The blithe indifference of a privileged German family to the immediacy of the Holocaust is the subject of filmmaker Jonathan Glazer's starkly compartmentalized 2023 look at Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and his wife Hedwig as they build their idealized family life right next door to the concentration camp. Instead of depicting graphic images as one would expect in dread, evil is portrayed in the absence of moral judgment. We only see the horror peripherally and in personal conversations that mostly imply the extermination. The ebbing sensitivity of the couple to humanity becomes all the more striking with their increasingly banal behavior. It's an engrossing film even though Glazer is intent on avoiding explicit images to punctuate his themes. Toward that end, the film might be frustrating for some viewers.
Review of The Zone of Interest
