The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)

[Soothsayer]

I have also not seen this yet, hope to soon. I’m intrigued by the film’s premise in contrast to Raul Hilberg’s studies/writings on “the neighbors”, citizens who lived next to the concentration camps and their reactions (or lack thereof). Claude Lanzmann also explores this in Shoah. Hilberg gives an excellent lecture on the subject here:

https://youtu.be/fg0gLvAfBfU?si=n8yLVOVbfX_4j9Wh

[Mr Sausage]

I thought this was tremendous. Spoilers all through the following:

I agree with tenia, I found the wife far more off-putting than her husband. The film as a whole is functioning on an old observation that amorality is worse than immorality. Both her and the commandant are examples of that, but I found her particular amorality striking in a way his wasn't. She has a lot more apathy and incuriosity than him, because as the commandant he is aware of everything and sees everything. He watches it all with perfect equanimity, to judge by the one shot of him observing the train cars being unloaded, but there's nothing for him to ignore. There is a universe of human suffering right on this woman's doorstep, however, and she is utterly unconcerned, showing not even mild interest. On the other hand, she puts a great deal of time, care, and interest into all the domestic affairs under her control. And, in true German fashion, she is fastidious about mess and order, even as human remains fertilize her garden, human detritus falls over her greenhouse, and human slurry flows down the river over her family. It's chilling, more chilling than a man in nazi uniform being evil, because we expect that. He is a nazi and goes about the business of nazis, but she is an ordinary human like anyone, behaving like an ordinary human in the exact situation that ought to make that impossible, and that's so much more offputting to watch.

The film seems to agree, as she's the only one of her family not to have some kind of revelation. Her mother is no moral beacon, showing plenty of callous apathy when wondering if her former employers are in the camp, speculating on what devilish Jewish things they got up to in their book club, lamenting that she wasn't able to purchase their drapes after the family had been carted off, and in general resenting having been a have-not to their haves--and yet she cannot endure the constant evidence of human misery just over the wall. Even the commandant, a petty bureaucrat who treats being an architect of the final solution like another rung in the corporate ladder, has, seemingly, a moment of revelation: he isn't drunk or ill, yet nearly vomits before suddenly being granted a vision beyond the veil of history--although true to form, his vision of the legacy of the holocaust features the same juxtaposition of horror and domesticity as defines his own life. He seemingly shrugs it off, but he at least had this moment of primal disgust followed by some kind of revelation. Two of the kids have revelations of their own, the girl sleepwalks and in her sleepwalking has some kind of psychic connection to a Polish girl who goes out at night to help however she can; and the young boy is interrupted in his playing by some soldiers drowning a prisoner for fighting over an apple, and he is seemingly disturbed by it. The older boy is the only one without a revelation, old enough to be corrupted by what he's adjacent to, at least enough to play jailkeeper to his brother. The wife similarly has no revelation.

Funnily nothing in the wife's behaviour reads as coping or resilence. It speaks instead to the brittleness of the rich and privileged, who fear the loss of their station and its priviledges the more they acquire, and who are haunted by the humiliation that any loss in station would entail. What could be worse than proudly showing off paradise to one's mother only to have to explain to her that they're losing it all. How humiliating!


I've read the Martin Amis novel. It's the only one of the four novels of his I've read that I liked (including his previous, more formally audacious stab at this subject in Time's Arrow). The movie is better, but also much different. The novel is told from three points of view, which alternate with each other: A. a nazi official at Auschwitz, a shallow playboy and panty chaser, who comes to his own moral awakening while living in and around the camp. B. the camp commandant, who is much like the commandant in the movie, only worse in that he tries to have his wife killed both out of jealousy and because she increasingly humiliates him. C. a sonderkommando, a Jewish man who is granted relative ease and safety in return for helping gas his fellow Jews, and the psychological state that this role induces.

