‘The Zone of Interest’
The Banality of Evil. The Power of Silence.
There are an awful lot of movies about the Holocaust. Most of these are rhetoric and awful to watch and the anti-antisemitism message is the only good thing about them. On the other hand, there also are many masterpieces, intelligently written and outstandingly well directed. The first ones that come to my mind are Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” and Polanksi’s “The Pianist”. Personally, I also love Benigni’s “La Vita è Bella” but to be honest, other than its heavy emotional weight, it’s a not-that-excellent film. Whatever. Most of these films are set inside concentration or extermination camps, sometimes from the Germans' point of view. It’s really difficult to imagine any other view standpoint but, somehow, Jonathan Glazer did. This movie made me sick to my stomach and it quite literally was the only thing I could think of for a couple of days after seeing it. Here’s my review of “The Zone of Interest”.
TRAPPED
The film’s start is really intriguing. There’s a completely black screen and slowly we can hear sounds gradually increasing in volume. At first, there are natural sounds, birds chirping, grass moved by the wind, leaves flying all around, etc. At the end of the “black screen sequence” we can clearly hear people screaming. I’m not sure what critics are saying about this because I haven’t read a single article about the film but I interpreted it as the only scene in the film set inside of Auschwitz. The black screen represents a first-person P.O.V and that makes us, the audience, empathize with all the people that were trapped in those death machines. During that sequence, we are in the film, we feel what those people felt back then. I found it genius. We’re so used to fast-paced films that a mute and slow start like this one makes us feel trapped. Trapped in time, trapped in the cinema. Maybe we are trapped in a concentration camp, trapped in our sorrows with desperation as our only companion. The feeling of being caged follows us for the rest of the film because the way the film is shot makes us feel like we’re in some kind of Truman show, and we’re seeing something we’re not supposed to see. We’re watching the only thing that is worse than the horrors that happened during those years: we’re watching indifference, the world’s biggest problem, humanity’s poison. Seeing a normal family doing normal things in an absolutely fucked up situation makes us feel disgust for them but also for ourselves. Because that’s what most of us are doing right now. We’re trapped in our own fantasy, indifferent to the suffering all around us.
SILENCE
Throughout the film, silence is one of the patterns we recognize the most. “The Zone of Interest” doesn’t have much content-heavy dialogue. If we take out those few parts where the Nazi generals interact with each other, the rest of the film is mainly children screaming and talking children stuff, adults having adults conversations, and dogs doing dog things. The lack of meaningful dialogue finds its substitute in silence. There are an awful lot of scenes without dialogue in the film, and that is the terrific beauty of it. Jonathan Glazer shows us without showing. The terror and the horror of the Holocaust are summed up by silence and the constant sound of shootings and the chimney that is… well, we know what’s happening there. Silence was Nazi Germani’s biggest ally. Silence is today’s dictatorship's biggest ally, and we know that. But yet we decided to stay silent because who cares, our opinion won’t change anything. It is what it is, that’s our mindset. That’s what makes all the killing and the injustice prosper without any problem. We just shut the fuck up and won’t do anything about it. The ear-splitting noise of silence has made us all deaf to the desperate cry of our world, devastated by anger, sloth, and resentment.
IN THE DARK
The final sequence of the film is bone-chilling. It is one of the most powerful sequences in any Holocaust movie. At the end of the film, we see Hoss having a bit of nausea as he goes down the stairs of the building where his office is located. The film then cuts to the present. We see two ladies cleaning up the Auschwitz Museum. We see all the shoes, shirts, watches, and handbags but we can also feel the aura of death that surrounds the whole place and the scream of dreams that never were. The montage makes it look like Hoss also sees what we’re looking at, and then he goes away, encompassed by darkness. It’s a powerful metaphor for how subtle evil is, fading away after the deal is done and forgotten once people start healing from those tragic events. What we get from this scene is that we must remember and keep those memories alive. We cannot cancel evil, we have to face it. And beat it. Because if we don’t, evil will come back from the darkness it went back to and will once again take control of humanity. It’s fairly easy to fall into the darkness we have within. But we must resist.
Thank you for reading this review of mine. I had some trouble finding inspiration for a new article but luckily Jonathan Glazer helped me. This film is phenomenal and I’m glad it won the Oscar for Best International Picture. I’ll leave y’all with this poem I found online while looking for stills from “The Zone of Interest”. I think it pretty well sums up this review and my personal views on the tragedy the film speaks of.
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith for ever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live
as long as God Himself.
Never.“Never Shall I Forget” from “Night” by Elie Wiesel.
Copyright © 1958 by Les Editions de Minuit.
