FILM
THE ZONE OF INTEREST
JONATHAN GLAZER’S UNORTHODOX, UNSETTLING LOOK AT THE HOLOCAUST
SS officer Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) surveys the scene in a room of incongruous beauty.
★★★★★
OUT 2 FEBRUARY / CERT 12A / 105 MINS
DIRECTOR Jonathan Glazer
CAST Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Ralph Herforth, Johann Karthaus, Luis Noah Witte, Nele Ahrensmeier, Lilli Falk
PLOT Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Höss (Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Hüller) lead a charmed life. But a job transfer threatens to upset their harmony.
KEEP ’EM PEELED
Filming took place near the real Auschwitz, the Hoss house rebuilt from an old officers’ barracks. Production designer Chris Oddy and his team planted the garden months before filming began.
CLOTHES AND TRINKETS from Jews, facing degradation and starvation, if not death, find their way to Rudolf Höss’ house. His wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) tries on the spoils like she’s in Saks Fifth Avenue, slipping into a fur coat, twirling and posing in front of her bedroom mirror. Downstairs, Rudolf (Christian Friedel) conducts a work meeting, in which gas-chamber blueprints are pored over like designs for a new car, human incineration discussed in bland business tones. But what a magnificent house! Modernist by any era’s standards, it is beloved by the happy Höss family, despite the fact that it backs onto Auschwitz, literally —atop the garden wall is barbed wire, for it is also one of the camp’s walls (as it was in reality). A hulking watchtower is visible beyond it. A deathly chimney overlooks the Höss children’s paddling pool.