The Zone of Interest (2023)
Movie about the private life of Rudolf Höss, overseer of the Auschwitz death camp in german occupied Poland.
Directed by Jonathan Glazer, Zone of Interest is a movie that's more engaging to think about than it is to actually watch. Zone of Interest is almost entirely focussed on the unremarkable family life of what appears to be an unremarkable man. Its depiction of Rudolf Höss is that of a soft spoken, repressed and pathetic person. In his home, seperated from the concentration camp by nothing more than a wall, he embodies an emotionally distant husband and father. A man who, even in the context of a society as violently patriarchal as the Third Reich, is unable to stand up to his own wife.
The only thing noteworthy about him is that he's overseeing the enslavement and mass execution of millions. Not that any of that is ever explicitly depicted, of course. It's only ever discussed in the abstract settings of business meetings and assemblies that could very well be part of any other industry.
It's tempting to say Zone of Interest is about the banality of evil, but that would be reductive. Zone of Interest is about the human capacity to detach themselves from their own evil. The ones planning atrocities can take comfort in them being carried out by people below them. And the ones carrying out atrocities can take comfort in them having been planned by people above them. Genuine cruelty is required in no more than a select few for even the greatest acts of evil to be realized.
Does Rudolf Höss take pleasure in death and enslavement? It doesn't appear that way. As a matter of fact, he doesn't seem to take a lot of pleasure in much of anything. When the brass is ordering his transfer from Auschwitz to Oranienburg he's more emotional towards his horse than towards his family, who's staying behind. His wife Hedwig displays more genuine hatred towards those she deems below her than he ever does.
Zone of Interest chooses to neither focus on the masterminds behind the holocaust nor on its victims but on those who felt the least responsibility while being among the most guilty. The eternal middle managers who carry out their order unquestioningly to the best of their ability.
One can look at the Holocaust, or indeed many other great historical atrocities, as acts of singular evil caused by individuals of singular evil but the truth is, if one were to walk down a crowded street they would walk past dozens of people who'd be capable of the same things Adolf Hitler was and hundreds who'd be capable of the same things Rudolf Höss was if put in the same positions. The capacity to be responsible for or complicit in acts of bestial cruelty is latent in a vast majority of human beings and the more it's being denied the more dangerous it is.
Zone of Interest is a movie about denial. About the way people can not only administrate but live next to the dark satanic mills that manufacture hell on earth, and have a garden party. We can scoff at those who deny the Holocaust today but it was already being denied while it was still ongoing. Why is it integral for the welfare of the nation that millions of civilians have to be enslaved and executed? Because it's been determined by the leadership so it might as well be the word of God, no more any individuals responsibility than the direction of the wind or the ebb and flow of the tides.
The capacity to recognize guilt in ourselves is so underdeveloped and so easily disabled that it might as well be nonexistent. The real Rudolf Höss was tried and hanged after the war. Did he understand why? Who knows. It takes many years for a person to develop a healthy conscience and no more than a minimal amount of time and effort for it to be dismantled. The impulse to comply with cruelty so much stronger than the impulse to object to it. Can a person be taught to be better? Can a society?
Zone of Interest features Rudolf Höss' five children. A couple of those are still alive. Did they grow up in a world that raised them to be better people than their parents? Did we?
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