Obviously Glazer has eliminated the first and third sections and zeroed in on the second, the domestic story. He's eliminated most of the events from that section, too, like the breakdown in the commandant's marriage. He's also eliminated the jump forward in time at the end of the novel, replacing it with a glimpse of the present. The movie also elides the horrors far more than the novel does. In the novel we do get a few set pieces among the horrors, nothing full out, but we do witness the train cars get unloaded and a few scenes here and there of abject cruelty to the Jewish prisoners. Glazer more radically keeps all the horror just off screen.

The most crucial change, tho', is the commandant's wife, because I think this reveals what Glazer is up to. In the novel, her domestic routines are coping mechanisms, a way of ignoring a horror she cannot deal with; and as the novel progresses, her resilience breaks down, she comes to loath her house, her family life, and her husband especially, and clings to the nazi officer as the lone evidence of sanity in the madhouse that is her life (and her moral force works on him, as his shallow sexual designs give way shame, horror, and then active resistance). The commandant's wife is as much of a moral centre as the novel can be said to have, and Glazer cut out all of that and made her very much like her husband, another shallow profiteer off of human misery. Had Glazer intended otherwise, there would've been no reason to change the character so radically.

Anyway, there were a lot of outwardly disgusting things in the movie, but the most disgusting was the wife trying on clothes and then meeting her friends so they could discuss their new stuff as tho' they'd all been shopping that day instead of stealing from recently murdered human beings. Unspeakably revolting. And that's how I felt about the commandant and his wife: they were revolting. Their banality was revolting; their opportunism was revolving; their preening was revolting; their complicity was revolting. Amazing movie.

[therewillbeblus]

I was waiting for someone who read the novel to chime in, so thanks. I've been thinking a lot about Hüller's mother, their relationship dynamic, and her departure, which is obviously deliberately left in fragments. I've been wondering if Hüller came from a rough childhood, or if her mother's presence was unpredictable, and how that could play a role in why she's so determined to stick to this antisemitic ideology, spouting it around to help secure her position there - psychologically simplifying as a form of coping. The mother's letter was tossed into a box, as if this is business as usual for her, even if Hüller did cry that it was 'impossible' for her mother to be gone - that felt forced, like she was desperately wanting to believe it would be different 'this time' and projecting ingrained parental disappointment triggering loneliness onto the only people she could develop relationships with - 'the help', those of a lower class (how ironic). I'm not sure if the intention was for the images to reveal an explicit progression (mother wakes up alone, becomes aware of atrocities, succumbs to drink, leaves to return to baseline) or hint at why Hüller might cling to what she's been given: perhaps to provide a space for her mother to feel comfortable, like she could stay in one place, give a sense of permanence, security, predictability to it all.. due to some deep-rooted familial stuff.

But again, this was just me musing. It makes sense as an ambiguous, I guess.. more charitable(?) reading, as I read her character translated way more like the book apparently

[tenia]

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I took it as reality hitting her, her mother not being able to stomach what turned into some white noise for her, and supposed the letter to be saying something along "I can't take it and don't know how you can", with her then throwing it away either because she doesn't want to deal with it or because she expected her mother to be able to deal with it too and proved to be too weak.

[Mr Sausage]

I think you'll find the book far more open to the kind of humanist readings you're attempting here, blus, especially in the sonderkommando sections with their sometimes brutal empathy and attempt to locate almost kindness where you'd think that'd be impossible. The movie seems to actively resist that kind of thing, tho'. The movie seems to be driving hard at how many layers of inhumanity rest underneath the seeming humanity of the character's day-to-day lives. There is a sense in which one just has to throw up one's hands at these particular people, and that time is more profitably spent reflecting on how often we ourselves turn a blind eye to the human despair around us in order to get on with our lives. A brutal thing to contemplate, but the movie kinda forces that on you.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah that's the direct interpretation I'm referring to, tenia, but - whether simply due to my professional sensitivity (surely a factor) or if anything of substance exists in the performance to support it - there seemed to be something indicated by how Hüller reacted within their dynamic. As I said earlier, I don't think there's a chance Hüller would throw a treasonous letter in with the rest like it's 'one of many', so it was likely just a very brief 'sorry gotta run' familiar Irish goodbye. Anyways, I agree with Sausage and you about the film's primary interest but I also think there's a sly ambiguity (i.e. the organic/questionably-inorganic or organic image/sound mesh; shades of Hüller's humanity shining through) to make the film richer - to make us even less comfortable, because we cannot just have one simple feeling towards it. We 'must' identify to a point. But yes, the idea is to throw your hands up at them, and then at ourselves.

