss at work than home and the film ends on a note of “be careful what you wish for.” Like Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon last fall, Glazer is exposing how casual dissociation can be just as damaging as physical intent. How you choose your life might echo in history.