I haven't kept up with the releases by A24 in a while, the production company started to lose me a little if I must admit. But wanting to catch up on some films lately, I heard a lot about The Zone of Interest online, and it piqued my interest quite a bit. The idea is adapted from a book, as most films are, but the general concept is something genuinely disturbing: the evil within the most normal seeming of minds. A lot of films tend to talk about evil or the darkness that is found within people, but rarely do they really match the reality. But watching The Zone of Interest, I realised it has a degree of normality to it. The feeling that it was displaying genuine people. I won't yet mention what the film is about, I'll leave it for you to think of for now as I continue this brief introduction on the film. Moving forward, The Zone of Interest is unlike your typical film focused around the events of the Second World War. And it is incredibly refreshing to be able to say so.
One of the main problems of war oriented films is that they focus too much on tropes, particularly in the area of the Second World War in which the Nazi party are often seen as comically evil individuals, ranging down from the elites to the everyday soldier. The problem here is that we lose a lot of the genuine humanity in these people that actually contributes to the horrors of what was conducted in that era. To make people seem almost an exaggerated level of evil is to remove the parts that allow us to actually connect with them and see their stances. For many of those within the Nazi party, they were either just your everyday person, a soldier conscripted, or a typical contributor to the war efforts even in the form of completely unrelated positions in other industries. Even those in the most highest areas of the Nazi Party were regular people. Those with families, interests, and even their own fears. To ignore this is a catastrophic failure in Hollywood's part. And one of the reasons why we rarely get a perspective from the Nazi side of things that doesn't just represent them as villains from a comic book franchise.
This review may feature a few spoilers here and there, though I typically refrain from posting important aspects of the plots in these reviews. Consider this a little warning just in case you're the type that likes to go into a film completely blind!
The Zone of Interest
The Zone of Interest plays itself very differently by giving us the perspective of a family of a Nazi in command of the Auschwitz concentration camp. But it goes beyond that, into the realm of how this family establishes a life through the construction of a house and garden right next to the camp. This contrast of everyday life for a family and the horrors of what's taking place next door creates a very odd atmosphere for a film that portrays the family as those with normal issues and events. A family that is raising children, growing flowers and vegetables in the garden, having little tea parties and such while the backdrop are the screams and killings of citizens beyond a large wall that overshadows the home. Imagine that for a moment: living right next to a camp and hearing the suffering of hundreds, if not thousands of people; their executions with sudden bursts of gunfire. Now imagine these sounds as you simply ignore them, talking to friends and family about your new set of bushes, or the children and their school days. It goes beyond the typical idea of the Nazi contributors being stereotypically evil, and into the oddity of how those who did contribute saw little wrong in it.
As the title implies, this is a film on the general zone of interest the human mind can have. How people can easily overlook things in pursuit of their own interests. The ways in which such insane atrocities can take place within the world because of the odd dreams and priorities those can have, particularly with any power. Not that they don't also believe that what they're doing is actually good and beneficial for their societies, but that they can keep going on with this assumption even in the face of those horrors, even as they take place right next to them day and night. That ability to zone that aspect of evil out and go about your typical day-to-day activities promotes an entirely new idea of what evil really is. Pushing almost into the realm of sheer insanity. But the terrifying reality is that there are many people like this in our societies. Many that contribute to such suffering as they live their little fantasies in luxury. Your average politician is a prime example of this. They deaths they sign off on, the suffering they cause in citizens. The fruits of that labour they enjoy as they return home to their own families in the evening. And that is what The Zone of Interest really is about.
What adds to this atmosphere is the directing and general cinematography of The Zone of Interest. It's a film that is shot in a way that makes the entire film almost seem like a documentary, as if the normal lives of this family are being shot in real time, somewhat containing a more reality television series style. Sometimes the cinematography differs a bit and offers a more cinematic perspective on things. Long tracking shots as we watch the characters walk through the garden, seeing little bits of depth within the space as various objects and events take place between them, these moments contributing to the normality of the whole situation for them; say children playing in the garden as the parent walks from one side to the other, the sounds of gunshots in the distance that nobody pays a single bit of attention to. Shots that are still within certain rooms as we see the family moving from one room to another, talking to each other in different tones and pursuing different actions. We hear a sound design that contributes to this too, a very real sounding set of actions. Many objects clinging and clattering as the chaos of normal days unfold.
I really enjoyed the way it was shot due to this. The whole thing feels so much more real, and the aforementioned use of sound design hardly feels forced in a way that makes you feel like a certain agenda is being pushed to the audience. Sandra Hüller, recently in the massively successful film Anatomy of a Fall, plays the wife of the commander, we mostly see her life and perspective on the whole situation, the ways in which she ignores everything, pursuing the life of a housewive in this whole ordeal. In some instances, the film certainly takes on a more nightmarish feeling. How characters are framed within the shot, the fixed perspectives it uses. The ambient music that sometimes plays, though much of the film is void of any music, rather using ordinary sounds like the sound of wind, barking of dogs in the background. Sometimes with the narration of certain poems or stories.
It gives off a very harrowing feeling. The realisation that people can live a normal life under the acts that they actively contribute to, how they can hear it all day and night without a care. Still fixated on their dreams and personal lives. At the same time, it shows how many of the everyday people are often powerless in such situations, that the grand scale of things is far too much for any given person to be able to put a stop to. It leaves you with a lot of thoughts and questions. And I think that is something incredibly important in a film like this, based on something that really happened in history, not just glorifying one side, not just telling half of the story.
I'd say this film is absolutely worthy of your time. It's a terrifying idea that really shows the horrors of how certain aspects of war and genocide unfold. The people behind such acts. The stories that actually connect us, showing us we aren't really that different. And that's what's really scary about it. Very powerful as a result.
