During World War II, the Germans designated the area surrounding Auschwitz as an “area of interest.” The monotony of the phrase was intentional, another euphemism as operative as “concentration camp.”
In this kind of adaptation by Jonathan Glazer of the novel of the same name by Martin Amis, this self-deception is revealed. Hedwig Höss (Sandra Hüller) runs a manor house. She raises her children, directs the maids and tends the garden. Her house is on land next to Auschwitz. Jews are being massacred on the other side of the wall.
While Amis’s novel fictionalized its characters, Glazer centers it on the real-life Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), the camp commandant and a rising star in the Nazi party. A powerful and terrifying first scene finds him discussing the details of an incinerator and how its chambers can be arranged. Mass extermination, project managed. “Burn, cool, discharge, recharge,” someone explains so matter-of-factly they could be talking about buying a refrigerator.
Area of interest It’s not a fun movie, but you’ll spend a lot of time rolling your eyes at Nazis.
Auschwitz is a pastoral beauty. The mass murder is happening just out of frame. The Höss family easily ignores the evidence of this (the occasional crackle of gunfire, the rising columns of smoke, the screams). They are just environmental detritus, a small stain on an idyllic landscape.
There’s not much here in terms of a conventional plot, but the most dramatic conflict for the Hösses occurs after Rudolf is ordered to move to another city. (The office rewards hard work with a promotion.) Hedwig wants to stay. “They would have to drag me here,” she says. “We are living like we dreamed we would.” She later refers to herself as the Queen of Auschwitz. Area of interest It’s not a fun movie, but you’ll spend a lot of time rolling your eyes at Nazis.
I craved the dark comedy moments of Glazer’s previous work. In the underrated 2004 film. Birth, Nicole Kidman encounters a 10-year-old boy who may or may not be inhabited by the spirit of her late husband. (A hilarious conceit!) With his 2012 masterpiece Under the skin, Scarlett Johansson’s charisma is traded for cold distance as she seduces strangers and immerses them in black liquid. (She’s an alien with unclear motives, though they’re beside the point anyway.) It’s a film rife with innovations, not only Johansson’s inspired casting but also the fact that Glazer filmed the pickup scenes with hidden cameras, capturing one of Hollywood’s most recognizable stars. flirting with unsuspecting Scots in real life. (Surprisingly, in a fur coat and dark wig, few people seem to identify her.)
As Under the skinGlazer’s camerawork here is meticulous and moody, aided by the watchful eye of cinematographer Łukasz Żal, best known for his impressive work with Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski (Going, Cold War). The camera stays away from its characters; I don’t remember a single close-up of a face. The effect is a kind of distancing, perhaps one that reflects their detachment from their immediate surroundings. Like the script, it’s an austere, spare look: the bucolic woods feel too brightly lit, almost as if to disappear; The interiors feel cold and angular.
But above all, the burden of expectations weighs heavily on a filmmaker of Glazer’s talent, especially since he releases something every decade. And don’t get me wrong, this film is extraordinary, even if its greatest achievements sometimes seem technical. Very few films of the last decade have been as disturbing or sobering.
Still, it’s hard to know what exactly we’re supposed to learn here. For all of Glazer’s formal inventiveness, the central ideas of Area of interest They are familiar. The Nazis are cruel autocrats; the atrocities echo generations later. Even if the desire for an original Holocaust narrative is fruitless, it’s hard not to wish the film’s tensions were livelier. Nothing in the film deepens the themes it begins with.
I was partly soured by a trick Glazer pulls at the end (a brief jump to modern-day Auschwitz) to point out the lasting horror of what has been hidden from the viewer throughout the film. It’s a metatextual gesture toward the film’s production, which was shot on location, but it’s hard not to see the move as a bit obvious.
It may not be much of a leap to expand the specificity of Area of interest. We live our lives focused on the domestic rhythms and narrow ambitions of the workplace, even when many abominable things are happening in the world. Glazer’s film is an effective film about the Holocaust, but I wonder if there is a more subtle suggestion that we might recognize how small our lives are if we bothered to look over the wall.
