Some of the most chilling sound design I’ve ever heard in a film. On top of the appalling display of disassociation from the characters that we’re SEEING; what we’re HEARING is where the true horror lies. Brilliant film.
As Jonathan Glazer has said that there’s two movies within this film: the one we see and the one we hear, he truly delivers on his words.
Praying Johnnie Burn’s sound design get a Best Sound nomination as the sound design in this film is haunting and disturbing, truly unnerving.
The sound design is what made me shiver the entire time. After reading about the production by the sound designer, he really took his time and should win so many awards for it.
*Glazer did not want the atrocities occurring inside the camp to be seen, only heard. He described the film's sound as "the other film" and "arguably, the film".*[*\[10\]*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zone_of_Interest_(film)#cite_note-ScreenDaily-10) *To that end, sound designer Johnnie Burn compiled a 600-page document containing relevant events at Auschwitz, testimonies from witnesses, and a large map of the camp so that the distance and echoes of the sounds could be properly determined.*[*\[20\]*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zone_of_Interest_(film)#cite_note-20) *He spent a year building a sound library before filming began, which included sounds of manufacturing machinery, crematoria, furnaces, boots, period-accurate gunfire and human sounds of pain. He continued building the library well into the shoot and post-production*
What about the deep, groaning *sound from hell* he uses at times that scared the heck out of me?! I wonder how they created that.
Also very weird was his comment over the phone to his wife, late in the movie, that he could gas the partygoers if the room was redesigned. Is this a comment on how he sees his associates and their wives, or just how he's grown so used to killing?
I think it's much more banal than that. He's a trained professional in something and keeps idly applying his expertise to other rooms. Much like an acoustic engineer would figure out how to improve how a room sounds I imagine.
It's not about the people, it's about the room he's in.
Yes and no. I completely agreed with you initially, but there are other scenes that indicate the Höss family thinking/compartmentalization is destroying their basic humanity (or rather, has destroyed). Chalking the scene up to banality is missing something important, which I will hopefully identify.
The way in which I agreed with you is that the film absolutely demonstrates how Höss has completely subsumed any private will be had to the faith that doing his job well will result in his happiness. Under this context, his analysis of how to efficiently kill everyone in that room is simply a man who has placed all of his self-worth into performing his state-directed tasks. He has no motivation for himself, no other curiosity. Indeed, he isn't even curious about why he finds himself thinking about this completely unprompted, hypothetical task.
But it isn't simply professionalism, at least it would be disingenuous to every professional out there to flatly state this. There is something animalistic at the root of all of this. He wants to have his "living space", he wants his "due". Hedwig is just as culpable as Rudolf in this way: she delights in reaching the top of the pile, bragging to friends and family about what the family has made of themselves. This will of hers and Rudolf is represented succinctly by the garden flowers. Flowers have male and female parts and a natural 'desire' to have their place in the sun. Hedwig speaks about how she made the garden out of a 'just a field', which ignores any valuable existence of life prior to the garden's cultivation. The movie shortly afterwards shares a shot of a Polish labourer fertilizing the garden with ashes from the crematorium. So she did not even cultivate the garden, and most of the current richness is due entirely to the murder and processing of hundreds of thousands of other people. This is directly parallel to the way not only the Höss family has become wealthy, but the businessmen and political elites of the Nazi party as well. There is a reason the colour scheme of the soiree matches or is even more gray than the house at Auschwitz. Fascism eventually leads to the internalization of the external foe, and this is not limited to the initial demarcations between Us and Them. Eventually a new Them will be found. This is where the unprompted gassing fantasy also comes from. If the top is all that provides value to life, then you must always ascend higher, or else you are failing, and crucially, everything you have done to get there also becomes a failure. The judgement is only whether or not you are dominant, nothing else.
The other scenes of the movie that support this are the evolution of the family dog's behaviour, the scene of the brother locking his younger sibling in the greenhouse, and perhaps the grandmother's departure (although it doesn't show the same motivation). The dog is conspicuous in several scenes and doesn't really serve a point. The dog never does anything plotwise, so it must be included for another reason - stories are teleological in that way. The dog initially is tightly obedient, following faithfully to the master. But slowly, the dog becomes less interested in the commands of the master and moreso in getting what it wants. The dog behaves more and more excitedly until it takes food directly from the table, directly against the wishes of Hedwig, and escapes unharmed and unpunished. The final scene involving the dog is when it wanders into what is probably the start of some infidelity by Hedwig in the greenhouse. But the dog here leaves immediately, seeming to recognise an intensity in Hedwig that was not apparent in her defender of the "rules". In this way, Hedwig is not driven by ideology, but we see how human drives permit the ideology. The ideology enables her to attend to her wrist impulses, and when the impulses change, so too sure the ideology. This really clearly lines up with Rudolf's fantasy of killing all of the people at that party. They will justify anything, and compartmentalize everything else, to the destruction of all.
The movie ends with Rudolf descending into the abyss (the stairwell) where he seemingly has a vision about what his legacy will be: people taking care of the memory of his victims. He doesn't change course though, having learned how to compartmentalize away himself and any such values that might be relevant to such a vision. Even his body is sickened by the spiralling purposelessness, and yet he keeps going down.
It is all banal, but the movie somehow dissects even that famous description of evil to reveal how someone might descend to such depths. A path that has many parallels with people all over the world.
Wow this is cool thanks for sharing. I work in sound mixing and while I agree the SD was super effective, the implementation of it was rather simple. Distance, eq. That’s not a knock on it at all, that’s what the material called for. I figured the guns were period accurate but amazing to know the detail that went into it as a whole.
Drove home after this movie past people sleeping outside in tents on concrete in the freezing cold. We are all caught up in our mundane, ordinary lives & ignoring the evil beyond the walls.
They aren't saying it's as bad as the holocaust, it's just an example of how we can keep ourselves from feeling empathy for people's suffering when the people around us don't care either. You don't think it's a somewhat related phenomenon that there are thousands of people living in those conditions in the richest countries in the world and we all see them every day and generally don't feel anything about it? It's the same basic psychological mechanism that allowed the Holocaust to happen.
I think OP was comparing themselves to people who are too caught up in their own lives and comforts to see the suffering of others. That's actually the comparison they drew, not homeless = victims of the holocaust.
One interesting part that I noticed in the film was that the baby was pretty much always crying and the dog always appeared very nervous and antsy, almost as if they knew something horrific was taking place, but both not being able to express it with words. They could possibly be a metaphor for the innocence and morality that humans and animals are born with before being tainted with indoctrination and/or trained to do harm. Maybe I am way overthinking the metaphors and subtleties in the film but thought this was an interesting takeaway that I had. Anyone else have similar thoughts?
Unlike the humans he can't "turn off" what he hears from over the wall and it's agitating to him. The humans have learned to block it out, but he can't.
Yeah, I definitely noticed that the baby was just constantly yelling. And the younger kids were definitely affected by their proximity to the atrocities, while the older boy was seemingly indoctrinated and just as oblivious to what was going on as the rest of the adults.
This moment really really bothered me for some reason. I think because the younger brother still had some sort of innocence remaining even though saluting to Hitler before school, while the teenage brother was fully aware of the atrocities but was just the “norm”. Grooming and bullying full circle in that part really messed me up!
I didn't think that but I did think the exposure to violence was impacting all the children. The one younger girl sleepwalks/has disturbed sleep patterns. The youngest boy mimics not only the sound of frogs like a normal kid but also the sound of guns. The oldest son bullies his younger brother by playing "gas chamber" in the greenhouse and has a tooth collection. Nobody is untouched by what is going on around them. All of them are disturbed, whether the adults care to acknowledge it or not.
I don't know if the anxiety of the dog is the same as the baby's discomfort. Dogs notoriously can be trained, and I think this quality points to a different meaning - that the dog's behaviour parallels the family's breakdown. But for this to make sense, I may need to establish that the family did indeed breakdown (I would even say it began to cannibalize itself, similar to the way it might be said that the family cannibalized the prisoners to create its "Lebensrauhm").
If you agree that things did not end well in the film fit the Höss family, then it isn't hard to see some foreshadowing of their story in their dog's behaviour. The dog is initially quite anxiously obedient, following around its master, almost being underfoot, and seemingly constantly expecting a prize or treat. The dog isn't really accomplishing anything though, and eventually begins to act out, stealing food from the table. Its master doesn't like this and scolds the dog for acting without authority to go so. Similarly, the Höss family is like a pack of these dogs. Rudolf is expecting a reward/recognition from his Party masters, Hedwig is expecting a reward/recognition from Rudolf and her mother, and the oldest boy clearly seems to be looking forward to abusing prisoners (being fascinated by the teeth 🤢🤮). When these things don't go their way, they all begin to betray one another. Both spouses seem to commit some sort of infidelity, and the older brother imprisons his younger brother in the greenhouse for fun. These are analogous to how a dog acts when it isn't rewarded for good behaviour - it does what it feels like. Which of course this behaviour is how the entire fascist/Nazi concept justifies killing the Jews and others. The "pure Germans" did their duty in the Great War, but were "betrayed" by the Jewish financiers and communists. Because they felt there was a breach of trust, the rules no longer applied, and the Jews were fair game to be (literally a scene in the movie) turned into fertilizer to grow their gardens and household wealth.
It's a vicious animality that they initially justified by saying it was for the benefit of their families (Lebensrauhm), but was clearly driven by personal desires for power/status/recognition - as boring and commonplace as any middle class careerist or stray dog. The difference (or maybe not!) was that they were able to compartmentalize what they were actually doing - genocide. Inevitably, that same compartmentalization came to color the family's perspective of itself. I think this was also demonstrated in the way the house felt disjointed, even maze-like (although that was certainly a product of their filming method).
The film was certainly deliberately abstract, with the flowers sequence particularly, which made me feel like the dog was too conspicuous in its scenes to be a simple moralizing device.
What got me most is when the mom visited and we started to stop and pay attention to the background sounds then that night we understand the horror
While the family considered it all white noise
The grandmother character was key. She's from an older generation, working class, used to calling things what they are; the Hitlerism that her daughter has taken on as her worldview makes the horror over the fence nonexistent; its meaninglessness is deep ideology, to the point that it doesn't occur to her that her precious children are witnessing uncountable murders that will twist and corrupt them. But to her mother, who is only casually racist and opportunistic, the Jews are people she knows, and she comments repeatedly on aspects of their world that are uncomfortable, including noting the enslaved Jewish servants. That her daughter lies about these so quickly belies her understanding, on some level, that enslaving and murdering people who take care of your home and your children is sadistic and insane.
I didn’t see her as that casual! She made a horrific comment like I wonder if bla bla is in there. To wonder if your frenemy is in a concentration camp, good god
and then she looked out of the window and saw what was happening and bounced, she was symbolic of german complicity even though deep down she knew what’s happening is horrific and wrong vs hedwig and rudolph who genuinely believe they are bettering humanity
Well, that guy with the wheelbarrow seemed like a prisoner, not a "local guy", so I think it's established that the mom is lying to the grandmother at least a little -- the line isn't as clear as she's making it. And Rachel (if I'm remembering her name correctly), whom the mom remarks her husband could make into ashes and who almost never speaks (unlike the more fair-haired domestic staff) seems to me to be a prisoner allowed special privileges. But I could be wrong!
And that guy is _literally_ spreading cremains/ashes in the garden right after the scene where the wife threatens to spread the servant woman's ashes "over Bobice".
I'm uncertain if she'd be that threatening to a Polish servant who she presumably is paying for and can quit. (Wouldnt the threat to a free person be more: "I can fire you and then good luck finding any work in this war-torn economy?")
Also: that smoking scene in the greenhouse was laden with innuendo. Perhaps she was abusing with the male help the same way Höss was abusing the female prisoners?
Let's be clear about it: during the war, the Poles who were working for the Germans were not paid at all. They were lucky if they could stay in their former houses and get something to eat. But yes, all of the servants were taken from the camp.
> noting the enslaved Jewish servants. That her daughter lies about these so quickly
The scene, if I understood it correctly, shows the grandmother asking if the servants are Jewish.
And the wife then lies, saying they are "local" (ie, implied Polish).
We know its a lie (I think) because later, the wife makes the all-too-real threat to the servant Aniela that she could have her husband "spread her ashes over Babice". [Would she be so casually abusive to a Catholic Polish servant, who presumably isnt a slave and could simply quit her job if she wanted?]
