The Zone of Interest
No mildly amusing caption.
I'm not feeling glib or sarcastic after watching this.
dir: Jonathan Glazer
2023
What is this film?
Whatever it is, it has very little in common with the book by Martin Amis that it’s supposedly based on.
I am pretty sure this is a horror film, one in which you never see the Holocaust itself, but you watch the people ‘enjoying’ its benefits adjacent to it. To be awfully glib, it’s like watching a version of Jaws where you never see the shark, or the shark’s victims, or even go on the water, but you spend all your time with the mayor of Amity Island and his wife, keeping the beaches open for fun and profit, going about their daily routines, looting stuff from the victim’s belongings, living their best lives.
It feels wrong to joke about such things, but all the same, if I’m not too offended, I might just uncancel myself and continue.
I’m not going to go into how the flick starts, because it’s all part of Glazer’s intention to not let us get comfortable at any time, but when there’s actual people on screen, it could be the Von Trapp family on summer holidays from The Sound of Music. The beauty of nature, them with all their super pale Aryan skin, enjoying their time outdoors. Quality family time spent together. No devices whatsoever.
Then they go home. What a nice house, what a happy, comfortable family. Lots of kids, lots of servants to help run the household, keep everything ship shape, gardeners to help in the garden. Nothing out of place, no one goes wanting.
Work / life balance wasn’t a well-known concept during the Third Reich and the Holocaust, but the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camps is better placed than most in the messy work of genocide by having his villa located just outside the walls of the death factory. He and his family never have to see the unspeakable, unending, unbelievable horror that is occurring right next door.
But, like us, they hear it, but unlike us, they have to act like they hear nothing at all as they go about their idyllic lives.
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