The Zone of Interest

The Academy Award nominations were announced last week and the only nominee for Best Picture that I hadn't seen yet was The Zone of Interest (click on the titles for my commentaries about American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, and Poor Things) so I decided to see it as part of my double feature at the Broadway last night.  It is one of the most unsettling movies I have ever seen because it is a brilliant depiction of the mundanity of evil.  Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedel), the commandant of Auschwitz, lives an idyllic existence with his wife Hedwig (Sandra Huller) and their five children in a large house next to the camp.  Hedwig is able to ignore the sound of trains, screaming prisoners, gunshots, and furnaces (the sound design in this movie gave me so much anxiety) because she is living in her dream house and enjoys having prisoners as servants in the house, being given her choice of all of the prisoners' belongings, and working in her extensive gardens and greenhouse.  Her mother (Imogen Kogge) is initially impressed by her daughter's status when she comes to visit but is horrified by the flames from the crematorium and soon leaves.  Rudolf is able to speak dispassionately about the death happening all around him because he sees his efficiency in disposing of the prisoners as a means of gaining advancement.  He is so numbed by death that he casually calculates how much gas it would take to kill the officers attending a party.  The scenes of the family going about their daily life with picnics by the river, birthday celebrations, and parties by the pool are disturbing because there is always a hint of the horrors taking place in the camp just out of sight.  However, I was most disconcerted by the scenes of janitors blithely cleaning the gas chambers, ovens, and museum displays at Auschwitz in the present because this serves to emphasize how easy it is to become accustomed to evil in plain view.  Both Friedel and Huller give chilling performances that convey so much without a lot of dialogue and the haunting score emphasizes the unease.  I was very unnerved by this movie (people in my audience sat in silence long after the credits finished rolling) and I know I will be thinking about it for a long time to come.  It is very difficult to watch but I recommend it because it is so powerful.