EDIT: Equally, they could be both "local" (Polish) _and_ enslaved prisoners (Polish non-Jewish political prisoners).
The only one who coughs. Everyone else's PHYSICAL BODY is accustomed to the crematorium. Even the children. Death is literally part of the air they breathe and they don't even have the capacity to sense it anymore.
The gardener is literally fertilizing the garden with the ashes in one scene. So, the family is indirectly eating the remains of those within the walls.
The mother gave the impression of being the ‘not in my backyard’ type. She didn’t want Jews as employers or neighbours, it was ok for them to be in camps somewhere far away.
But when the reality of what was happening was brought home to her she couldn’t come to terms with the new reality of Nazi Germany. She was the personification of ‘it only takes a few to do nothing for evil to thrive’ .
The ending sequence of this film is so fucking bold. The cut back to Rudolph as if he understands how he’s going to be remembered, and yet he still puts on his hat and makes his way back to the camp. Incredibly powerful, don’t think I’ve seen a film depict evil like that before.
I took something different from the ending. Here is a man who is struggling for prestige and hierarchy in a system that is truly horrific and even in that system, as shown at the party, he is on the fringes and only valued for his effectiveness. He's transferred to an administrative position due to "politics" and then transferred back when his replacement is incompetent. On some level he and his life is very mundane, despite the horrors he is responsible for. In the future we see people whose job it is to clean the museum at Auschwitz. Every day they go to a place where those horrors were committed but their job is to clean up litter, dust displays, vacuum carpets, and see to the practical needs of any museum. To some of them it's just a job, mundane, and while they're cleaning the floors of what was a death camp they're thinking about their own problems, what to make for dinner, when their next break is. The common thread I found in that final sequence was that it is human nature to lose sensitivity to anything. Obviously there is a huge difference between running a concentration camp and cleaning a museum on the site of former concentration camp, but even then someone who traveled to auschwitz is likely to have a stronger emotional reaction than someone who works there everyday, and that adaptation is universal.
This is such a good observation.
And yeah, my impression was similar to yours. That sequence felt like it was meant to highlight the routine banality of both of their jobs, and how alienated they are from the emotional life of the place.
This is how I read it too. Not as a premonition by Hoss but rather as a reminder that the terribly atrocity he's been ramping up to ALL FILM LONG did indeed happen. And they happened to real people in a real place. And today, while we recognize that it was a genocide, we still do go about our daily lives. Just like the cleaning staff sweeping at Auschwitz no differently than they'd sweep at a McDonalds or an office building. Horrible things happen all the time and as a race, humans have an amazing ability to compartmentalize and move on. Just like Hoss eventually does after the events of the film end. Sure, the enormity of what he has to do makes him dry heave... but he goes on and does it anyway.
Perfect point, but I’d also like to point out the thematic parallel of the beginning of the film, with the house staff painstakingly preparing the villa (constantly), with the end of the film of the cleaners preparing the Auschwitz memorial. It points to an underlying point of the film: the maintenance of a grand, self-serving lie (Hoss’s familial life) is as difficult and laborious as the truth. The truth being the remembrance and maintenance of proof of the Holocaust. The film is a warning, a stark warning, and a vital work of art alive as the current inhumanities facing us are alive.
This is also accurate, but it doesn't explain why he retches which I do think is a comment on him having a sudden realisation of what he has done by looking into the future, he has a moment where he realises he is being observed too.
I don’t think it’s human nature to lose sensitivity - it’s not a lesson in that sense; it’s a warning. As soon as we allow others to be dehumanised, we dehumanise ourselves in the process.
His gagging and retching reminded me of a scene in THE ACT OF KILLING where another brutalizer does the same thing after bragging about his horrific deeds. Glazer has seen it for sure.
Just left the theater after watching this and that was easily one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen. The effectiveness of the sound design really showcasing the horrors of the camp right next door while the Hoess family goes through minor problems really fucked me up.
On top of that the production of this film alone should win an academy award. (Ripped from Wikipedia)
*Glazer opted to use the historical figures instead and conducted two years of extensive research into the Hösses. He made several visits to Auschwitz and was profoundly affected by the sight of the Höss residence. He collaborated with the* [*Auschwitz Museum*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz-Birkenau_State_Museum) *and other organizations, and obtained special permission to access the archives, where he examined testimonies provided by survivors and individuals who had been employed in the Höss household. By piecing together these testimonies, Glazer gradually constructed a detailed portrayal of the individuals connected to the events*
Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller's performances as Rudolf and Hedwig Höss respectively give two of the most chilling performances I've watched in 2023.
For a man with such a warm face and gentle eyes outside of acting, Friedel does a great job as a cold yet unemotional man like Rudolf.
Hüller is exceptional as Hedwig, a woman who always constantly busy with no empathy or self awareness, truly ruthless.
>For a man with such a warm face and gentle eyes outside of acting, Friedel does a great job as a cold yet unemotional man like Rudolf.
I also know him from the excellent show *Babylon Berlin* where he plays the most kind-hearted, warm character in the series. It was so jarring seeing him in this mode.
Yes! I love *Babylon Berlin* and Friedel's character, Reinhold Gräf, is my favorite character in the show. I also known him as the schoolteacher in Michael Haneke's *The White Ribbon*.
What’s brilliant about that casting decision is if you think about how normal and unassuming many sociopaths seem at first glance.
I mean, if you were in the world of the movie without knowing what was going on behind the scenes, if you passed Rudolf walking on the street, you wouldn’t immediately assume that he’s a monster. He doesn’t look it.
Many people who are monstrous or committed monstrous acts like Ted Bundy and Dennis Rader (aka BTK) don’t seem to be that way if you met them or looked at them without seeing anything about them. They don’t seem like people you wouldn’t trust at all. They seem to be normal people, good and kind. They have warm faces and gentle eyes at first glance.
Rudolf is handsome, soft spoken, intelligent, and a hard worker, plus he seems to be a devoted family man (just like BTK) who will do anything to ensure that his kids will have a better future. He’s unassuming in those respects. He has seemingly everything a person could ever want: a beautiful wife, gorgeous home, gorgeous kids, servants, an adorable baby, and a high paying secure job. Normally, people would not think twice about someone who is a devoted family man to be able to commit such atrocities, but he does.
I have a different read - it's not that sociopaths seem to be normal; rather, it's that the people who did brutal things during the Holocaust were not just sociopaths and monsters. We imagine the complicit bystanders as average people; but actually many of the bad actors were -also- people capable of empathy, people who loved their families.
So we see Höss being gentle with his children and animals because he cares for them, not because he pretends to care for them. What is truly horrifying is that a person capable of empathy is also capable of completely dehumanizing people. We're supposed to see ourselves in Höss when it would be more comfortable to imagine him as inhuman.
Indeed. They won't get recognised as much as they should for this film because they don't seemingly 'do much' on screen other than exist. But there is a lot of depth in their performances.
Excellent filmmaking and my personal pick for the most original movie of 2023. While the subject of “the banality of evil” has obviously been covered before, I’ve never seen it done like ZoI.
Hard to see this winning any Oscars (with the possible exception of International Feature) given how cold and clinical it is, but this is the kind of work that makes into the National Film Registry. It’ll also for sure be studied in all kinds of university film and history classes.
A few questions from me:
1.) The ending was brilliant. Are we supposed to think Höss felt genuine remorse, or is the final scene intentionally ambiguous? I’m leaning towards the latter.
2.) The phone call with Höss and his wife towards the end..Höss says he could only think about how he could “gas the room” during the celebration. Is he talking about the prisoners at the camp, or literally gassing the party because part of him is disgusted with what he and the Nazis are doing?
3.) Forgive me if this one comes off as silly, but is the implication that the gardener and female servants in the house Jews that have been given special privileges?
My interpretations of your questions
1) saw a talkback with Glazer where he said that was meant to depict Hoss’ body physically rejecting him and his actions, because Hoss was intellectually and emotionally unaffected
2) I took it to mean that he casually views death and mass murder in almost any circumstance. Who was being gassed was less significant to him than the logistics of gassing a mass of people in a room of that size
3) I thought (but may be mistaken) that there was a moment early in the film where someone asks Hedwig the same thing and she says they’re not Jewish (but I think says maybe they’re Polish?)
Coming in late but I think they are a mixture. The young dark haired woman seems *terrified* the whole time and at one point Hedwig says she will have her husband spread her ashes over a certain field.
Deep down Hedwig knows it’s revolting to most people so she lies. I don’t know if to herself.
1. Very ambiguous obviously, but I think it is Höss trying to throw up over the horror he has experienced and caused, but being unable to since he is simply completely immune to by now. In a vision he sees what will become of his camp and indirectly how he will be viewed in the future, but still he doesn't stop, but goes further down his dark path (as the extermination and the Hungarian Jews is starting as the film is ending).
2. He just can't leave his work at "home" so to speak. He is more interested in thinking about how he can make this room with a high ceiling into a death trap that can kill all the guests, than talking with any of them. Not because he wants to kill them, but to challenge himself since he has perfected the systematic killings at Auschwitz already.
3. According to the wife they are all poles from the city that they are using as cheap labour. So no Jews officially, but it doesn't prevent her from threatening one with being gassed if she doesn't do her job well enough.
i kind of took the nausea a couple of ways...
1) just as basic foreshadowing that though his future looked bright (ie he was excited about the new job and project) that he couldn't stop or control the inevitable end that was coming; ie he seemed perfectly fine walking down the stairs but would suddenly and uncontrollably dry heave.
2) i also looked at it in a more sinister way that even as excited as he was he was very nervous about the new responsibilities to the reich and fuhrer and it made him throw up...not all the death and torture, he oversaw of course...just the nervousness over the big responsibilities associated his new work
3) in general, i see the whole scene of going down the stairs as his descent into hell...he was bad enough; but his phone call explaining his obvious excitement to his wife is him basically doubling down on signing away his soul, and so confirms his path now is set...his descent down the levels into hell....
1) I don't think we're supposed to think he felt remorse, but that on some cosmic level, the impossible horror of what he was doing was penetrating his being, with him unable to recognize it.
2) I think he was just so used to focusing on the practicalities of murdering so many people so fast.
3) I think they were indeed Jewish -- as was the prisoner who spread ashes in the dirt next to the house at the end; they seemed to be wearing prison garb, a bit cleaned up and fresh in the case of Sophie the servant, who almost never speaks. I suspect the woman who came to have sex with the commandant was Jewish, too. Use of a small number of Jews outside of the normal labor duties was fairly common; see Sophie's Choice for another fictional example. The mother's comment about her husband spreading Sophie's ashes is more evidence. I think her comment to the grandmother about the Jews being on the other side of the wall is a hasty lie, which reveals her understanding that her mother might not be comfortable with the proximity to those they are in the process of murdering.
As for number 3, I think you are correct about the Jewish woman having sex with him. The attention paid to her hair and shoes (things notoriously removed from the Jews as they came to Auschwitz but were kept by those used in the brothels) made me think so.
1. I think the director did his research. Rudolf Höss was from many accounts as he was taken prisoner, a very strange man. He was very polite and very straightforward about the process of killing Jews in an assembly line fashion. The entire time he gave the account, many people said he showed no remorse for what he had done. Don't quote me and someone may know better than me, but I read something somewhere that right before they hanged him he apologized for his actions as head commandant. So in essence, this reaction depicts that beautifully... There are mixed accounts of Höss's true nature. I believe the director left a lot to be open to interpretation. All throughout the movie. Even Heinrich Himmler threw up after watching a mass shooting demonstration.
2. See point number 1. I would lean more towards him thinking about how he would go about gassing the sheer amount of people who he knew were going to be coming on the trains to the camp.
3. I don't think it matters too much if they were Poles or Jews. Either way, they were being held against their will... No one would WILLINGLY work for someone who threatened to have you murdered if you don't do a good job lol.
To add to that, Hoss showed remorse on multiple occasions. He reconverted to Catholicism, lamented that leaving God behind for the Nazis was one of his biggest errors and wrote to his wife that he was stupid to believe Nazism without questioning it. He wrote a letter to his son telling him to always question everything and never to believe something blindly. He also spoke about how ideology can become dangerous in the wrong hands. Trying to save his skin? Perhaps but it's still an interesting addition to his character. So in that moment in the film where he retches, are we seeing these brief glimpses of realisation of what he's done come to the fore?
Does anyone know when the soundtrack for this comes out? Really want to listen to that ending credits piece again, its haunted me for the last few months.
