The Zone of Interest will probably be a one-time watch for me; not because I didn’t think the movie was good, but on the contrary, because it was too well done. That was truly one of the more chilling films that I’ve ever seen, but it was also just so original and wonderfully made, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of it even though it was about such a hard topic.
I thought that it had to be an exaggeration that the sound would have such a large impact on the movie, but to my surprise it actually did; it made the entire film. The movie itself and the sound in it are two stories in complete opposition of each other. What is mostly shown on the screen is just a regular seeming family in a regular looking home. Emphasis on mostly, as there are obviously wide shots and quick moments where we see the horrors happening next door too. The sound however, leaves you with a sick, scary feeling as soon as the movie starts. I like the way that the director chose to leave the screen black at the beginning of the film and have just the sound playing, because it sets the tone and creates that eerie feeling right off of the bat for us. This way, even with the most regular and simple of scenes, you always feel aware of the presence of the camp, even if you can’t see it. That’s what I think I liked most about this whole movie – it reminded us that it’s always going to be there, even if we don’t want to see it or acknowledge it. When we talk about an artist’s responsibility to history and making artwork about events like the Holocaust, I think this film did a beautiful job of it and left an important impression. It’s an ugly part of history, and we don’t want to see it or even think about it at times because of how horrible it was; but even if we don’t want to see it, it will always be there. Even when we couldn’t see anything happening in the camps throughout the film, we could hear it, and worse, we could feel it. They couldn’t have done a better job approaching it in my opinion, and the sound is what keeps you with that feeling throughout the entire thing.
During the film, I also saw a scene that reminded me of another one of my only-one-watch favorites, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Both scenes are of the family’s children in their rooms with Hitler / Nazi symbols present. For The Zone of Interest, the son is wearing an outfit with the Swastika on it, and for The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, the daughter had put up posters with Nazi propaganda on it. It always feels like such an interesting part of these movies to add in scenes with children, because it shows how negatively those beliefs can spread to the next generations, especially in households where their families were involved in running the camps. However, the one scene with children that stood out in this movie from every other Holocaust-related one that I have seen, was the garden room scene with the two brothers. The older brother in his usual outfit picks his screaming little brother up, throws him in the garden room, and locks him in as he’s begging to get out. Meanwhile in the background, you can see the smoke coming out of the camp, where literally that exact same situation is happening, but in a much more serious sense. Seeing them doing that playfully, repeating what their parents have done, with it occurring in real time only a couple yards or so away, spoke volumes. It was a perfect parallel and honestly, one of the most terrifying scenes out of the whole movie for me.
In terms of lingering questions, I’d love to figure out more about the significance of the Hansel and Gretel story in the film. It’s been a while since I brushed up on my fairytale knowledge, but it was clearly a very important part of the movie that I have yet to fully understand.
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