MOVIE GUIDE: ZONE OF INTEREST
(2023)
“…The Life we enjoy is very much worth the sacrifice…”
Rudolph Höss
What else is left to be said about the horrors of the Holocaust? I guess that, unfortunately, history keeps repeating itself. The monsters, the perpetrators of such atrocities were, oftentimes, ordinary people with dreams, aspirations and hopes of a better future. Even if their vision of a “better future” meant to annihilate other human beings. “The Zone Of Interest” opens an unexpected window on the daily life of Rudolph Höss, the Commandant of Auschwitz, and his family living next door to the death camp. Jonathan Glazer, the film director, avoids the use of violent images, instead his focus goes to pinpoint all the sounds surrounding the Höss family house. Violence here is on the mind of the spectator creating a chilling contrast with the banal images of a family totally detached to the carnage happening next door. The great accomplishment of Glazer and his DoP Lukas Zal is that in order to give that sense of normality not only he uses a quite natural color palette, sometimes overexposing the whites without being fancy to the eye, but also placing hidden cameras throughout the house to encourage the actors to act more naturally on their roles. Evil has many faces, here the worst one is apathy disguised as fulfilling a duty.
Evil has many faces, here the worst one is apathy disguised as fulfilling a duty.