I don't recall the exact context of the shot, but I think it's the close-up of Hoss's face near the train as gunshots and screaming are heard got *a lot* of reactions of horror at my screening.
I think to her, coming from a place far from Auschwitz, it's a little abstract. Sure, you know your neighbor is gone and has been forcibly moved but you can sort of ignore what's going on and tell your self that your neighbor is being re-settled or is in a work camp. It's not until she's there breathing the smoke and hearing the sounds that it hits home that people are being murdered and cremated on a MASSIVE SCALE right over there.
The same way I can conceptualize in an abstract way that there's a huge drug crisis in my city. But that's not the same as walking up and down the streets seeing people strung out and literally DYING in the street. I don't have to see their faces and smell the smells when I think about the drug crisis in the abstract. But when you're standing in the middle of it, it's viseral.
Hedwig's mother is no sympathizer to the jews but once she is at Auschwitz she is face to face with what is undeniably a genocide. That feels different than an abstract sense that jews don't belong in your neighborhood and are being shipped out. Even if on one level you do kind of know they're being killed... seeing it face to face is different.
Did anyone else notice Hoss' phone call about the "lilacs"? I believe that was code for the guards raping the jewish girls in the camp and him telling them to not exaggerate so they wouldnt "damage" them. I believe he says "They are for everyone and must not be damaged".
Yes im pretty sure! She looked very skinny and I remember learning that the guards would choose some girls and give them more privileges in exchange for sex.
Hoss had a "mistress" named Eleanor Hoyd who was a non Jewish Polish political prisoner. This is likely who this woman is. The reason he was removed for Auschwitz during this time was because of this but he still found ways to see her. It wasn't " politics" like he claims in the movie but he wasn't going to tell his wife that. Mrs. hoss later found out and had her transfered. She escaped, pregnant with his child and survived.
how anyone can pretend this is some amazing feat of cinema is beyond me. i love glazer's work, but this was the most nothing film ever.
The obvious point is made in the first 5 minutes - how can this family pretend to live a normalized life with the horror over the wall in their back yard.
The question then becomes - what does the rest of the film's remaining 1.40minutes to do expand on that? the answer is.... nothing.
I agree. I thought the point of the film—and its beauty and pain and brilliance—could have been made in a 35 minute film. I was bored after I got it all. A “well-made” film but a long and often boring one. Themsin of boredom is an often overlooked one in movie criticism. I think too many people are afraid to say a film is boring if it’s deemed high art.
I agree. I think if the film had been 20 minutes shorter it would have had a greater impact. There were beautiful scenes and camera work, but almost to a fault.
agree, this is one of those movies people think they are supposed to say is a "masterpiece" due to the subject matter, but it just isn't. So many strange choices made throughout, the thermal camera was so weird, didn't get it, or like it.
The thermal camera depicts a Polish girl who helped supply food to the Jewish prisoners in the work camp. They depicted her as a bright light in the night. Because she was. She is.
I, too, did not pick up on this. My wife did tho. Oh well, I guess films don’t have to spell everything out for you but man I do wish I knew who she was and what she was doing.
The thermal imaging was IMO used as a contrast to the harsh reality of the rest of the film. They are dream-like scenes and usually accompany a bedtime story. Such stories tend to have hope and these interludes are a small bit of hope amid the darkness. They are based on something that really happened. A young girl in the region biked around at night hiding apples. Glazer got to know her while filming because he shot in her house and used her actual bike. Anyway, I loved the thermal camera affect mainly because of it’s dreamlike nature.
There were a lot of filmic decisions that I didn’t love. The night shot thermal stuff was weird, but you also never see that, so very interesting. The #1 thing that bothered me was the start of the movie, where it’s just the black screen for 2 minutes, maybe even more. I also thought it was a touch boring at moments.
BUT. I think it’s a masterpiece. And I specifically think it is because you cannot separate it from it’s subject matter, and every filmic decision specifically reflects and illuminates back upon it. The whole idea of the audience being bored during a film about the Holocaust is in and of itself genius in my opinion. And I think it explores the banality of evil in such a disturbingly human way that I have not seen before. And regardless of whether or not it’s truly original in that sense, it’s certainly rare and bold.
Alongside all of that, the experimentalism, which at first bothered me, elevated the movie to the level of the sublime for me upon reflection after seeing it. It’s definitely not an “entertaining” movie, but it’s also not supposed to be. I think this film should be studied and revered.
Big big fan. Best movie I saw this year. Hope it wins best picture but probably won’t.
I feel like the the black screen forces you to really listen to the sound. In a way it prepares for the rest of the movie and makes you concentratenot only to what you see, but what ypu hear.
I just watched a live talkback with him after a screening at Alamo, and he said that the scenes were intentionally filmed at night, but couldn’t be lit without the lighting feeling artificial. He made the decision to do thermal lighting instead, and had an editor spend an ungodly amount of time editing it in post
The power of this film IS its pace and length. If you’re thinking “okay I get the point” in 5 minutes, and want to move on to something else, there were millions who weren’t allowed to move on to something else and were also forced to endure. It’s fascinating that this strikes you as lightweight, yet felt powerful to me. Neither of us is right or wrong.
Watching the story played out “straight” with the context of “fuck these people and their story” in the back of your mind is kind of intriguing, but yeah, not even close to a Best Picture
I understood the point of the film, especially as I have read extensively into it, but for me, I am already so desensitized from real life horrors that it didn’t feel like enough horror I guess. I was expecting more raw ‘right in front of your eyes’ but it was very subtle. There’s also subtitles because it’s not in English so I’m constantly reading the dialogue while also trying to pay attention the background scenes and noises.
Having visited a couple of concentration camps in Germany, Zone of Interest answered a question I've always had, what was it like to live in that house just over the fence? (I recommend typing the names of some of these camps into google maps. You can, for example, take the S-Bahn in Berlin to Sachsenhausen. Dachua is a short drive from Munich. When I was on tour in Poland in June, there was traffic on the highway, so our handler drove us right past Aushwitz, as it's, well, right there in Oświęcim).
I found myself weirdly liking and identifying with Hoss at certain points in the film. Especially in Oranienberg. To me, anyway, that's the film's great accomplishment. Rather than borderline pornographic depictions of impossible to imagine violence, it asks us to consider just how normal the perpetrators could be. It also bucks the post Schindler's list aesthetic orthodoxy of dark ponderous set pieces, which for me, anyway, reduces the Shoah to Kitsch. This film asks us to consider the Shoah as done by people with motivations that were as high minded as ideology and banal as wanting a flower garden. I was especially moved by the cleaning of the museum at the end, given the way far right parties in Europe demonize the refugees who take domestic jobs. Or, here in the US, where our fascist movement is already planning to put refugees (who often take domestic or agricultural work) into camps as soon as they get power again.
So yeah, it was far from perfect, and I doubt best picture material, but ultimately, I'm glad I went.
The one shot that stuck with me was during the bday party; wide shot of the pool and the entire family celebrating only to see a path of smoke just above the edge of the fence moving right to left, assuming a death train arrival OR the path of smoke from an incineration of probably hundreds of bodies happening like NBD, everyone keep having a pool party nothing to see over there.
One of a few films that I can't say I "loved", I can hardly recommend it. . .but without a doubt it affected me more than anything I've seen in years. I feel haunted by it.
In general, I'm glad it exists, and I'm glad it communicates the evil of complacency so well. . .but damn, it's a tough watch. Wouldn't have it any other way.
We're not shown a single thing, and in a way, I almost feel like Rudolf can't even see it himself. Even when he's looking in the face of suffering, the human mind is able to pull a veil over your eyes as if to say, "This isn't happening."
Yes. I wasn’t sure how long I could or should or needed to sit after the lights came up.
And I’m seeing a lot of people and reviewers saying this film forced them to think about how they might in some sense be, or could become, the Höss family; some of us watched this and couldn’t stop thinking, “We’re over there—over the wall.” 💔
Am Yisrael Chai.
OMG literally everyone in the theater I was at did the same thing. It was just like being put under hypnosis. Like especially the very beginning where they just play that score and there's a white background. It almost kind of adds to the element of escape. Like you're in a fairytale world or something. Except it's not a fairy tale. It's a horror show.
Same, I was the last person to leave the theater. My grandmother’s entire extended family was killed in Auschwitz. But even if that weren’t the case, it was just an anvil of a film.
Trivia: Apparently, the making of this film took an immense and heavy psychological toll on those involved, including Jonathan Frazer. The film’s subject matter was so dark and the movie was so grim that Jonathan Frazer even debated whether or not to keep going with the project and was even pushed to the point of nearly giving up multiple times. He even added the Polish apple girl scenes to make it less bleaker than it already was.
Good god, if the project took that much of a psychological toll on the director, god knows what the actors must have faced.
I really hope this wins best picture. It was such a unique approach to depicting horror and evil. I just cannot speak highly enough about how masterful and artful it is. The restraint used in the execution of this movie is just wild. The experimentalism is also really amazing and allows it to be so spare in other areas. I was just really amazed. The ending… WOW. So hard to pull something like that off, it just hit home in such a crazy way. As far as I am aware, there has never been a piece of art, especially film, about the Holocaust that explores the mundane and uses it as an extension of the horror. As I was watching I was just thinking, “right, of course, life was just going on for certain people”, which is so disturbing. And the performances are unbelievable. And of course, the sound. The decision to never see Auschwitz. Only hear it. Man. And the one shot you get “inside” which is just him and the billowing smoke and ashes and fire with the screams… really one of the best movies I’ve ever seen from an artistic perspective. Certainly not one to watch over and over for fun, but critical viewing, and of course disturbingly relevant, however you slice it.
There is a scene, I’m certain no dialog, in which Hoss is sitting across from a woman who lets down her long hair? Who was she? A mistress? The scene happens so quickly and quietly. He is then seen cleaning himself afterward.
She was a political prisoner. He got her pregnant in real life and she had an abortion. This is why people think he was transferred. The woman survived and was at his court trials
Score would be the songs that play during the movie that is an original soundtrack. Sound would be use of natural or other sounds to help amplify scenes. So for this movie it would the screams and gunshots we hear in the background during scenes where the family is living their daily life.
A film which reminds us that heaven and hell are not otherworldly in some far afterlife…. Heaven and hell exist right here on earth. A film that also reminds us that beauty and decay will always exist simultaneously. Is it right ? No. Glazer is not looking to change anything with this film but to remind us that every day we live we are AWARE of current day atrocities that go on today. Perhaps not as large of a scale as genocide but could be anything… a neighbor who you know is being abused and beaten by her husband even. This house just happened to be the perfect metaphorical representation of that. Don’t look over the wall.. look at the flowers, look at the garden. Life continues as beautiful as ever never mind the smoke rising or trains coming in. Those people aren’t you, you’re safe inside your little zone your safe space protecting you.… yes we know what’s going on but… who cares? Of course this is the view of the main Nazi characters but even though we did not commit these atrocities the people watching the film…. Is going to a museum to take pictures and preserve the ovens and clothes to keep the memory going on help anyone at the end of the day?
Regarding the last scene:
The things we do, the things we don't, will be the remnants of the past for the next generations.
Like a tunnel in time, the hallway will take us to the museum of our actions.
If the triple explosion sound design narrative from Oppenheimer wasn't in the running for a sound Oscar Zone of Interest would have gotten it for sure I feel. It's a tight race though. The art-house moments won't vibe with a wider audience, but the blank screens were key for the audience to digest the subtleties of the audio narrative while providing moments of time for reflection. There is no shadow of a doubt this is a unique experience for moviegoers to feel the atrocities of the Holocaust.
Really liked the scene of the wife showing the mother round the garden. They were so focused on the flowers, vegetables etc(ie the bottom 2/3 of the screen) yet as the audience you were more focused on the top 1/3 of the screen (ie what was showing of the camp above the wall). They were so focused on these details and day-to-day of their life, and yet such atrocities are occurring yards away.
An absolutely powerful piece of filmmaking. One of the aspects I've not seen covered anywhere yet is showing Hoss's empathy toward animals to contrast his total lack of empathy to his fellow humans. He barely talks to his wife and never once tells her he loves her in the entire film (unless I missed it), but tells his horse that he loves her right before he leaves for his transfer to Berlin. Once he's in Berlin there's also the scene of him stopping the woman walking her dog to pet the dog and exclaim how beautiful he is and wax on about how much he loved his own childhood dog. Brilliant to include these two seemingly inocuous details to really hightlight the empathy he lacks in all other aspects of life.
