The Zone of Interest

Sound as a torture device.

Occasionally in life, there are distinct befores and afters. These are perhaps noticeable since life rarely conforms to story so when it does, those pivotal plot-type points stand out more. The first time I experienced this sensation was shortly after my aunt died when I was seven, a distinct feeling that nothing after would be the same, accompanied by an anger that other people were continuing their week in the same way they’d begun it. No break for them, no rupture. It is almost three years since similar happened, when a chance encounter took my life in a whole different direction, this time the sense of difference was welcome, although still terrifying. On Thursday, walking across Waterloo Bridge in the early evening dark, head bent to the wind, I had the same feeling I had when I was seven; that afternoon, something profound had happened to me and yet there everyone else was, carrying on with their lives. How dare you, I wanted to scream.

Before a friend’s book launch, I’d watched The Zone of Interest, in part for research, in part because I’d seen it recommended by a writer I trust. I’ve never seen or heard anything like it. To sit through Glazer’s film is to be both simultaneously held captive and complicit; to achieve this in a single gesture is the mark of a highly accomplished film maker, one not afraid to take stylistic risks or attempting to play to the crowd. There are no redeeming features to this film, in the same way there were no redeeming features to be found in its subjects, Rudolf and Hedwig Hoss. It is a film I both want to watch again and wish I’d never seen.

In his book Art is Magic, Jeremy Deller writes about art, saying it is profoundly absurd if not stupid. I agree with him, it is not often art does much in the way of acting on the world, a painting remains a painting no matter how far it reaches into the sublime. I spoke about this reaching with someone I am mentoring, how artists reach into the beyond, and implicit in this process is the risk that the beyond might not talk back. There is the real possibility that in going into the absurdity, the stupidity, the beyond-ness of it, that there will be nothing, not even an echo. Glazer embraces and exposes the absurdity and stupidity of art by creating a film that on the one hand is only a film and on the other is the most visceral cinematic experience I’ve ever encountered and while every good critic (I am not one) knows the trap of falling into the affective fallacy, I know that when art as reconfiguring at this is encountered, then a knock-on effect is produced. I now want to work harder to go deeper and further into what is found outside, over there, in the lurking darkness. This is the place where horror lurks, never coming into full view, but existing at the periphery all the same.

This lurking, the lack of full view, is largely the strength of Glazer’s work, although it is as much a work of reportage and witness as it’s possible for something 81 years after the fact to be. After, I researched pictures of the Hoss family and their home, what we see on screen so closely resembles how they lived that photographs could be film stills, film stills could be photographs. I wanted to think he’d sensationalised it, this would have made it easier to bare. He hasn’t.

In the opening scenes we witness the morning in the life of a busy family, excited to be celebrating their father’s birthday. It would be a touching scene were it not for the noises coming over the wall. Noises which the domestic at times seems to eclipse, but when the family go to sleep, the noise comes into its own; this is the sound of Auschwitz, there is the sound of prisoners, of babies crying, of dogs barking, of guards talking, and of the furnace that burns and glows all night long. Hoss’s dog does not settle in the opening scene or in any others, getting under the feet of everyone in the house, regularly suffering a scolding, in this way the dog acts as the moral compass of the film, it can’t ignore the sounds or smell coming from over the wall. Meanwhile Hedwig happily gives her visiting mother a tour of the walled garden, where she hopes to grow honeysuckle. Her mother, a cleaner, is upset to have been outbid on her previous Jewish employer’s curtains, is at first thrilled to see her daughter in such a wonderful house, such a plentiful garden, such a beautiful family. Her delight compounds the horror, just moments earlier we see Hedwig rummage in the pockets of a fur coat stolen from one of the prisoners over the wall, extracting a lipstick and hiding it in the drawer of her dressing table after dividing clothes up for her staff. One piece each, she sternly instructs.

It is these small, human details that continually emphasise the horror. And this is a horror film, make no mistake. As day turns to night, the crematorium chimney burns - we’ve already learnt the ingenious details of how this system works, Hoss is eager to patent the design - the flare of the chimney glows in the children’s windows as the eldest son counts the teeth of prisoners. Such gruesome relics turned to treasure. Such disregard for the children. This beautiful house, this paradise as Hedwig’s mother refers to it, is home to monsters and would be monsters. In refusing to allow either of the Hoss’s off the hook, Glazer shows us monsters do walk among us, they live next to us, they live just over the wall as bodies burn, and they must delight in the burning of these bodies because without this mass murder, they would not have the life they have. The homely becomes uncomfortable, discomforting, unhomely; unheimlich, and so we are firmly in the realms of horror.

And this is where the film becomes neither pointless or absurd, we, the viewer at this point must ask how much we turn away from the pain of others in order to live the life we do. The only other piece of work I’ve encountered the revolves so effectively around the same question is Jesse Ball’s The Divers’ Game, asking what we turn blind eyes to, how we find a way to live in the complex, capitalist web we do. I find each piece of work both unbearable and essential.

