The Oscar-nominated “Zone of Interest” is a new Holocaust film
“The Zone of Interest” follows the everyday life of a Nazi officer (Christian Friedel) and his wife (Sandra Hülser). The film is nominated for five Oscars.
“The Zone of Interest” offers a frightening new perspective on the Holocaust.
Nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, the film is set just outside the walls of Auschwitz in a stately villa where real-life Nazi commander Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) lives with his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hülser). five children and a dog.
What makes the film particularly shocking is the fact that you neither set foot in the concentration camp nor witness any violence on screen. Rather, the audience is subjected to distant screams and gunfire as the blasé Höss family goes about their everyday lives: playing in the pool, lounging in the backyard or eating dinner together.
“I hesitated to take part because I didn’t dream of portraying a Nazi woman,” says Hülser. But when she spoke with director and co-writer Jonathan Glazer, she was convinced by his “smart artistic choices” and portrayed the subject in a way “I had never seen before.”
Glazer “wasn’t interested in solving these atrocities,” says Johnnie Burn, Oscar nominee for best sound. “It is vital that everyone has their own understanding of what happened there. These mental images that we all have can be easily reproduced through the suggestion of sounds.”
“The Zone of Interest” is a Holocaust film about “the darkness within us”
To ensure historical accuracy, Burn compiled 600 pages of research, detailing what times of day the transport trains arrived and how executions of Jewish prisoners took place. While Rudolf and Hedwig chat idly in bed, the dull roar of the crematorium ovens can be heard right outside their window. At other times, it is difficult to determine where exactly a dog's bark or a child's cry is coming from.
“Do I hear the children screaming with joy in the garden, or is it something else even scarier?” Burn says. The concentration camp sounds were added entirely in post-production, allowing the cast to view the script as a “family drama” rather than the horror film it truly is.
“That's what gives you this extraordinary feeling: 'I know you can close your eyes, but you can't close your ears. So how come people aren't hearing what I'm hearing?'” Burn says. “This atmospheric genocide that permeates all their everyday worries and needs is the reason the film works.”
It was important for Hülser not to understand or humanize her icy matriarch, who boasts that she is “the queen of Auschwitz.”
“We wouldn’t research them too much because we didn’t want to psychologize behavior,” says the German actress. Filming in Poland, not far from the original camp, “as people we knew very well what was happening in that area at that time. But it was easy to let the characters forget that.”
Amid conversations about spa days and home improvement, Glazer is disturbingly reminded of the Höss family's indifference. Hedwig tries on lipstick and a fur coat confiscated from the dead, while one of her sons collects gold teeth. In another stomach-churning scene, Rudolf angrily scrubs ash from his body after swimming in a nearby river where he had discovered a human jawbone hours earlier.
Friedel's greatest challenge was to “give this evil person a human face through his 'banal actions at home'.” The film shows how many ordinary people felt emboldened by the Nazi Party and were willing to turn a blind eye in exchange for wealth and power. The real Höss was eventually hanged for his war crimes in 1947.
“He thought he was a really important person, but he wasn’t at all,” Friedel says. “This isn’t just a film about the Holocaust – it’s about our choices, the darkness within us and what we are capable of.”
Sandra Hülser, who was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress, also stars in “Anatomy of a Fall”.
“The Zone of Interest” is one of two films that 45-year-old Hülser has in Oscar contention this season. She is also nominated for best actress for “Anatomy of a Fall,” a French courtroom thriller that is vying for best picture and best director (Justine Triet). In the film, Hülser plays an author who is accused of murdering her husband after he suspiciously falls from the balcony of their chalet.
“It's really rare these days to have a multi-dimensional female character,” Hülser says of her role in “Anatomy.” “I like so many things about her: the way she stands up for herself and the way she doesn't apologize for her decisions.”
Huller has been traveling the world for months to promote “Anatomy” and “Zone,” both of which won top prizes at the Cannes Film Festival in France last May. Despite her demanding travel schedule, she is grateful that each of them has been so warmly welcomed.
“Women tend to say, 'I was very lucky,' because they tend to underestimate their own work,” says Hülser. “I know I did a really good job. I also know that I was very lucky. Nobody could have guessed that both films would be completed at the same time and enter competition at Cannes. So I’m really enjoying it, but at the same time I’m ready to go home.”