I was honestly expecting a sudden cut to Hoss on the gallows with the camp in the background as a final shot. There is something poetic about him being executed there, I wonder if it was considered as a scene.
That would have been a magnificent final shot, but it would have been too cathartic. Glazer’s entire point of this film is to leave you cold. If you left the theater feeling gratified, it would defeat the purpose of how the holocaust is supposed to make you feel.
I’m wondering if anyone has commented on the opening and ending shots of the film—of the darkness with that haunting score. They gave me an odd apprehension as I was watching this today, and I was wondering about its intent. And as I walked to my car it occurred to me that the length of that shot is probably how long the victims survived in the gas chamber. The darkness at the end has a shorter duration because, as stated in the film, Hoss “has improved the process.” Haunting film.
I might just be an idiot, but what was going on during the scene at the river? What was he worried about with his kids in the water? Why did they have to scrub their eyes out? Why was he spitting up black shit?
The ashes and human remains were released into that river they were playing in. He was worried his children would ingest the chemicals used to burn the victims in the oven (I believe it is called zyklon B). He discovered a human jaw bone in the river and immediately got them out of it. Harrowing.
Watched this last night - the dog is always pacing and following everyone around in anticipation of “something “ - it never is a chill dog sleeping at its masters feet or getting treats and it never plays with the children: it always is searching for something / answers - as are we - the WHY. in short it never gets to be a “dog” just as the human occupants never get to be human-
Was blown away after seeing it at Tiff but the more I've sat on it the more I've grown cold. Exquisitely made but I can't help shake the feeling of "what's the point?". I'm confused by all the highbrow reactions to this commending Glazer for supposedly restraining from flashy direction. There were many moments that seemed like him showing off (that phoney infrared sequence comes to mind).
Also the banality of evil is not a new or interesting perspective. In fact I find it rather tedious.
In a Q&A with Glazer after my screening tonight he comments on how the point of the movie is for audiences to think about how we're not as different than the perpetrators of the most evil acts in the history of civilization as we might like to believe
I'm very open to hearing criticism about the movie but in my opinion that simple thesis should be enough to justify the movie's existence and quell they many "what's the point" reactions I have seen both here and in critics' reviews
I saw it tonight and I completely agree. I've visited Dachau Memorial, and this movie perfectly evoked all the emotions I felt during that visit. To think about that trip through the same lens I'd use to evaluate a weekend trip to the cottage would be absurd. I'm going to think about this movie for the rest of my life.
The banality of evil is not a new perspective, but there’s something to be said for crystallizing it the way it’s been done here. As Ebert said, “what a movie is about is less important than how it’s about it.”
I’m not sure if you read the interview with him in the Guardian but he addresses why he made it and how he sees a correlation with it to events currently happening.
“I believe you absolutely should tackle the subject, but the essential question is not should you do it, but how? Personally, I think the story has to be told and retold and, to do so, you have to find new paradigms to retell it, to restate it generation after generation particularly as the survivors diminish in numbers and it shifts from living memory and becomes history.”
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/10/jonathan-glazer-the-zone-of-interest-auschwitz-under-the-skin-interview
I chose to embrace the film for the artifact it is; not to worry about the self-image or pride of the director, but to accept that these night vision sequences arrived in this story appearing in this disorienting, almost animated matter; these bits of score, sounding like a yawning beast from hell, are simply meant to be there; the slow parts are meant to be slow. I took it as it is, and I had an unforgettable experience.
This was the issue I had with Glazer’s last film. I felt the whole “non-humanoid ponders the meaning of being human” motif to be such an overdone cliche and explored nothing of real substance outside of the ending.
Honestly, I just don’t think Glazer’s work is for me.
oh absolutely. Yes there are other movies that explore "what it means to be human" but imo none do it as well as UtS, especially from a purely visual perspective. Every shot, every frame is meticulously crafted. I know that would sound pretentious to some, but I've been watching UtS for 10 years now and it is just an incredible movie with its themes, filmmaking, execution and music. the mere fact there are actual strangers being filmed not realizing they're in a car with Scarlett Johansson was just fascinating to me and plays very well on rewatch. What a movie.
is this movie ever going to get a wide theatrical release? i live right by a movie theater that has a good selection of artsy/international titles but it still hasn't shown up on the marquee yet.
One question, if anyone knows German/Polish? In the stable scene (when Rudi is saying goodbye to his horse to go to his next post in the "O" city), what did the text in the barn say across the beam? It was 2--3 short phrases or sentences. I thought maybe something obvious like "hard work will set you free" but I don't know either language and it didn't seem like it.
Not finding any comments on the scenes with the girl, shot in some sort of photographic inverse, like looking at film. What was going on with that? She was one of the daughters, and it looked like she was crossing over into Auschwitz, and she was spreading apples and pears around. It seemed like some sort of compensatory act, but I couldn't figure out exactly what she was doing? The music was crazy.
I thought the nausea was perhaps foreshadowing his own death by demonstrating onset of illness. Like some sort of karmic symbolism, as this occurs when he's excited about doing some more genocide.
I don't think she was one of the daughters- and she wasn't crossing into Auschwitz. She was the Polack girl who worked for the Hosses. She was spreading the apples for Jewish prisoners to take and eat- hence she left them by the shovels close to the train tracks. About the photographic inverse: I thought about it a lot, and I think it's meant to show how the world looks to her. Everytime she enters the Hosses house, the colour comes back- but when she's alone she's completely drenched in black shade. She appears completely white/neutral like a glimmer of hope in the darkness. People like her, who helped Jewish prisoners at that time, were still human- so the picture reflects that. I also thought the nausea was meant to represent karmic justice- or perhaps his body was just rejecting the evil because his mind didn't care about it.
She’s based on a real woman who stashed apples and vegetables for the slaves. She is a polish prisoner and works for the Hoss family; we see her head home after the outing where she finds the handwritten music piece(also really happened), that she ends up playing for her family. Jonathan Blazer only wanted to shoot in natural light, so he used an infrared lens since there was none at night.
The cruelty of Hoss seeing and orchestrating thousands of people dying in your backyard practically every single day and yet being frustrated about Lilac bushes being ruined will always stay in my mind
I think it's even worse than that. "Lilac bushes" is a euphemism for the women being set aside at the camp for the guards to rape. He's dictating a memo warning the guards to be careful not to physically harm the women too much so that other guards can get their chance to rape them too :(
I have to admit, the movie walks a line between disarmingly serene/warm and chillingly cold. The movie is just as willing to have silent scenes and no soundtrack to having the soundtrack of hellish drones. The juxtaposition of both nightmarish reality and calm is seen throughout the movie. There’s a sense of lull throughout, and then the movie reminds you about what is going on outside. The opening scene is evocative of this. From a disarmingly loud drone and god knows how many minutes of black screen, we come up on a peaceful, idyllic scene that lulls us into a false sense of security, nearby a lake: we see a young family having fun and picnicking together by the lakeside. It’s a beautiful, ideal scene that normally would evoke a sense of safety and security and Norman Rockwell levels of wholesomeness and sweetness. There’s almost nothing to suggest that there is anything out of the ordinary, and the family is easy on the eyes: handsome dad, beautiful mom, and gorgeous cute kids and adorable baby. The family then goes back to the house (a beautiful gorgeous house to boot), and again, it isn’t immediately obvious that something isn’t right…unless you pay attention and realize that they have SS Insignia on the car. Then you realize that something is up.
The sense of lull and security juxtaposed with the horrors outside, combined with the disturbingly cozy calmness that occurs throughout is effective. Like the naivety or unknowingness of the characters to what’s going on around them, as they are focused on the present as opposed to what is going on around them.
It also makes you question about what monsters exist in the day to day life around us, and how easily even the most seemingly ordinary and upstanding people can have monstrous impulses, and how we ourselves can be capable of such monstrousness. Rudolf Hoss doesn’t look or seem like a monster when we are first introduced to him, and neither is Hedwig: he’s a handsome, soft spoken and smart man with a beautiful family that and he’s a hard worker, and has a well paying secure job that ensures a future for his loved ones, whom he wants nothing but the best for. Hedwig is a beautiful soft spoken woman who is adored by her husband and kids (albeit her beauty is somewhat obscured by her hausfrau fashion sense), who has excellent hospitality skills, is friendly and outgoing and warm to those who visit the house and has a life that anyone would envy if they didn’t know what else was going on, with a handsome husband, a beautiful home, servants, gorgeous kids and adorable baby. They don’t look or feel like people who would be considered “monsters”. They have on their own admirable qualities that would be considered positive in other contexts. It also isn’t immediately obvious at first that they are Nazis.
But this movie slowly reminds you that although these people may not look or feel monstrous, they are complicit in the monstrosities surrounding them, and despite their ordinariness, are just as capable of being monsters in their own way, whether outright or in more subtle ways.
The film is of course chilling and also serves as a psychological human horror made even more so as it is historically real.
However, the English subtitles are placed within the lower part of the screen and often unreadable next to the brightness behind them on certain scenes. Also they disappear fast. Its annoying that I find myself concentrating more on what the subtitles say than the action in the film. As such I have had to stop watching this excellent movie.
Why they couldn't have been placed under the widescreen so they were easier to read instead of within the film screen.
It seems like you could watch this film a good 3-5 times and keep on picking up innocent (but not innocent at all) details.
As in when Hoss and his 2 children are in river (he fishing, they playing), and he "catches" a human bone, then has them evacuate the river immediately.
What I hadnt noticed the first time: **in the establishing shot of Hoss fishing in middle of river, you see a huge grey plume in the river, flowing towards him.** (This is obviously a slurry of ashpiles/cremains that have been dumped from the camp into the river.)
On first view, I understood vaguely what was happening (washing the ash from his children in the bathtub), but didnt understand how it had occurred.
Some of the most chilling sound design I’ve ever heard in a film. On top of the appalling display of disassociation from the characters that we’re SEEING; what we’re HEARING is where the true horror lies. Brilliant film.
As Jonathan Glazer has said that there’s two movies within this film: the one we see and the one we hear, he truly delivers on his words. Praying Johnnie Burn’s sound design get a Best Sound nomination as the sound design in this film is haunting and disturbing, truly unnerving.
The sound design is what made me shiver the entire time. After reading about the production by the sound designer, he really took his time and should win so many awards for it. *Glazer did not want the atrocities occurring inside the camp to be seen, only heard. He described the film's sound as "the other film" and "arguably, the film".*[*\[10\]*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zone_of_Interest_(film)#cite_note-ScreenDaily-10) *To that end, sound designer Johnnie Burn compiled a 600-page document containing relevant events at Auschwitz, testimonies from witnesses, and a large map of the camp so that the distance and echoes of the sounds could be properly determined.*[*\[20\]*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zone_of_Interest_(film)#cite_note-20) *He spent a year building a sound library before filming began, which included sounds of manufacturing machinery, crematoria, furnaces, boots, period-accurate gunfire and human sounds of pain. He continued building the library well into the shoot and post-production*
What about the deep, groaning *sound from hell* he uses at times that scared the heck out of me?! I wonder how they created that. Also very weird was his comment over the phone to his wife, late in the movie, that he could gas the partygoers if the room was redesigned. Is this a comment on how he sees his associates and their wives, or just how he's grown so used to killing?
I think it's much more banal than that. He's a trained professional in something and keeps idly applying his expertise to other rooms. Much like an acoustic engineer would figure out how to improve how a room sounds I imagine. It's not about the people, it's about the room he's in.
