Between hell and everyday life: the film “Zone of Interest” about the sweet family of the commandant of the concentration camp is released in Ukrainian cinemas – Publications

Sunny summer day in central Europe. A family of five – it seems very happy – is enjoying time in a country house amid the splashing of the river, the smell of flowers and the pleasantly warming rays of the sun. There is only one problem: a constant hum, which must be shouted over in order not to go crazy. And it is not surprising, because behind the wall is the year 1943 and one of the largest Nazi concentration camps – Auschwitz.

February 22 the winner of 3 BAFTA nominations is released in the Ukrainian box office “Zone of Interest” by Jonathan Glaser about the life of the Auschwitz commandant’s family. Movie viewer UP. Culture Kyrylo Troitskyi explains why this film causes outrage and, at the same time, an understanding of the challenge facing Ukraine and Europe after the current genocidal Russian war.

The film tells about a small period in the life of Rudolf Göss’s family (by Christian Friedel)commandant of Auschwitz, and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Guller), who live with their children in their own estate, separated from the concentration camp by a wall. But despite the extremely tragic historical background, this film consists of many everyday scenes. Hanging laundry, going to the garden, swimming in the river, fishing – all of this paired with static frames tries to create the effect of stability and dimension of life, to indicate that nothing seems to be happening.

This is what scares the most in this film, and this is what puts it in the category of horror films. But not those usual horrors, where the most terrifying thing is achieved by the effect of surprise, as it happens when using screamers.

In the case of “Zone of Interests”, we do not have any surprises, everything shown is completely expected and usual. What it weighs instead is not shown – horrors that we know exist, but that we cannot see, because they happen over there, behind the wall, and the Goess family does not even want to know about them.

But it is impossible not to know: the reality of Auschwitz reminds us of itself here and there – either in the yellow-hot beam of the crematorium on the wall of the room, or in the pile of ashes with bones carried by the river.

The family tries their best to distance themselves from this reality, Hedwig constantly walks around the garden and calls out the plants: “azaleas, rosemary, beets, fennel, here are sunflowers, and here is kohlrabi – children adore her.” All so that instead of the names of the plants, thoughts about the fertilizer on which this garden grew did not enter the head.

With this ordinariness, the film terrifies, but also infuriates. It seems that Glaser is trying to show the criminal here as an ordinary person, as one who is no different from others, and therefore also one who deserves sympathy.

In this, Glaser is almost certainly commenting on a well-known concept Hannah Arendt about “banality of evil”according to which a typical criminal in a totalitarian society (such as Goess or Adolf Eichmannabout which he writes Arendt) is not the personification of some superhuman and demonic evil, but is an ordinary person, a conformist who is capable of great evil for the sake of advancement on the career ladder, and not for the sake of evil itself. A kind of “little cog” in the killing machine who commits crimes because others commit them too.

Goess from the film is just as thoughtless and banal, it might seem Jonathan Glazer. This is what makes the film infuriating – the thoughtlessness of the criminal seems to open a path to his justification and the removal of responsibility from him (this consequence of the “banality of evil” was often blamed on Hannah Arendt herself, which she, for the sake of justice, did not agree with and unequivocally condemned criminals).

But on second glance, it begins to seem that Glaser is not so much embodying Arendt’s concept as arguing with it, because in the details of the film we see how the almost inhuman indifference to the experiences of others hides behind the superficial banality of the criminal family. Let’s take just one of the microdialogues of this film:

– Guess where I found this diamond? In toothpaste.
– That’s how smart you have to be!

We are never told whose toothpaste it was, or who was supposed to be “clever”, but this casual line makes an understanding viewer horrified by the pettiness of the film’s characters.

In another episode, the couple rejoices at the news of the deportation of 700,000 Hungarian Jews, and especially because Goess will be in charge of their extermination. After this, there is no doubt about the “banality” of the criminal – as there is no room for sympathy for him.

It seems that this is the fundamental value of this film both for Ukraine and for the whole world. It is needed in order to learn to see the terrible in the everyday, to see the impossibility of demarcating the existing hell in the step. After all, in order not to accidentally acquit a criminal who hid under the cover of banality and adaptation – a challenge that will still face us in the future.