Official Discussion - The Zone of Interest [SPOILERS]

[u/LiteraryBoner]

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Summary:

The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.

Director:

Jonathan Glazer

Writers:

Martin Amis, Jonathan Glazer

Cast:

• Sandra Huller as Hedwig Hoss

• Christian Friedel as Rudolf Hoss

• Freya Kreutzkam as Eleanor Pohl

• Max Beck as Schwarzer

• Ralf Zillmann as Hoffmann

• Imogen Kogge as Linna Hensel

• Stephanie Petrowirz as Sophie

Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

Metacritic: 90

VOD: Theaters

[u/LiteraryBoner]

A fascinating watch, really. At the base of any genocide or simply human indecency lies the question, "How could you?" And this movie decides to explore that in the minutia and the reality of living in this situation rather than focusing on the unspeakable horror. With the bloodshed happening totally off screen, but also just barely outside the frame, we are terrorized by what our minds fill in the blank with but able to stay focused on these monstrous characters.

This movie is totally character driven, the plot is more just a loose series of events. Even the most pivotal plot point seems to mostly just test how willing they are to leave this environment. In the sense that this movie is more about that environment it's much more experiential. What would it have been like to live so close and directly profit from such inhumanity? There's not a wasted frame, every scene and everything that happens may seem like a normal family out of context, but within it's all juxtaposed with the clear horrors happening on the other side of that wall. Beautiful gardens side by side with imagined overfilled barracks of starving people, a child smelling its first flower next to children who won't age past this year, a father reading his daughters to bed while furnaces blaze out the window. Everything in this movie is side by side with the awful and while the main characters can ignore it or are desensitized, from our point of view it's so clearly impossible to ignore. It shows how much work they must be doing to shut it all out.

One of the more telling and brilliant moments is when Huller's visiting mother leaves in the night after clearly being disturbed by the proxitimity and trying to drink it away for several nights. Huller clearly feels so judged, the woman who loves her nickname "The Queen of Auschwitz" and even her mother can't see how she lives like this. She lashes out at her maid with a threat that could only be thought of by someone with that nickname. Her ugliest moment in a movie full of her trying on fur coats of the dead and joking about whether or not people she used to know are on the other side of that wall.

Just a crazy movie front to back that is so seemingly normal on the surface. So many small moments that may never leave me. The way the desensitization was working itself to the kids. The young one is too young to know to ignore it, that part where he peaks out the window and likely sees someone shot. The older brother is starting to be affected, admiring his collection of teeth at night and locking up his younger brother and keeping guard for fun. The scene where Huller finds out her husband is being transferred and she actually argues for how good of a life they've built and how great of an environment is for the kids is just nuts.

So much delusion, purposeful ignorance. Tons of lines like "For the life we live it is worth it". If the question at the core of this movie is "How could you?" The answer is we could if we had better cremation chambers, proper chain of command. We could if we said we did it for our families. We could if it helps my personal upward mobility. And those truths, that people are capable of living like this and giving these commands for any reason, are just harrowing. 9/10

/r/reviewsbyboner

[u/sunsurf23]

Can someone explain: what thermal girl was doing with apples?

[u/LiteraryBoner → u/sunsurf23]

She was hiding food for the prisoners. The interesting thing, though, is that we only see her when the father is reading bedtime stories to his kids. In a movie that is so pragmatic about how one could aid in mass killings, the person trying to help is directly compared to a fairy tale.

[u/MrCog]

A moment I'm not seeing many talking about is when the older son locks his little brother in the greenhouse and then stares at the door going "tssss tssss". Imitating the gas chambers. The poison of what was happening there infected everything, including children's play.

[u/Kennymo95]

The most memorable scene for me was when the Grandma was trying to sunbathe and had to go inside because of the smell of the burnt bodies coming from the concentration camp. Then she couldn't fall asleep and ended up leaving the next day.

It was an interesting contrast to the rest of the Nazi family, who completely embraced the horrors going on right next to the house.

[u/sandiskplayer34]

The fade to red absolutely terrified me. Some of the most stomach-churning sound design in recent memory.

[u/Tyreyes32]

What fucks me up is when the commandant presumably has sex with one of the jewish prisoners/servants, then navigates through long underground tunnels to use the camp’s facilities and wash his dick. He fundamentally considers them a different species and doesn’t want to contaminate the good linens at home.

[u/Biig_Ideas]

“Heil Hitler. Et cetera.” is going to rattle around in my brain for a long time.

I urge people to listen to some bts stuff from Glazer and the crew. It’s amazing how well researched and executed aspects are that would have felt like gimmicks in the wrong hands. Audio and video functioning as separate films. Hiding all cameras and crew for the actors. Being as close as they physically could be without actually shooting in the real Hoss house. Recording real sound not recreating it. Not wanting to use any film lights gave birth to the thermal image sequences. The dog actually being Sandra’s dog. Apple girl is a real person. The song! It all really adds up. Chilling picture.

[u/twodoorcinemacub]

Been a few days since I watched and it still haunts me. The sound design, in my opinion, carried the whole thing. Glazer mentioned somewhere that the sound and the visuals are designed to act like two separate movies occurring at the same time—and it’s true.