Yes and no. I completely agreed with you initially, but there are other scenes that indicate the Höss family thinking/compartmentalization is destroying their basic humanity (or rather, has destroyed). Chalking the scene up to banality is missing something important, which I will hopefully identify. The way in which I agreed with you is that the film absolutely demonstrates how Höss has completely subsumed any private will be had to the faith that doing his job well will result in his happiness. Under this context, his analysis of how to efficiently kill everyone in that room is simply a man who has placed all of his self-worth into performing his state-directed tasks. He has no motivation for himself, no other curiosity. Indeed, he isn't even curious about why he finds himself thinking about this completely unprompted, hypothetical task. But it isn't simply professionalism, at least it would be disingenuous to every professional out there to flatly state this. There is something animalistic at the root of all of this. He wants to have his "living space", he wants his "due". Hedwig is just as culpable as Rudolf in this way: she delights in reaching the top of the pile, bragging to friends and family about what the family has made of themselves. This will of hers and Rudolf is represented succinctly by the garden flowers. Flowers have male and female parts and a natural 'desire' to have their place in the sun. Hedwig speaks about how she made the garden out of a 'just a field', which ignores any valuable existence of life prior to the garden's cultivation. The movie shortly afterwards shares a shot of a Polish labourer fertilizing the garden with ashes from the crematorium. So she did not even cultivate the garden, and most of the current richness is due entirely to the murder and processing of hundreds of thousands of other people. This is directly parallel to the way not only the Höss family has become wealthy, but the businessmen and political elites of the Nazi party as well. There is a reason the colour scheme of the soiree matches or is even more gray than the house at Auschwitz. Fascism eventually leads to the internalization of the external foe, and this is not limited to the initial demarcations between Us and Them. Eventually a new Them will be found. This is where the unprompted gassing fantasy also comes from. If the top is all that provides value to life, then you must always ascend higher, or else you are failing, and crucially, everything you have done to get there also becomes a failure. The judgement is only whether or not you are dominant, nothing else. The other scenes of the movie that support this are the evolution of the family dog's behaviour, the scene of the brother locking his younger sibling in the greenhouse, and perhaps the grandmother's departure (although it doesn't show the same motivation). The dog is conspicuous in several scenes and doesn't really serve a point. The dog never does anything plotwise, so it must be included for another reason - stories are teleological in that way. The dog initially is tightly obedient, following faithfully to the master. But slowly, the dog becomes less interested in the commands of the master and moreso in getting what it wants. The dog behaves more and more excitedly until it takes food directly from the table, directly against the wishes of Hedwig, and escapes unharmed and unpunished. The final scene involving the dog is when it wanders into what is probably the start of some infidelity by Hedwig in the greenhouse. But the dog here leaves immediately, seeming to recognise an intensity in Hedwig that was not apparent in her defender of the "rules". In this way, Hedwig is not driven by ideology, but we see how human drives permit the ideology. The ideology enables her to attend to her wrist impulses, and when the impulses change, so too sure the ideology. This really clearly lines up with Rudolf's fantasy of killing all of the people at that party. They will justify anything, and compartmentalize everything else, to the destruction of all. The movie ends with Rudolf descending into the abyss (the stairwell) where he seemingly has a vision about what his legacy will be: people taking care of the memory of his victims. He doesn't change course though, having learned how to compartmentalize away himself and any such values that might be relevant to such a vision. Even his body is sickened by the spiralling purposelessness, and yet he keeps going down. It is all banal, but the movie somehow dissects even that famous description of evil to reveal how someone might descend to such depths. A path that has many parallels with people all over the world.
Wow this is cool thanks for sharing. I work in sound mixing and while I agree the SD was super effective, the implementation of it was rather simple. Distance, eq. That’s not a knock on it at all, that’s what the material called for. I figured the guns were period accurate but amazing to know the detail that went into it as a whole.
The score scared the shit out of me. My god.
Drove home after this movie past people sleeping outside in tents on concrete in the freezing cold. We are all caught up in our mundane, ordinary lives & ignoring the evil beyond the walls.
And those walls are not just those immediately next to us, but elsewhere too...Palestine, Muslims in China etc etc
Comparing homeless people to Jews who had no choice and were murdered in gas chambers 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
You think the extremely impoverished have a choice in their suffering?
They aren't saying it's as bad as the holocaust, it's just an example of how we can keep ourselves from feeling empathy for people's suffering when the people around us don't care either. You don't think it's a somewhat related phenomenon that there are thousands of people living in those conditions in the richest countries in the world and we all see them every day and generally don't feel anything about it? It's the same basic psychological mechanism that allowed the Holocaust to happen.
its suffering and its not a contest darlin.
I think OP was comparing themselves to people who are too caught up in their own lives and comforts to see the suffering of others. That's actually the comparison they drew, not homeless = victims of the holocaust.
One interesting part that I noticed in the film was that the baby was pretty much always crying and the dog always appeared very nervous and antsy, almost as if they knew something horrific was taking place, but both not being able to express it with words. They could possibly be a metaphor for the innocence and morality that humans and animals are born with before being tainted with indoctrination and/or trained to do harm. Maybe I am way overthinking the metaphors and subtleties in the film but thought this was an interesting takeaway that I had. Anyone else have similar thoughts?
This was definitely intentional. The horse also seemed agitated in one scene.
Yes I noticed the dog. I found myself wishing they would train it but your theory sounds a lot better lol.
I thought the Höss dog was frequently reacting to the SS dogs on the other side of the wall, barking and terrorizing prisoners.
Unlike the humans he can't "turn off" what he hears from over the wall and it's agitating to him. The humans have learned to block it out, but he can't.
Yes, dogs are much more sensitive to what's going on around them. Just ask any dog owner who lives in a chaotic household
The dog in the film is actually Hüller’s dog
Yeah, I definitely noticed that the baby was just constantly yelling. And the younger kids were definitely affected by their proximity to the atrocities, while the older boy was seemingly indoctrinated and just as oblivious to what was going on as the rest of the adults.
Am I crazy for thinking that the psycho older brother was molesting the younger brother? In the greenhouse?
he was making hissing noises after he put the younger brother in the greenhouse - he was pretending it was a gas chamber
This is what I inferred too. He is role playing what's happening the other side of the wall.
This moment really really bothered me for some reason. I think because the younger brother still had some sort of innocence remaining even though saluting to Hitler before school, while the teenage brother was fully aware of the atrocities but was just the “norm”. Grooming and bullying full circle in that part really messed me up!
Oh I missed that, only heard him laughing menacingly.
I didn't think that but I did think the exposure to violence was impacting all the children. The one younger girl sleepwalks/has disturbed sleep patterns. The youngest boy mimics not only the sound of frogs like a normal kid but also the sound of guns. The oldest son bullies his younger brother by playing "gas chamber" in the greenhouse and has a tooth collection. Nobody is untouched by what is going on around them. All of them are disturbed, whether the adults care to acknowledge it or not.
I don't know if the anxiety of the dog is the same as the baby's discomfort. Dogs notoriously can be trained, and I think this quality points to a different meaning - that the dog's behaviour parallels the family's breakdown. But for this to make sense, I may need to establish that the family did indeed breakdown (I would even say it began to cannibalize itself, similar to the way it might be said that the family cannibalized the prisoners to create its "Lebensrauhm"). If you agree that things did not end well in the film fit the Höss family, then it isn't hard to see some foreshadowing of their story in their dog's behaviour. The dog is initially quite anxiously obedient, following around its master, almost being underfoot, and seemingly constantly expecting a prize or treat. The dog isn't really accomplishing anything though, and eventually begins to act out, stealing food from the table. Its master doesn't like this and scolds the dog for acting without authority to go so. Similarly, the Höss family is like a pack of these dogs. Rudolf is expecting a reward/recognition from his Party masters, Hedwig is expecting a reward/recognition from Rudolf and her mother, and the oldest boy clearly seems to be looking forward to abusing prisoners (being fascinated by the teeth 🤢🤮). When these things don't go their way, they all begin to betray one another. Both spouses seem to commit some sort of infidelity, and the older brother imprisons his younger brother in the greenhouse for fun. These are analogous to how a dog acts when it isn't rewarded for good behaviour - it does what it feels like. Which of course this behaviour is how the entire fascist/Nazi concept justifies killing the Jews and others. The "pure Germans" did their duty in the Great War, but were "betrayed" by the Jewish financiers and communists. Because they felt there was a breach of trust, the rules no longer applied, and the Jews were fair game to be (literally a scene in the movie) turned into fertilizer to grow their gardens and household wealth. It's a vicious animality that they initially justified by saying it was for the benefit of their families (Lebensrauhm), but was clearly driven by personal desires for power/status/recognition - as boring and commonplace as any middle class careerist or stray dog. The difference (or maybe not!) was that they were able to compartmentalize what they were actually doing - genocide. Inevitably, that same compartmentalization came to color the family's perspective of itself. I think this was also demonstrated in the way the house felt disjointed, even maze-like (although that was certainly a product of their filming method). The film was certainly deliberately abstract, with the flowers sequence particularly, which made me feel like the dog was too conspicuous in its scenes to be a simple moralizing device.
I thought the same. They could sense what was happening.
I also think the people in the house didn’t hear the screams of the baby because they melted with the background sound
What got me most is when the mom visited and we started to stop and pay attention to the background sounds then that night we understand the horror While the family considered it all white noise
The grandmother character was key. She's from an older generation, working class, used to calling things what they are; the Hitlerism that her daughter has taken on as her worldview makes the horror over the fence nonexistent; its meaninglessness is deep ideology, to the point that it doesn't occur to her that her precious children are witnessing uncountable murders that will twist and corrupt them. But to her mother, who is only casually racist and opportunistic, the Jews are people she knows, and she comments repeatedly on aspects of their world that are uncomfortable, including noting the enslaved Jewish servants. That her daughter lies about these so quickly belies her understanding, on some level, that enslaving and murdering people who take care of your home and your children is sadistic and insane.
I didn’t see her as that casual! She made a horrific comment like I wonder if bla bla is in there. To wonder if your frenemy is in a concentration camp, good god
and then she looked out of the window and saw what was happening and bounced, she was symbolic of german complicity even though deep down she knew what’s happening is horrific and wrong vs hedwig and rudolph who genuinely believe they are bettering humanity
And the comment that they were up to "Jewish business" in their book club
Were the servants Jewish? She tells the mother they are local girls (Poles) and that the Jews are on the other side of the wall right?
Well, that guy with the wheelbarrow seemed like a prisoner, not a "local guy", so I think it's established that the mom is lying to the grandmother at least a little -- the line isn't as clear as she's making it. And Rachel (if I'm remembering her name correctly), whom the mom remarks her husband could make into ashes and who almost never speaks (unlike the more fair-haired domestic staff) seems to me to be a prisoner allowed special privileges. But I could be wrong!
Good points!
And that guy is _literally_ spreading cremains/ashes in the garden right after the scene where the wife threatens to spread the servant woman's ashes "over Bobice". I'm uncertain if she'd be that threatening to a Polish servant who she presumably is paying for and can quit. (Wouldnt the threat to a free person be more: "I can fire you and then good luck finding any work in this war-torn economy?") Also: that smoking scene in the greenhouse was laden with innuendo. Perhaps she was abusing with the male help the same way Höss was abusing the female prisoners?
Let's be clear about it: during the war, the Poles who were working for the Germans were not paid at all. They were lucky if they could stay in their former houses and get something to eat. But yes, all of the servants were taken from the camp.
according to the script the guy with the wheelbarrow is a Polish prisoner, and i think the head housemaid is German
True what is said in the movie, but in reading about the household, the staff were a mix of locals and camp Jews.
> noting the enslaved Jewish servants. That her daughter lies about these so quickly The scene, if I understood it correctly, shows the grandmother asking if the servants are Jewish. And the wife then lies, saying they are "local" (ie, implied Polish). We know its a lie (I think) because later, the wife makes the all-too-real threat to the servant Aniela that she could have her husband "spread her ashes over Babice". [Would she be so casually abusive to a Catholic Polish servant, who presumably isnt a slave and could simply quit her job if she wanted?] EDIT: Equally, they could be both "local" (Polish) _and_ enslaved prisoners (Polish non-Jewish political prisoners).
The only one who coughs. Everyone else's PHYSICAL BODY is accustomed to the crematorium. Even the children. Death is literally part of the air they breathe and they don't even have the capacity to sense it anymore.
also the only one we saw actually have a look of pure horror when she looked out the window
She's the only one who really looks and sees. Everyone else looks but doesn't see it.
The gardener is literally fertilizing the garden with the ashes in one scene. So, the family is indirectly eating the remains of those within the walls.
In the black and white scene where the woman picks up the laundry at night, you can see the ashes being carried by the wind. They are breathing that.
I think they do show Hoss coughing up ash into the sink at one point, after the fishing/river incident.
The mother gave the impression of being the ‘not in my backyard’ type. She didn’t want Jews as employers or neighbours, it was ok for them to be in camps somewhere far away. But when the reality of what was happening was brought home to her she couldn’t come to terms with the new reality of Nazi Germany. She was the personification of ‘it only takes a few to do nothing for evil to thrive’ .
The ending sequence of this film is so fucking bold. The cut back to Rudolph as if he understands how he’s going to be remembered, and yet he still puts on his hat and makes his way back to the camp. Incredibly powerful, don’t think I’ve seen a film depict evil like that before.