There's also a deeply unsettling juxtaposition between the film's de-humanist clinical formal strategy and the despair and overwhelming anxiety produced by its after-effects on humanity observing the art. In today's age, we are flooded with so much content related to so many things we care about and we have to ignore more in order to cope with the finite energy we have - just thinking about appropriately addressing everything occurring in (what feels like) our ubiquitous surroundings feels unbearable, albeit many of them less horrific, widespread, entrenched, and 'literally' occurring in our backyard, but still!

[Mr Sausage]

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I saw less humanity there than bourgeois pettiness. The wife evidently grew up working class, and has used the Nazi takeover as an opportunity for social advancement. She constructs a perfect bourgeois household with its perfect bourgeois garden, and shows it all off proudly to her mom. And then her mom scarpers in the night. The wife's reaction is buttoned up annoyance and insult. When she snaps at the servant because the mother's uneaten breakfast is still on the table, she says: "Did you leave this there just to insult me?!" I think that comment is telling: the wife feels insulted. Not chastened, but feeling petty rejection when she had been working hard to impress. Her mom hated this domestic paradise the wife was showing off so much she fled like a thief. All this plays out the exact same way if the movie is taking place in the countryside with no nazis or concentration camp. It's right out of bourgeois domestic drama. Which I take to be the point.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah absolutely, I just always see both, but I probably wouldn't be any good at my job if I didn't. I never thought Glazer was more interested in the former than the latter, I just think he's up to something maybe a bit more nuanced than others do, and I was curious if there was anything in the book that colored in that influence of her upbringing/relationship with her mother.

[Mr Sausage]

Yeah absolutely, I just always see both, but I probably wouldn't be any good at my job if I didn't. I never thought Glazer was more interested in the former than the latter, I just think he's up to something maybe a bit more nuanced than others do, and I was curious if there was anything in the book that colored in that influence of her upbringing/relationship with her mother.

It's been a year since I read the book, but I don't remember the mother even being in the novel. I think Glazer invented the whole business. Like I said, the wife is much different in the novel. She's younger, more attractive, has more personality, and is less domestic and less abusive to the staff. She is unhappy with life next to the concentration camp, and is unsettled by the objects brought back from the showers rather than happily embracing them. She craves warmth and affection, and feels acutely her husband's limitations. I don't recall if her background was mentioned.

Which is why I can't share your attempts to find nuance since it's clear to me Glazer has drained the character of all the nuances and psychological shadings Amis invested his character with. And this is not a criticism, I think Glazer has achieved some amazing effects by it. This is just not a movie about character or psychology in the novelistic sense.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah not at all - but I like how he uses our humanity as a device, and I think those shimmers in Hüller is part of how he's doing that operationally for his thematic intent. Though yes, not in a traditionally novelistic manner.

[Mr Sausage]

I dunno, your attempts remind me of that crack about Henry James, that he always chewed more than he bit off. But I do admire your determination to find some, any evidence of shareable humanity in these people, however minuscule, in order to get a handhold. Lord knows the movie gives you as little help as it can!

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah I'm definitely trying to be transparent about my musings, but I disagree that Glazer is trying to make the humanity not shareable. I think it's particularly because we begin to see our banal selves, including childrearing, familiarly broad marital fights, etc. in these people that we get a more complex experience from the film. On the one hand, yes Glazer is explicitly doing one grand thing we can all get behind, but he's also including our other vulnerabilities in the mix to create a complicity, making us not only feel disgusted but coercively included, as guilty and capable. I think we are meant to see our own reactive potentials when Hüller tells the maid she could have the ashes spread, while also clearly seeing the extreme differences under a different context. But I think we are meant to see a similarity in our fallibilities - that under different conditions, without the right tools or supports, my projected insult-threat could be like that - and that's what makes the seen go from stomach-churning to hauntingly shameful.

