The Zone of Interest: Listen To It

So, that A24 marathon I hinted at in my article on The Florida Project? Yeah, I don't think it's going to completely pan out as much as I had initially hoped, because I just watched Martin Scorsese's The Irishman yesterday and to completely undersell how great it was, I absolutely have to talk about it as soon as possible. But I wanted to dedicate a fourth article to an A24 movie, and I mean, four articles in a row is crazy generous for one studio. Besides, I already posted an article about Civil War back in May. But I'm rambling. OK, so I wanted to discuss Jonathan Glazer and A24's 2023 Holocaust drama "The Zone of Interest." Short answer, it's really good. Read the rest of the article for the long answer as I explain why. But gallows humor before I review a heavy movie aside, I've never really seen anything quite like The Zone of Interest. Or perhaps I should say I've never really heard anything quite like it. This movie is essentially an exercise in sound design, and it's a chilling, effective, and deeply personal one at that. And this is probably going to be something of an unpopular take that I hope doesn't rub some of you the wrong way, but since Schindler's List first came out in 1993, I think that I've gotten a little bit tired of Holocaust films that followed it. And that's not because I don't think that we need to hear about this period in history. Rather, it's because I think too many of these films are either trying to be exploitative of the success of Schindler's List, exploitative of the reality of the holocaust, or both. And so, I wasn't sure what to think when I first heard of The Zone of Interest. However, I've always been interested in history, so I thought I would watch it. And so I did. I watched it. Or rather, I listened to it. And I was fascinated and horrified in equal measure by what I heard. In essence, I think that this film is two stories in one. You watch one, and you hear the other. What you watch is the idyllic everyday house life of Auschwitz Kommandant Rudolf Höss and his family. What you hear is the faint grind of the Birkenau death camp, Auschwitz's sister complex. It's a chilling and effective experiment in the audio-visual realm, and today, I wanted to give my thoughts on The Zone of Interest in detail.

To put out a brief synopsis, The Zone of Interest follows SS officer Rudolf Höss and his family as they try to make a living while Höss simultaneously runs Auschwitz and Birkenau in the background out of sight and out of mind of his family.

So, I want to start by addressing the elephant in the room and talk about the sound design of The Zone of Interest, which is the selling point of this film. Earlier, I said that this film is essentially two movies in one: one is watched, and the other one is listened to, and they are two very different movies indeed. One is peaceful, where the biggest problem is bored German soldiers carelessly and destructively picking Höss's flowers. The other focuses on an infamous concentration camp, where every day is an almost futile fight for survival for those living there. And where films like Schindler's List tended to rub your face in the undeniable inhumanity and ugliness of the camps, The Zone of Interest is far more suggestive of the cruelty taking place than anything else. You never see any of the horrible sights of the camps. You only hear what's happening. It's a strange choice, but it's also strangely effective. It's unique as well as incredibly unsettling. As far as composer Mica Levi's score goes in this film, it's almost non-existent, running for a grand total of 14 minutes (most of the score was unused for artistic purposes). And when it does appear, it tends to be very droney and minimalistic. I would also go so far as to say that the distant horrors of the camp are the soundtrack of this film in a lot of ways. In essence, I think that what makes this film so morbidly fascinating to me is that it's a fresh take on a familiar subject. I already had something of an expectation as to how this film would play out, but this movie didn't really focus on what I expected it to, and while that can and did seem to frustrate some viewers, I like getting something new, even if the subject matter itself is morbid and horrible. Now, it's less important, but as far as what we see with our eyes in this movie, the production design is very well done and lends a necessary sense of authenticity to the story, even if it is playing second fiddle to the sound design of the film.

In addition, The Zone of Interest was a very interesting psychological study of how we dehumanize ourselves rather than others, and this makes it an interesting reversal of a familiar idea. Höss wants to spare his family the horrors of the death camps, and so while he may not outwardly acknowledge it, something deep down in his spirit knows that what he is doing is wrong. Why else would he keep his children in the dark about the truth of the concentration camps? However, something in him won't allow him to act on that feeling. And so his children stay blissfully ignorant of what's going on. Either that, or they have their suspicions, and have just been conditioned to simply not care. I think there's something to be said here about the dangers of dehumanization, whether it be of political opponents, of other nations, or of other ethnicities. Looking back over history, I've come to believe that if we want something badly enough, we'll do anything to get it, and if someone stands in our way, we just tend to tell ourselves that they're somehow lesser for as long as it takes for us to believe it so that we can go ahead and do whatever we want. But why do we do this? If you ask me, I would say that it's in part because we don't want to confront our own wrongdoing. It makes us uncomfortable, so we come up with any tale we can to make ourselves feel better. What's not helpful is when our peers and our leaders impress on us the same stories we tell ourselves in an effort to gain our admiration and support. However, no matter how much we tell ourselves these things, there will always be that death camp making noise in the background. Just because we pretend we're not committing wrongdoing doesn't mean that the truth just conveniently goes away. But enough philosophizing from me. Back to the basic building blocks of filmmaking. If I had to point out a flaw in The Zone of Interest, it would have to be a familiar one for arthouse films: just like The Florida Project from several years prior, The Zone of Interest lacks momentum. It's more interested in showing us a series of events, and while I can understand this narrative decision, I wished that the film had more of a drive to it and more overall development. However, even with this weakness, The Zone of Interest has more than enough strengths to keep its head above water, most notably the fact that we've gotten an undeniably unique film from an oft-tapped source. As far as the parental guide goes, The Zone of Interest isn't much to worry about, at least on paper. However, it does touch on some super-heavy subject matter, so it's probably good to go into the film with that expectation. All that said, I can't necessarily say it was a pleasant watch, and I doubt I'll ever be dying to go back and rewatch it, but The Zone of Interest was undeniably well-made and unique, and I'm glad I watched it once.

The Zone of Interest - 9/10

James 4:17