The unbearable nature of Glazer’s work lies not only in the story but in the soundscapes that do much of the storytelling. I’ve never heard anything like it. Listening to it reminded me of when I spoke to Alexander Cockburn about the psychological effects of drone warfare on children in Afghanistan, and how the sound of them constituted a kind of torture device. One of the most poignant moments came with the birdsong in the opening scene, knowing the prisoners and family would both be waking to these noises, and then knowing that the noise we can barely endure for the length of the film are the same sounds the prisoners would endure every day, all day, the same sound the family ignored just to continue living as they did. The sights the family can barely bring themselves to see or to hear are the same the prisoners had no respite or escape from. Hedwig’s insistence on beauty amidst such horrors is understandable, again throwing the viewer’s moral compass off. Our insistence on beauty displayed in much of our social media usage, is understandable amidst the horrors of the time we live in, but no less unforgivable. If The Zone of Interest is a film about walls, and it is - the walls we build, the walls we refuse to see past, the ways we inure ourselves to the wider reality - then every screen is also a wall. I wonder what we daily refuse to look at, what realities we turn from on our screens. I have thought about this for years while writing Ava Anna Ada, I now think of it more.

Some of the most poignant moments of the film are the ones I found the most personally difficult, when Hoss’s daughter dreams herself to be in Hansel and Gretel, leaving sugar for the prisoners. She sleepwalks, suffers sleep disturbances and nightmares, dreams she is doing something when she can do nothing. She is imprisoned by her parents’ insistence on paradise. It is no surprise I found myself having a panic attack during these scenes. Afterwards, I vomited and shook for two hours. This is a measure of the power of the film. If there’s even a hint of humanity to be found in Rudolf Hoss, it’s when he reads to her, lying with her until she falls asleep, as if attempting to replace her reality with an easier to contend unreality. Perhaps he is excusing himself here, becoming the hero of a fairy tale, every fairy story is also a horror story. Perhaps we never leave the woods.

But in neither characters could I find redemption. And this brings us close to the heart of the effectiveness of the film - it necessitates the question how do we redeem ourselves in the times we live in? Is redemption possible now faith is largely impossible? Just how are we to spend our days, asked Grace Paley’s friend at the start of her collected short stories. I think of this often. I don’t have answers. I have my silly art. My ineffective stories. My book of witness. My fables. They’re not enough. It’s never enough. But it is also, at times, all I can do. Or so I say. Perhaps the only truth is we are all captive and all complicit, as Glazer renders and reminds us.

In the closing scene, Rudolf leaves a party where he’s spent the time thinking about how he’d gas everyone in the room; by now we suspect he’s as disgusted by it all as the viewer is, although we aren’t given a reason for his disgust. I fear if there is a reason, it’s the the opulence of the Reich is getting to him, he’s an efficient man, one so efficient his colleagues worry he will send everyone up the chimney and there will be no ‘workers’ left. For him, this is one way to live, amidst the horrors of the regime, this again compounds the horror of the daily choices we all make. How much pain do we outsource? Hoss’s disgust effects nothing as our disgust largely does the same. He walks down stairs, doubles over, retches. He is not sick. Not only do we never see over the wall, never at any point do we see blood, bodies, vomit, semen, excrement. It is an extremely sanitised film just as their existence was, highlighting the distance between Hoss’s commands and the brutality of the murders he enacted. With such a distance, would he even see himself as a murderer? At such a distance, do we understand the brutality of our own actions?

The second time he retches, he is drawn to a pin prick of light. Suddenly we are inside present day Auschwitz where the cleaners are at work, polishing ovens, cleaning the glass of display cases behind which thousands of shoes are piled. We can no longer comprehend the scale of the atrocity in the same way we could when we heard it, at some point numbers become meaningless. Here the cleaners are sanitising Hoss’s legacy. Although Hoss’s retching could be construed as remorse, after he has seen his legacy secured, cleaned, tended and attended to, he walks down the stairs, no longer retching, no longer sickened but comforted.

I read that Christian Friedel had a panic attack as that screen was shot, and I would not be surprised if this was true. The effect on all of us contained there in the matinee screening was so profound that barely anyone moved after the credits. We clapped. We sat until the lights went up. There was a feeling of collective something in the room, we’d been moved beyond where we’d been before. We’d seen beyond and did anything look back other than the legacy of trauma?

Someone shouted free Palestine, someone replied stupid woman, it’s not the time. It is both not the time and exactly the time to consider the complicated knock on effects of antisemitism and the appeal of turning the other way. It is also the time to consider how we begin to see data sets that are increasingly incomprehensible. Glazer certainly points to how we might, and this is perhaps something that should be of concern to artists as we try to make meaning of the absurd, not just of the absurdity of art, but from the absurdity of all things.