[Mr Sausage]

But the point of all the recognizable domestic behaviours is to feel alienated from them. It's not humanity we feel we might share, but inhumanity. It makes the familiar strange and less comprehensible. We're not drawn into the character of these particular people, but shocked out of our own. That's quite a different thing, to locate the inhumanity underneath what we usually take to be normal everyday human lives. So I admire your attempt to find something within this woman to connect with, musing or not; but the film struck me as hesitant about traditional psychology, and happy to repel anyone who might try to dig into the motivations behind these disturbing individuals.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah, I guess to say it another way, I think the film was provoking those attempts through those 'human' devices (i.e. familiar marital fight, where you can sympathize broadly with the situation; framing of lonely woman clearly feeling pain and then lashing out at first person to approach her sensitive emotional shell) only to do just that - repetitively demonstrate that one thing trumps the other: So yeah, there's emotion and vulnerability and humanity driving behavior but also inhumanity as a result, and that's what matters. The result. It doesn't matter about the backstory, the mother abandoned her daughter. It doesn't matter what Germany as a people went through between WWI and WWII, they're slaughtering fucking people. It doesn't matter what problems their marriage contains, because (gestures at the world). And yet, the ability to compartmentalize, that's allowed us to advance so far as a species, the very thing holding us together right now today, is also the thing that is driving our inhumanity. I felt that Glazer was showing how compartmentalization, the rationalizations, the delusions, the evolved ability to tune out and tune in and make meaning is also being used to keep us apart. So he's using very specific detail to show that action matters, that he can see the rest of the story peripherally but that cause and effect will occur, and in a way we are powerless to stop the course, just as we are powerless to fix the qualities we're ashamed of or alter the movie to focus on the ones we can relate to and empathize with!

All that said, even if he's using lower-case 'b' to inflate upper-case 'A' point, that humanity stuff is still being used to dish it on harder I think. Draw us in with the humanity so it can clunk us with the inhumanity.

[Magic Hate Ball]

For others who have seen this, how constant did you find the noise from the camp? After reading so much about the amount of effort Glazer put into creating an aural map and developing a detailed soundscape, I was surprised that what was actually heard was extremely minimal, mostly just vague chatter and footsteps. Obviously there were occasional distant gunshots, and the sound of the camp is put front and centre during a couple of sequences, but otherwise the idea that "the image tells one story and the sound tells another" fell completely flat for me. We saw much more of the camp than we heard of it, and what we heard of it was primarily mundane.

Since so many people have talked about how oppressive the sound design was, it makes me wonder if my screening had faulty volume and I was missing out on a key element. The visual juxtapositions were striking at first, but lacked an accumulating effect.

[Mr Sausage]

I remember an oppressive soundscape of rough barking (as in orders), gunshots, beatings, marching, clanking, digging, and the sound of the crematorium, but it wasn't thrust in my face. It kind of droned on in the background, so you could lose a sense of it if you were paying attention to what was unfolding onscreen, but it would always come back to you as a reminder. If you were expecting an explicit, balanced contrapuntal technique, the film doesn't quite have that. But I'd guess if you spent a lot of time listening closely to just that part of the soundtrack, you'd hear a surprising amount. And that's probably more effective, in that you can at times stop hearing the genocide in the background because some urgent domestic business is happening on screen, like someone yelling at a servant.

[therewillbeblus]

Brilliant analysis of the potential thematic intent behind the sound design!

[Magic Hate Ball]

I also picked up on the fact that the visit of the mother coincides with the sounds getting louder, and I thought it was notable that the only time you actually hear the roar of the crematorium is in that one shot where she’s looking out of the bedroom window at night and it’s reflected in the glass.