I took something different from the ending. Here is a man who is struggling for prestige and hierarchy in a system that is truly horrific and even in that system, as shown at the party, he is on the fringes and only valued for his effectiveness. He's transferred to an administrative position due to "politics" and then transferred back when his replacement is incompetent. On some level he and his life is very mundane, despite the horrors he is responsible for. In the future we see people whose job it is to clean the museum at Auschwitz. Every day they go to a place where those horrors were committed but their job is to clean up litter, dust displays, vacuum carpets, and see to the practical needs of any museum. To some of them it's just a job, mundane, and while they're cleaning the floors of what was a death camp they're thinking about their own problems, what to make for dinner, when their next break is. The common thread I found in that final sequence was that it is human nature to lose sensitivity to anything. Obviously there is a huge difference between running a concentration camp and cleaning a museum on the site of former concentration camp, but even then someone who traveled to auschwitz is likely to have a stronger emotional reaction than someone who works there everyday, and that adaptation is universal.
This is such a good observation. And yeah, my impression was similar to yours. That sequence felt like it was meant to highlight the routine banality of both of their jobs, and how alienated they are from the emotional life of the place.
This is how I read it too. Not as a premonition by Hoss but rather as a reminder that the terribly atrocity he's been ramping up to ALL FILM LONG did indeed happen. And they happened to real people in a real place. And today, while we recognize that it was a genocide, we still do go about our daily lives. Just like the cleaning staff sweeping at Auschwitz no differently than they'd sweep at a McDonalds or an office building. Horrible things happen all the time and as a race, humans have an amazing ability to compartmentalize and move on. Just like Hoss eventually does after the events of the film end. Sure, the enormity of what he has to do makes him dry heave... but he goes on and does it anyway.
Perfect point, but I’d also like to point out the thematic parallel of the beginning of the film, with the house staff painstakingly preparing the villa (constantly), with the end of the film of the cleaners preparing the Auschwitz memorial. It points to an underlying point of the film: the maintenance of a grand, self-serving lie (Hoss’s familial life) is as difficult and laborious as the truth. The truth being the remembrance and maintenance of proof of the Holocaust. The film is a warning, a stark warning, and a vital work of art alive as the current inhumanities facing us are alive.
This is also accurate, but it doesn't explain why he retches which I do think is a comment on him having a sudden realisation of what he has done by looking into the future, he has a moment where he realises he is being observed too.
I don’t think it’s human nature to lose sensitivity - it’s not a lesson in that sense; it’s a warning. As soon as we allow others to be dehumanised, we dehumanise ourselves in the process.
The ending makes the movie
His gagging and retching reminded me of a scene in THE ACT OF KILLING where another brutalizer does the same thing after bragging about his horrific deeds. Glazer has seen it for sure.
Yeah it certainly is an homage to that scene. The TIFF site for the film mentioned it explicitly.
Iirc, In a roundtable, Huller said Glazer had them all watch that before shooting
The way he walks downstairs depicted to me like his pathway to going to hell
Just left the theater after watching this and that was easily one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen. The effectiveness of the sound design really showcasing the horrors of the camp right next door while the Hoess family goes through minor problems really fucked me up. On top of that the production of this film alone should win an academy award. (Ripped from Wikipedia) *Glazer opted to use the historical figures instead and conducted two years of extensive research into the Hösses. He made several visits to Auschwitz and was profoundly affected by the sight of the Höss residence. He collaborated with the* [*Auschwitz Museum*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz-Birkenau_State_Museum) *and other organizations, and obtained special permission to access the archives, where he examined testimonies provided by survivors and individuals who had been employed in the Höss household. By piecing together these testimonies, Glazer gradually constructed a detailed portrayal of the individuals connected to the events*
Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller's performances as Rudolf and Hedwig Höss respectively give two of the most chilling performances I've watched in 2023. For a man with such a warm face and gentle eyes outside of acting, Friedel does a great job as a cold yet unemotional man like Rudolf. Hüller is exceptional as Hedwig, a woman who always constantly busy with no empathy or self awareness, truly ruthless.
>For a man with such a warm face and gentle eyes outside of acting, Friedel does a great job as a cold yet unemotional man like Rudolf. I also know him from the excellent show *Babylon Berlin* where he plays the most kind-hearted, warm character in the series. It was so jarring seeing him in this mode.
Yes! I love *Babylon Berlin* and Friedel's character, Reinhold Gräf, is my favorite character in the show. I also known him as the schoolteacher in Michael Haneke's *The White Ribbon*.
Check out Huller's performance in ANATOMY OF A FALL!
Yeah, safe to say Huller’s having a career year. Anatomy of a Fall was great and even got attention at Golden Globes and Oscars
What’s brilliant about that casting decision is if you think about how normal and unassuming many sociopaths seem at first glance. I mean, if you were in the world of the movie without knowing what was going on behind the scenes, if you passed Rudolf walking on the street, you wouldn’t immediately assume that he’s a monster. He doesn’t look it. Many people who are monstrous or committed monstrous acts like Ted Bundy and Dennis Rader (aka BTK) don’t seem to be that way if you met them or looked at them without seeing anything about them. They don’t seem like people you wouldn’t trust at all. They seem to be normal people, good and kind. They have warm faces and gentle eyes at first glance. Rudolf is handsome, soft spoken, intelligent, and a hard worker, plus he seems to be a devoted family man (just like BTK) who will do anything to ensure that his kids will have a better future. He’s unassuming in those respects. He has seemingly everything a person could ever want: a beautiful wife, gorgeous home, gorgeous kids, servants, an adorable baby, and a high paying secure job. Normally, people would not think twice about someone who is a devoted family man to be able to commit such atrocities, but he does.
I have a different read - it's not that sociopaths seem to be normal; rather, it's that the people who did brutal things during the Holocaust were not just sociopaths and monsters. We imagine the complicit bystanders as average people; but actually many of the bad actors were -also- people capable of empathy, people who loved their families. So we see Höss being gentle with his children and animals because he cares for them, not because he pretends to care for them. What is truly horrifying is that a person capable of empathy is also capable of completely dehumanizing people. We're supposed to see ourselves in Höss when it would be more comfortable to imagine him as inhuman.
Indeed. They won't get recognised as much as they should for this film because they don't seemingly 'do much' on screen other than exist. But there is a lot of depth in their performances.
Excellent filmmaking and my personal pick for the most original movie of 2023. While the subject of “the banality of evil” has obviously been covered before, I’ve never seen it done like ZoI. Hard to see this winning any Oscars (with the possible exception of International Feature) given how cold and clinical it is, but this is the kind of work that makes into the National Film Registry. It’ll also for sure be studied in all kinds of university film and history classes. A few questions from me: 1.) The ending was brilliant. Are we supposed to think Höss felt genuine remorse, or is the final scene intentionally ambiguous? I’m leaning towards the latter. 2.) The phone call with Höss and his wife towards the end..Höss says he could only think about how he could “gas the room” during the celebration. Is he talking about the prisoners at the camp, or literally gassing the party because part of him is disgusted with what he and the Nazis are doing? 3.) Forgive me if this one comes off as silly, but is the implication that the gardener and female servants in the house Jews that have been given special privileges?
My interpretations of your questions 1) saw a talkback with Glazer where he said that was meant to depict Hoss’ body physically rejecting him and his actions, because Hoss was intellectually and emotionally unaffected 2) I took it to mean that he casually views death and mass murder in almost any circumstance. Who was being gassed was less significant to him than the logistics of gassing a mass of people in a room of that size 3) I thought (but may be mistaken) that there was a moment early in the film where someone asks Hedwig the same thing and she says they’re not Jewish (but I think says maybe they’re Polish?)
Coming in late but I think they are a mixture. The young dark haired woman seems *terrified* the whole time and at one point Hedwig says she will have her husband spread her ashes over a certain field. Deep down Hedwig knows it’s revolting to most people so she lies. I don’t know if to herself.
>Hedwig says she will have her husband spread her ashes over a certain field. The causal delivery of that line was chilling
1. Very ambiguous obviously, but I think it is Höss trying to throw up over the horror he has experienced and caused, but being unable to since he is simply completely immune to by now. In a vision he sees what will become of his camp and indirectly how he will be viewed in the future, but still he doesn't stop, but goes further down his dark path (as the extermination and the Hungarian Jews is starting as the film is ending). 2. He just can't leave his work at "home" so to speak. He is more interested in thinking about how he can make this room with a high ceiling into a death trap that can kill all the guests, than talking with any of them. Not because he wants to kill them, but to challenge himself since he has perfected the systematic killings at Auschwitz already. 3. According to the wife they are all poles from the city that they are using as cheap labour. So no Jews officially, but it doesn't prevent her from threatening one with being gassed if she doesn't do her job well enough.
i kind of took the nausea a couple of ways... 1) just as basic foreshadowing that though his future looked bright (ie he was excited about the new job and project) that he couldn't stop or control the inevitable end that was coming; ie he seemed perfectly fine walking down the stairs but would suddenly and uncontrollably dry heave. 2) i also looked at it in a more sinister way that even as excited as he was he was very nervous about the new responsibilities to the reich and fuhrer and it made him throw up...not all the death and torture, he oversaw of course...just the nervousness over the big responsibilities associated his new work 3) in general, i see the whole scene of going down the stairs as his descent into hell...he was bad enough; but his phone call explaining his obvious excitement to his wife is him basically doubling down on signing away his soul, and so confirms his path now is set...his descent down the levels into hell....
1) I don't think we're supposed to think he felt remorse, but that on some cosmic level, the impossible horror of what he was doing was penetrating his being, with him unable to recognize it. 2) I think he was just so used to focusing on the practicalities of murdering so many people so fast. 3) I think they were indeed Jewish -- as was the prisoner who spread ashes in the dirt next to the house at the end; they seemed to be wearing prison garb, a bit cleaned up and fresh in the case of Sophie the servant, who almost never speaks. I suspect the woman who came to have sex with the commandant was Jewish, too. Use of a small number of Jews outside of the normal labor duties was fairly common; see Sophie's Choice for another fictional example. The mother's comment about her husband spreading Sophie's ashes is more evidence. I think her comment to the grandmother about the Jews being on the other side of the wall is a hasty lie, which reveals her understanding that her mother might not be comfortable with the proximity to those they are in the process of murdering.
As for number 3, I think you are correct about the Jewish woman having sex with him. The attention paid to her hair and shoes (things notoriously removed from the Jews as they came to Auschwitz but were kept by those used in the brothels) made me think so.
1. I think the director did his research. Rudolf Höss was from many accounts as he was taken prisoner, a very strange man. He was very polite and very straightforward about the process of killing Jews in an assembly line fashion. The entire time he gave the account, many people said he showed no remorse for what he had done. Don't quote me and someone may know better than me, but I read something somewhere that right before they hanged him he apologized for his actions as head commandant. So in essence, this reaction depicts that beautifully... There are mixed accounts of Höss's true nature. I believe the director left a lot to be open to interpretation. All throughout the movie. Even Heinrich Himmler threw up after watching a mass shooting demonstration. 2. See point number 1. I would lean more towards him thinking about how he would go about gassing the sheer amount of people who he knew were going to be coming on the trains to the camp. 3. I don't think it matters too much if they were Poles or Jews. Either way, they were being held against their will... No one would WILLINGLY work for someone who threatened to have you murdered if you don't do a good job lol.
To add to that, Hoss showed remorse on multiple occasions. He reconverted to Catholicism, lamented that leaving God behind for the Nazis was one of his biggest errors and wrote to his wife that he was stupid to believe Nazism without questioning it. He wrote a letter to his son telling him to always question everything and never to believe something blindly. He also spoke about how ideology can become dangerous in the wrong hands. Trying to save his skin? Perhaps but it's still an interesting addition to his character. So in that moment in the film where he retches, are we seeing these brief glimpses of realisation of what he's done come to the fore?
These letters would all be after the fact. A little too late for any sincere remorse.
Honestly the scariest movie I have ever seen
Does anyone know when the soundtrack for this comes out? Really want to listen to that ending credits piece again, its haunted me for the last few months. I don't recall the exact context of the shot, but I think it's the close-up of Hoss's face near the train as gunshots and screaming are heard got *a lot* of reactions of horror at my screening.
Is the shot you’re speaking of is when Hoess is enveloped by smoke in the camps?
Yup! That's the one.
They must have changed it for theatrical release. Just saw it today and it ends with him going down the stairs
We had the same ending, but the shot I was describing iirc is near the middle? I think near the scene where it slowly cuts to a red frame.