Maybe I was just expecting more of the “contrapuntal” element, as you put it. The sound design as presented didn’t strike me as particularly groundbreaking - given how much work went into it, it’s sort of funny that most of the movie sounds like they’re living next to a park that’s being landscaped. The fact that the concentration camp actually sounded pretty mundane (as opposed to a wailing hell on earth) is kind of interesting, but it didn’t work as a “real story”, as I think Glazer put it.

edit: the

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Polish girl’s fruit-planting leading directly to prisoners being shot for fighting over apples was pretty sharp.

That felt like something out of a Haneke film.

[tenia]

The sound isn't "in your face", it's a constant white noise of slightly grinding mechanical sound with some chimney noises, and from time to time, yelling, screaming, shooting.

But I'm fairly certain it is covering a big chunk of the soundtrack, though it definitely isn't made to be glossy and obvious (the sound design even ended up being mostly mono in order to ensure it's not "too sensationalized"), but it's always just there nearby, hushing and grinding as a reminder that it's just next door if one was to pay attention to it. It reminded me of how anxiety-inducing the sound design of Uncut Gems was.

I thought it was mimicing some of the visual ideas of the movie

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in particular the train's chimney smoke only visible from above the wall, pushed aside within the frame instead of being absolutely obvious, front and center.

It's always just there, lingering nearby, a few feet away from what the movie is showing us : the garden, the house, the flowers, and oh wait that's one wall of Auschwitz extermination camp just there.

It could be a sightline, it could be the sound of an industrial zone nearby, casually ingrained in our sonic daily landscape, the humming of an HVAC, the droning of the electricity when plugging your phone to charge it back. It's all casual, because for the Höss, it has become all casual, mundane, while for us it's not, it's not any train, it's not any factory, it's not any wall, it's not any noise. (I lived near a train station for 4 years)

Yeah that's the direct interpretation I'm referring to, tenia, but - whether simply due to my professional sensitivity (surely a factor) or if anything of substance exists in the performance to support it - there seemed to be something indicated by how Hüller reacted within their dynamic. As I said earlier, I don't think there's a chance Hüller would throw a treasonous letter in with the rest like it's 'one of many', so it was likely just a very brief 'sorry gotta run' familiar Irish goodbye.

I obviously can be wrong, but that'd be quite a very trivial content for a letter to generate what looked to be a much stronger reaction than that, hence my thought it probably wasn't just a "sorry, got to go" letter, but something deeper than that. I don't have your professional background, but from a moviemaking perspective, that'd otherwise seem like overreacting.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Given the sound discussions, it's Oscar nominated!

[Magic Hate Ball]

The sound isn't "in your face", it's a constant white noise of slightly grinding mechanical sound with some chimney noises, and from time to time, yelling, screaming, shooting.

But I'm fairly certain it is covering a big chunk of the soundtrack, though it definitely isn't made to be glossy and obvious (the sound design even ended up being mostly mono in order to ensure it's not "too sensationalized"), but it's always just there nearby, hushing and grinding as a reminder that it's just next door if one was to pay attention to it. It reminded me of how anxiety-inducing the sound design of Uncut Gems was.

I thought it was mimicing some of the visual ideas of the movie

SpoilerShow

in particular the train's chimney smoke only visible from above the wall, pushed aside within the frame instead of being absolutely obvious, front and center.

It's always just there, lingering nearby, a few feet away from what the movie is showing us : the garden, the house, the flowers, and oh wait that's one wall of Auschwitz extermination camp just there.