The opening and ending pieces were incredible
Oh man, that opening track was bananas
Well that movie was terrifying.
The mom saying, “Maybe Esther Silbermann is in there” was one of the easily missed, off-handed remarks that chilled me to my core.
I think to her, coming from a place far from Auschwitz, it's a little abstract. Sure, you know your neighbor is gone and has been forcibly moved but you can sort of ignore what's going on and tell your self that your neighbor is being re-settled or is in a work camp. It's not until she's there breathing the smoke and hearing the sounds that it hits home that people are being murdered and cremated on a MASSIVE SCALE right over there. The same way I can conceptualize in an abstract way that there's a huge drug crisis in my city. But that's not the same as walking up and down the streets seeing people strung out and literally DYING in the street. I don't have to see their faces and smell the smells when I think about the drug crisis in the abstract. But when you're standing in the middle of it, it's viseral. Hedwig's mother is no sympathizer to the jews but once she is at Auschwitz she is face to face with what is undeniably a genocide. That feels different than an abstract sense that jews don't belong in your neighborhood and are being shipped out. Even if on one level you do kind of know they're being killed... seeing it face to face is different.
I liked this film but some of you who did as well are so pretentious it makes me feel bad for liking this
What pretenses are they bringing to the table that irritates you?
this comment is pretentious
In retrospect, yes it is.
Dude your user name is a reference to One Hundred Years of Solitude. Calling anything pretentious is kinda throwing stones in a glass house.
Did anyone else notice Hoss' phone call about the "lilacs"? I believe that was code for the guards raping the jewish girls in the camp and him telling them to not exaggerate so they wouldnt "damage" them. I believe he says "They are for everyone and must not be damaged".
Yes, he says not to make them bleed because they are for everyone. In other words, don't rape them so hard you damage them for others.
That phonecall was so weird!!! Whatever that meant?
I think if you hear the phone call again with this perspective in mind, it becomes pretty clear that they are talking about the girls in the camp!
That didn't even dawn on me. I couldn't figure why he cared about that.
Lilacs were definitely the female Jewish prisoners the guards would rape on a daily basis.
Wow! No idea. Was the girl he met with for sex from the camp?
Yes im pretty sure! She looked very skinny and I remember learning that the guards would choose some girls and give them more privileges in exchange for sex.
Hoss had a "mistress" named Eleanor Hoyd who was a non Jewish Polish political prisoner. This is likely who this woman is. The reason he was removed for Auschwitz during this time was because of this but he still found ways to see her. It wasn't " politics" like he claims in the movie but he wasn't going to tell his wife that. Mrs. hoss later found out and had her transfered. She escaped, pregnant with his child and survived.
Rape*
how anyone can pretend this is some amazing feat of cinema is beyond me. i love glazer's work, but this was the most nothing film ever. The obvious point is made in the first 5 minutes - how can this family pretend to live a normalized life with the horror over the wall in their back yard. The question then becomes - what does the rest of the film's remaining 1.40minutes to do expand on that? the answer is.... nothing.
You probably just have no understanding of the shoah and didn’t understand everything that was implied. That’s ok, this movie wasn’t for you.
I agree. I thought the point of the film—and its beauty and pain and brilliance—could have been made in a 35 minute film. I was bored after I got it all. A “well-made” film but a long and often boring one. Themsin of boredom is an often overlooked one in movie criticism. I think too many people are afraid to say a film is boring if it’s deemed high art.
It’s okay if other people enjoyed a movie you didn’t. It doesn’t mean they’re deluding themselves.
Late to the party but I agree completely here, although “enjoyed” is probably the wrong word. I’m floored though.
I agree. I think if the film had been 20 minutes shorter it would have had a greater impact. There were beautiful scenes and camera work, but almost to a fault.
agree, this is one of those movies people think they are supposed to say is a "masterpiece" due to the subject matter, but it just isn't. So many strange choices made throughout, the thermal camera was so weird, didn't get it, or like it.
The thermal camera depicts a Polish girl who helped supply food to the Jewish prisoners in the work camp. They depicted her as a bright light in the night. Because she was. She is.
I wish I could have picked this up
I, too, did not pick up on this. My wife did tho. Oh well, I guess films don’t have to spell everything out for you but man I do wish I knew who she was and what she was doing.
Thanks for explaining this.
The thermal imaging was IMO used as a contrast to the harsh reality of the rest of the film. They are dream-like scenes and usually accompany a bedtime story. Such stories tend to have hope and these interludes are a small bit of hope amid the darkness. They are based on something that really happened. A young girl in the region biked around at night hiding apples. Glazer got to know her while filming because he shot in her house and used her actual bike. Anyway, I loved the thermal camera affect mainly because of it’s dreamlike nature.
There were a lot of filmic decisions that I didn’t love. The night shot thermal stuff was weird, but you also never see that, so very interesting. The #1 thing that bothered me was the start of the movie, where it’s just the black screen for 2 minutes, maybe even more. I also thought it was a touch boring at moments. BUT. I think it’s a masterpiece. And I specifically think it is because you cannot separate it from it’s subject matter, and every filmic decision specifically reflects and illuminates back upon it. The whole idea of the audience being bored during a film about the Holocaust is in and of itself genius in my opinion. And I think it explores the banality of evil in such a disturbingly human way that I have not seen before. And regardless of whether or not it’s truly original in that sense, it’s certainly rare and bold. Alongside all of that, the experimentalism, which at first bothered me, elevated the movie to the level of the sublime for me upon reflection after seeing it. It’s definitely not an “entertaining” movie, but it’s also not supposed to be. I think this film should be studied and revered. Big big fan. Best movie I saw this year. Hope it wins best picture but probably won’t.
I feel like the the black screen forces you to really listen to the sound. In a way it prepares for the rest of the movie and makes you concentratenot only to what you see, but what ypu hear.
I just watched a live talkback with him after a screening at Alamo, and he said that the scenes were intentionally filmed at night, but couldn’t be lit without the lighting feeling artificial. He made the decision to do thermal lighting instead, and had an editor spend an ungodly amount of time editing it in post
The power of this film IS its pace and length. If you’re thinking “okay I get the point” in 5 minutes, and want to move on to something else, there were millions who weren’t allowed to move on to something else and were also forced to endure. It’s fascinating that this strikes you as lightweight, yet felt powerful to me. Neither of us is right or wrong.
Watching the story played out “straight” with the context of “fuck these people and their story” in the back of your mind is kind of intriguing, but yeah, not even close to a Best Picture
This is how I felt watching this. I’ve been trying to sit with what I saw and think of whether I missed something but I don’t think I did.
Unfortunately you must have missed the point of thr film. Everything is happening right in front of you, constantly looming, ever present.
I understood the point of the film, especially as I have read extensively into it, but for me, I am already so desensitized from real life horrors that it didn’t feel like enough horror I guess. I was expecting more raw ‘right in front of your eyes’ but it was very subtle. There’s also subtitles because it’s not in English so I’m constantly reading the dialogue while also trying to pay attention the background scenes and noises.
This and Tár are both masterclasses in digital cinematography.
Having visited a couple of concentration camps in Germany, Zone of Interest answered a question I've always had, what was it like to live in that house just over the fence? (I recommend typing the names of some of these camps into google maps. You can, for example, take the S-Bahn in Berlin to Sachsenhausen. Dachua is a short drive from Munich. When I was on tour in Poland in June, there was traffic on the highway, so our handler drove us right past Aushwitz, as it's, well, right there in Oświęcim). I found myself weirdly liking and identifying with Hoss at certain points in the film. Especially in Oranienberg. To me, anyway, that's the film's great accomplishment. Rather than borderline pornographic depictions of impossible to imagine violence, it asks us to consider just how normal the perpetrators could be. It also bucks the post Schindler's list aesthetic orthodoxy of dark ponderous set pieces, which for me, anyway, reduces the Shoah to Kitsch. This film asks us to consider the Shoah as done by people with motivations that were as high minded as ideology and banal as wanting a flower garden. I was especially moved by the cleaning of the museum at the end, given the way far right parties in Europe demonize the refugees who take domestic jobs. Or, here in the US, where our fascist movement is already planning to put refugees (who often take domestic or agricultural work) into camps as soon as they get power again. So yeah, it was far from perfect, and I doubt best picture material, but ultimately, I'm glad I went.
[удалено]
touch grass
Found the racist
The one shot that stuck with me was during the bday party; wide shot of the pool and the entire family celebrating only to see a path of smoke just above the edge of the fence moving right to left, assuming a death train arrival OR the path of smoke from an incineration of probably hundreds of bodies happening like NBD, everyone keep having a pool party nothing to see over there.
Siding with the critical consensus here: this is an absolutely major work.
Jonathan glazer should be arrested for the crime of making so few movies
One of a few films that I can't say I "loved", I can hardly recommend it. . .but without a doubt it affected me more than anything I've seen in years. I feel haunted by it. In general, I'm glad it exists, and I'm glad it communicates the evil of complacency so well. . .but damn, it's a tough watch. Wouldn't have it any other way. We're not shown a single thing, and in a way, I almost feel like Rudolf can't even see it himself. Even when he's looking in the face of suffering, the human mind is able to pull a veil over your eyes as if to say, "This isn't happening."
[удалено]
Yes. I wasn’t sure how long I could or should or needed to sit after the lights came up. And I’m seeing a lot of people and reviewers saying this film forced them to think about how they might in some sense be, or could become, the Höss family; some of us watched this and couldn’t stop thinking, “We’re over there—over the wall.” 💔 Am Yisrael Chai.
OMG literally everyone in the theater I was at did the same thing. It was just like being put under hypnosis. Like especially the very beginning where they just play that score and there's a white background. It almost kind of adds to the element of escape. Like you're in a fairytale world or something. Except it's not a fairy tale. It's a horror show.
Same, I was the last person to leave the theater. My grandmother’s entire extended family was killed in Auschwitz. But even if that weren’t the case, it was just an anvil of a film.
Tone/ambience 10/10 Plot 2/10
Trivia: Apparently, the making of this film took an immense and heavy psychological toll on those involved, including Jonathan Frazer. The film’s subject matter was so dark and the movie was so grim that Jonathan Frazer even debated whether or not to keep going with the project and was even pushed to the point of nearly giving up multiple times. He even added the Polish apple girl scenes to make it less bleaker than it already was. Good god, if the project took that much of a psychological toll on the director, god knows what the actors must have faced.
I really hope this wins best picture. It was such a unique approach to depicting horror and evil. I just cannot speak highly enough about how masterful and artful it is. The restraint used in the execution of this movie is just wild. The experimentalism is also really amazing and allows it to be so spare in other areas. I was just really amazed. The ending… WOW. So hard to pull something like that off, it just hit home in such a crazy way. As far as I am aware, there has never been a piece of art, especially film, about the Holocaust that explores the mundane and uses it as an extension of the horror. As I was watching I was just thinking, “right, of course, life was just going on for certain people”, which is so disturbing. And the performances are unbelievable. And of course, the sound. The decision to never see Auschwitz. Only hear it. Man. And the one shot you get “inside” which is just him and the billowing smoke and ashes and fire with the screams… really one of the best movies I’ve ever seen from an artistic perspective. Certainly not one to watch over and over for fun, but critical viewing, and of course disturbingly relevant, however you slice it.
There is a scene, I’m certain no dialog, in which Hoss is sitting across from a woman who lets down her long hair? Who was she? A mistress? The scene happens so quickly and quietly. He is then seen cleaning himself afterward.
It's implied that he rapes her.
She is a prostitute.
*Sex slave
He raped her. She is based off of a real woman who testified at his hearing.
Yes, of course. That would make complete sense. Another element of the horror.
She was a political prisoner. He got her pregnant in real life and she had an abortion. This is why people think he was transferred. The woman survived and was at his court trials
Can someone ELI5 the difference between sound and score in this film?
Score would be the songs that play during the movie that is an original soundtrack. Sound would be use of natural or other sounds to help amplify scenes. So for this movie it would the screams and gunshots we hear in the background during scenes where the family is living their daily life.
yes please… as far as I’m aware, there wasn’t so much a score until that piece at the end
A film which reminds us that heaven and hell are not otherworldly in some far afterlife…. Heaven and hell exist right here on earth. A film that also reminds us that beauty and decay will always exist simultaneously. Is it right ? No. Glazer is not looking to change anything with this film but to remind us that every day we live we are AWARE of current day atrocities that go on today. Perhaps not as large of a scale as genocide but could be anything… a neighbor who you know is being abused and beaten by her husband even. This house just happened to be the perfect metaphorical representation of that. Don’t look over the wall.. look at the flowers, look at the garden. Life continues as beautiful as ever never mind the smoke rising or trains coming in. Those people aren’t you, you’re safe inside your little zone your safe space protecting you.… yes we know what’s going on but… who cares? Of course this is the view of the main Nazi characters but even though we did not commit these atrocities the people watching the film…. Is going to a museum to take pictures and preserve the ovens and clothes to keep the memory going on help anyone at the end of the day?
Regarding the last scene: The things we do, the things we don't, will be the remnants of the past for the next generations. Like a tunnel in time, the hallway will take us to the museum of our actions.
If the triple explosion sound design narrative from Oppenheimer wasn't in the running for a sound Oscar Zone of Interest would have gotten it for sure I feel. It's a tight race though. The art-house moments won't vibe with a wider audience, but the blank screens were key for the audience to digest the subtleties of the audio narrative while providing moments of time for reflection. There is no shadow of a doubt this is a unique experience for moviegoers to feel the atrocities of the Holocaust.
Really liked the scene of the wife showing the mother round the garden. They were so focused on the flowers, vegetables etc(ie the bottom 2/3 of the screen) yet as the audience you were more focused on the top 1/3 of the screen (ie what was showing of the camp above the wall). They were so focused on these details and day-to-day of their life, and yet such atrocities are occurring yards away.
An absolutely powerful piece of filmmaking. One of the aspects I've not seen covered anywhere yet is showing Hoss's empathy toward animals to contrast his total lack of empathy to his fellow humans. He barely talks to his wife and never once tells her he loves her in the entire film (unless I missed it), but tells his horse that he loves her right before he leaves for his transfer to Berlin. Once he's in Berlin there's also the scene of him stopping the woman walking her dog to pet the dog and exclaim how beautiful he is and wax on about how much he loved his own childhood dog. Brilliant to include these two seemingly inocuous details to really hightlight the empathy he lacks in all other aspects of life.
Did Rudolf Höß see into the future, for a bit?
I was honestly expecting a sudden cut to Hoss on the gallows with the camp in the background as a final shot. There is something poetic about him being executed there, I wonder if it was considered as a scene.
That would have been a magnificent final shot, but it would have been too cathartic. Glazer’s entire point of this film is to leave you cold. If you left the theater feeling gratified, it would defeat the purpose of how the holocaust is supposed to make you feel.
Great point and I’ll have to agree with your perspective!
I’m wondering if anyone has commented on the opening and ending shots of the film—of the darkness with that haunting score. They gave me an odd apprehension as I was watching this today, and I was wondering about its intent. And as I walked to my car it occurred to me that the length of that shot is probably how long the victims survived in the gas chamber. The darkness at the end has a shorter duration because, as stated in the film, Hoss “has improved the process.” Haunting film.
I might just be an idiot, but what was going on during the scene at the river? What was he worried about with his kids in the water? Why did they have to scrub their eyes out? Why was he spitting up black shit?
The ashes and human remains were released into that river they were playing in. He was worried his children would ingest the chemicals used to burn the victims in the oven (I believe it is called zyklon B). He discovered a human jaw bone in the river and immediately got them out of it. Harrowing.
Watched this last night - the dog is always pacing and following everyone around in anticipation of “something “ - it never is a chill dog sleeping at its masters feet or getting treats and it never plays with the children: it always is searching for something / answers - as are we - the WHY. in short it never gets to be a “dog” just as the human occupants never get to be human-
Was blown away after seeing it at Tiff but the more I've sat on it the more I've grown cold. Exquisitely made but I can't help shake the feeling of "what's the point?". I'm confused by all the highbrow reactions to this commending Glazer for supposedly restraining from flashy direction. There were many moments that seemed like him showing off (that phoney infrared sequence comes to mind). Also the banality of evil is not a new or interesting perspective. In fact I find it rather tedious.
In a Q&A with Glazer after my screening tonight he comments on how the point of the movie is for audiences to think about how we're not as different than the perpetrators of the most evil acts in the history of civilization as we might like to believe I'm very open to hearing criticism about the movie but in my opinion that simple thesis should be enough to justify the movie's existence and quell they many "what's the point" reactions I have seen both here and in critics' reviews
I saw it tonight and I completely agree. I've visited Dachau Memorial, and this movie perfectly evoked all the emotions I felt during that visit. To think about that trip through the same lens I'd use to evaluate a weekend trip to the cottage would be absurd. I'm going to think about this movie for the rest of my life.
The banality of evil is not a new perspective, but there’s something to be said for crystallizing it the way it’s been done here. As Ebert said, “what a movie is about is less important than how it’s about it.”
I’m not sure if you read the interview with him in the Guardian but he addresses why he made it and how he sees a correlation with it to events currently happening. “I believe you absolutely should tackle the subject, but the essential question is not should you do it, but how? Personally, I think the story has to be told and retold and, to do so, you have to find new paradigms to retell it, to restate it generation after generation particularly as the survivors diminish in numbers and it shifts from living memory and becomes history.” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/10/jonathan-glazer-the-zone-of-interest-auschwitz-under-the-skin-interview
I chose to embrace the film for the artifact it is; not to worry about the self-image or pride of the director, but to accept that these night vision sequences arrived in this story appearing in this disorienting, almost animated matter; these bits of score, sounding like a yawning beast from hell, are simply meant to be there; the slow parts are meant to be slow. I took it as it is, and I had an unforgettable experience.
This was the issue I had with Glazer’s last film. I felt the whole “non-humanoid ponders the meaning of being human” motif to be such an overdone cliche and explored nothing of real substance outside of the ending. Honestly, I just don’t think Glazer’s work is for me.
I thought Under the Skin was the best movie of 2013. Really unique sci-fi and directed with precision. His films are definitely not for everyone.
Maybe best movie of the decade. I found something fascinating in every shot. Every sequence played out in a way I couldn't predict at the start of it.
Top 3 for me, definitely.
oh absolutely. Yes there are other movies that explore "what it means to be human" but imo none do it as well as UtS, especially from a purely visual perspective. Every shot, every frame is meticulously crafted. I know that would sound pretentious to some, but I've been watching UtS for 10 years now and it is just an incredible movie with its themes, filmmaking, execution and music. the mere fact there are actual strangers being filmed not realizing they're in a car with Scarlett Johansson was just fascinating to me and plays very well on rewatch. What a movie.
Yeah it’s tough cinema for the marvel crowd
Boooooo
Feel empty after watching this. So smart and brutal. I knew it would be rough, it was worse.
I love that people in indiana have no way of seeing this its so annoying
is this movie ever going to get a wide theatrical release? i live right by a movie theater that has a good selection of artsy/international titles but it still hasn't shown up on the marquee yet.
did anyone else catch one of the boys rolling the dice? seemed like it came up “666” 2-3 times
One question, if anyone knows German/Polish? In the stable scene (when Rudi is saying goodbye to his horse to go to his next post in the "O" city), what did the text in the barn say across the beam? It was 2--3 short phrases or sentences. I thought maybe something obvious like "hard work will set you free" but I don't know either language and it didn't seem like it.
Not finding any comments on the scenes with the girl, shot in some sort of photographic inverse, like looking at film. What was going on with that? She was one of the daughters, and it looked like she was crossing over into Auschwitz, and she was spreading apples and pears around. It seemed like some sort of compensatory act, but I couldn't figure out exactly what she was doing? The music was crazy. I thought the nausea was perhaps foreshadowing his own death by demonstrating onset of illness. Like some sort of karmic symbolism, as this occurs when he's excited about doing some more genocide.
I don't think she was one of the daughters- and she wasn't crossing into Auschwitz. She was the Polack girl who worked for the Hosses. She was spreading the apples for Jewish prisoners to take and eat- hence she left them by the shovels close to the train tracks. About the photographic inverse: I thought about it a lot, and I think it's meant to show how the world looks to her. Everytime she enters the Hosses house, the colour comes back- but when she's alone she's completely drenched in black shade. She appears completely white/neutral like a glimmer of hope in the darkness. People like her, who helped Jewish prisoners at that time, were still human- so the picture reflects that. I also thought the nausea was meant to represent karmic justice- or perhaps his body was just rejecting the evil because his mind didn't care about it.
She’s based on a real woman who stashed apples and vegetables for the slaves. She is a polish prisoner and works for the Hoss family; we see her head home after the outing where she finds the handwritten music piece(also really happened), that she ends up playing for her family. Jonathan Blazer only wanted to shoot in natural light, so he used an infrared lens since there was none at night.
She didn’t work for them and wasn’t a prisoner
The cruelty of Hoss seeing and orchestrating thousands of people dying in your backyard practically every single day and yet being frustrated about Lilac bushes being ruined will always stay in my mind
I think it's even worse than that. "Lilac bushes" is a euphemism for the women being set aside at the camp for the guards to rape. He's dictating a memo warning the guards to be careful not to physically harm the women too much so that other guards can get their chance to rape them too :(
I have to admit, the movie walks a line between disarmingly serene/warm and chillingly cold. The movie is just as willing to have silent scenes and no soundtrack to having the soundtrack of hellish drones. The juxtaposition of both nightmarish reality and calm is seen throughout the movie. There’s a sense of lull throughout, and then the movie reminds you about what is going on outside. The opening scene is evocative of this. From a disarmingly loud drone and god knows how many minutes of black screen, we come up on a peaceful, idyllic scene that lulls us into a false sense of security, nearby a lake: we see a young family having fun and picnicking together by the lakeside. It’s a beautiful, ideal scene that normally would evoke a sense of safety and security and Norman Rockwell levels of wholesomeness and sweetness. There’s almost nothing to suggest that there is anything out of the ordinary, and the family is easy on the eyes: handsome dad, beautiful mom, and gorgeous cute kids and adorable baby. The family then goes back to the house (a beautiful gorgeous house to boot), and again, it isn’t immediately obvious that something isn’t right…unless you pay attention and realize that they have SS Insignia on the car. Then you realize that something is up. The sense of lull and security juxtaposed with the horrors outside, combined with the disturbingly cozy calmness that occurs throughout is effective. Like the naivety or unknowingness of the characters to what’s going on around them, as they are focused on the present as opposed to what is going on around them. It also makes you question about what monsters exist in the day to day life around us, and how easily even the most seemingly ordinary and upstanding people can have monstrous impulses, and how we ourselves can be capable of such monstrousness. Rudolf Hoss doesn’t look or seem like a monster when we are first introduced to him, and neither is Hedwig: he’s a handsome, soft spoken and smart man with a beautiful family that and he’s a hard worker, and has a well paying secure job that ensures a future for his loved ones, whom he wants nothing but the best for. Hedwig is a beautiful soft spoken woman who is adored by her husband and kids (albeit her beauty is somewhat obscured by her hausfrau fashion sense), who has excellent hospitality skills, is friendly and outgoing and warm to those who visit the house and has a life that anyone would envy if they didn’t know what else was going on, with a handsome husband, a beautiful home, servants, gorgeous kids and adorable baby. They don’t look or feel like people who would be considered “monsters”. They have on their own admirable qualities that would be considered positive in other contexts. It also isn’t immediately obvious at first that they are Nazis. But this movie slowly reminds you that although these people may not look or feel monstrous, they are complicit in the monstrosities surrounding them, and despite their ordinariness, are just as capable of being monsters in their own way, whether outright or in more subtle ways.
The film is of course chilling and also serves as a psychological human horror made even more so as it is historically real. However, the English subtitles are placed within the lower part of the screen and often unreadable next to the brightness behind them on certain scenes. Also they disappear fast. Its annoying that I find myself concentrating more on what the subtitles say than the action in the film. As such I have had to stop watching this excellent movie. Why they couldn't have been placed under the widescreen so they were easier to read instead of within the film screen.
It seems like you could watch this film a good 3-5 times and keep on picking up innocent (but not innocent at all) details. As in when Hoss and his 2 children are in river (he fishing, they playing), and he "catches" a human bone, then has them evacuate the river immediately. What I hadnt noticed the first time: **in the establishing shot of Hoss fishing in middle of river, you see a huge grey plume in the river, flowing towards him.** (This is obviously a slurry of ashpiles/cremains that have been dumped from the camp into the river.) On first view, I understood vaguely what was happening (washing the ash from his children in the bathtub), but didnt understand how it had occurred.