It could be a sightline, it could be the sound of an industrial zone nearby, casually ingrained in our sonic daily landscape, the humming of an HVAC, the droning of the electricity when plugging your phone to charge it back. It's all casual, because for the Höss, it has become all casual, mundane, while for us it's not, it's not any train, it's not any factory, it's not any wall, it's not any noise. (I lived near a train station for 4 years)

I guess might have to just accept that this movie's primary trick didn't work for me, which honestly makes me sad because it's a subject matter that fascinates me, and one that obviously we all live amongst. Whether that's on a global scale (e.g., how many underpaid Chinese laborers touched the same keyboards or screens we're all typing on?) or in your immediate vicinity (accepting that going to the grocery store means passing moaning displaced drug addicts who are crumpled with opioids and soggy with vomit). If this movie is what causes people to wake up to that, then I think it's doing a terrific service. I always think of the customer I served once who was complaining about all the homeless people, and said to me "I wish I were the fire chief, I'd just bring out the trucks and hose these people down" - I'd like to think he could learn something from this movie. Would he be the mother, or the daughter?

[therewillbeblus]

I obviously can be wrong, but that'd be quite a very trivial content for a letter to generate what looked to be a much stronger reaction than that, hence my thought it probably wasn't just a "sorry, got to go" letter, but something deeper than that. I don't have your professional background, but from a moviemaking perspective, that'd otherwise seem like overreacting.

That's why I linked a subtext of anxious attachment between Hüller and her mother, but it was clearly very important for her to have her mother there - her reaction wasn't because of the way the letter said whatever it said, but how hurt the reader was to receive it at all. I don't think that requires any professional background to realize.

[Magic Hate Ball]

I obviously can be wrong, but that'd be quite a very trivial content for a letter to generate what looked to be a much stronger reaction than that, hence my thought it probably wasn't just a "sorry, got to go" letter, but something deeper than that. I don't have your professional background, but from a moviemaking perspective, that'd otherwise seem like overreacting.

That's why I linked a subtext of anxious attachment between Hüller and her mother, but it was clearly very important for her to have her mother there - her reaction wasn't because of the way the letter said whatever it said, but how hurt the reader was to receive it at all. I don't think that requires any professional background to realize.

Yeah, I doubt the letter was, like, a scalding indictment or anything. Hedwig feels burned by the fact that, despite having done everything "right" to lift them out of their working class lifestyle (i.e., subordinate to Jews), her mother has (in her mind) wimped out. More broadly, it presages their downfall, but in the moment it acts as an idictment from her mother, which unsettles her ability to disassociate, and that internal pressure is released via tantrum.

I also really like how there's some ambiguity to her mother's departure, as well. Is she disturbed by the death itself, or simply by the presence of it?

[therewillbeblus]

I also really like how there's some ambiguity to her mother's departure, as well. Is she disturbed by the death itself, or simply by the presence of it?

I'll need to see it again, but I recall

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that our last image of her is drinking a bottle alone in the middle of the night, while sitting on a single bed in a room that looked distinctly different than the one she was staying in at Hedwig's. That was a room with two small beds, while this was framed with a different (yet broadly familiar) layout - one bed, alone, attic. It felt like a purgatory-like allegory for our complacency and delusional rationalizations over time since then, a timeless canvas of us just inebriating ourselves through history in limbo, unknown, hazy dark contexts, ignorantly moving ourselves into increasingly isolated positions...

[Magic Hate Ball]

I also really like how there's some ambiguity to her mother's departure, as well. Is she disturbed by the death itself, or simply by the presence of it?

I'll need to see it again, but I recall

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that our last image of her is drinking a bottle alone in the middle of the night, while sitting on a single bed in a room that looked distinctly different than the one she was staying in at Hedwig's. That was a room with two small beds, while this was framed with a different (yet broadly familiar) layout - one bed, alone, attic. It felt like a purgatory-like allegory for our complacency and delusional rationalizations over time since then, a timeless canvas of us just inebriating ourselves through history in limbo, unknown, hazy dark contexts, ignorantly moving ourselves into increasingly isolated positions...

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That was the nanny, not the mother. The last we see of the mother is when she closes the curtain on the crematorium (also the only time we actually hear it, interestingly enough - as if the noise of it is amplified by her observation) and then puts a handkerchief over her nose to block out the smell. After that, she vanishes.

The image of the servant drinking herself out of life in her dingy little room was arresting, almost like a particularly angry Alex Colville painting.