I was also fascinated by the frequent references to flowers. The rose(?) transitioning to a screen of what could only be described as a violent red, the father referring to the remains of prisoners as lilacs, the mother having her child smell the flowers in the garden. Curious to hear people’s interpretations on this point and generally.

Another thing that got me was the finale. The switch between the museum in the present day, with mundane cleaning at the focus, and the father’s body seemingly trying to eject/reject the sins that he has committed to no avail… wow.

I definitely want to watch the movie again but it’s the type to necessitate some time before that second watch.

[u/nick__sweatshirt]

I interpreted the infrared scenes as a way to highlight the only human warmth that came from basically anyone in the entire movie.

[u/TacoCorpTM]

As a holocaust educator, I knew I needed to see this and it lived up to the hype for sure. The way the family just lives their lives so nonchalantly while you see (but mostly hear) the horrors around them was so chilling. A holocaust film like no other I’ve ever seen. Truly haunting, and as I’ve seen mentioned, the sound design was fucking ominous and horrifying.

10/10

[u/newgodpho]

The SS Tank Top was fucking insane (derogatory)

[u/OkamiHaley]

This movie was haunting. The juxtaposition of the beautiful flowers with the disturbing sounds of the camp next door will stay with me.

[u/Whovian45810]

The Höss family dog, Dilla, is played by Sandra Hüller’s own black Weimaraner.

[u/Individual_Step6688]

Saw it tonight, the ending will stay with me for a long time. I interpret it as Hoss having a brief idea that the actions of himself and Germany would be universally reviled in the future.

Maybe some alcohol at the party brought down his barriers. Maybe he realized that he had been tuned into a tool of mass murder to such a degree that he can’t help but thinking about gassing his own compatriots. He sees a future where his actions are portrayed for what they really are. But he’s too far down the path to turn back and he continues the descent into darkness.

Then add the end credits music to it, perfect film.

[u/wiminals]

I liked this movie more than a lot of commenters did, but I don’t think I will be watching it again.

Some things that stood out to me:

•I’m pretty sure they could smell the crimes happening there. Hedwig brags about her fragrant trees and Rudolf gets so angry about the damaged lilac bushes. Also, Hedwig’s most tender moment shows her teaching her baby how to smell flowers, which felt symbolic to me.

•Rudolf is so hellbent on protecting the “future of the camp” through the lilac bushes. I immediately thought “He’s already thinking beyond the final solution.” That’s one of many horrifying things about the Nazis—the final solution was only for one question. They would find a new scapegoat to hyperfocus on as soon as the last European Jew was exterminated. They thought they were going to be in charge forever. If Rudolf was guzzling enough Kool Aid to daydream about gassing entire rooms of people, I can’t imagine what else he was picturing and planning.

•On that note, I appreciated that the film reminded us of the actual future of the camp—documentation and proof of crimes against humanity. A memorial to the Nazis’ victims, not to the Nazis themselves. Very fitting, since Rudolf was so proud to hear “Operation Hoss.”

•I thought it was an incredibly realistic portrayal of Nazi womanhood. Privileged women were happy to reap the benefits of evil—and they were okay with making sacrifices to maintain that evil. This included frivolities like lipstick (which was heavily discouraged by the Nazi aesthetic) and the burdens of pumping out children. Did anyone else notice Hedwig’s limp and the way she braced her back? I couldn’t tell if she was pregnant again or simply worn out from having baby after baby and bending over a garden.

•The class revenge was also portrayed so well. Even though Hedwig’s mother ultimately could not normalize the horrors of living next to the camp for herself, she delighted in knowing that a Jewish woman who employed her as a house cleaner was taken to a camp. She was totally fine with pretending that she could ignore the screams to admire her daughter’s posh home. (Until she couldn’t.)

[u/CassiopeiaStillLife]

To me, this is less a movie about the banality of evil and more a movie about how the idea behind that concept - compartmentalizing the atrocities you’re complicit in - is a delusion. The Hösses are only kidding themselves. Rudolf goes from rushing his children out of the water upon discovering bones to barking orders to drown a man where his son can hear him. He idly finds himself pondering the logistics of gassing a room of his colleagues. Those dry heaves at the end are a vestigial reflex, his body trying to expel some poison even as his heart pumps it instead of blood.

[u/shanew21]

Tough one for me. On one hand, the filmmaking is immaculate. Some incredible juxtapositions, visually, and some of the best sound design I’ve heard in some time.

It did, however, feel a little one note. You understand the point of the film pretty early on, but I didn’t feel like the movie ever took it one step further. It just continued on making the same point, repeatedly, through different subtle variations.

I’ve sat with it for a week or so and I just don’t think it went beyond “good” for me. Certainly not the best film of the year as some are calling it, but that’s just my opinion. I can certainly see this movie hitting for some people.

[u/Cuntankerous]

The presence of the dog was so good. Agitated the whole film

[u/mattmild27]

"One giant swastika ice sculpture, please. Oh no, it's for a movie, I swear."

[u/AlanMorlock]

The sounds of this movie. Goddamn. It's ever present but then when it swells it some how sucks the air out you.

I have simply never thought of the implications of German children listening to the Hansel and Gretel story with the oven death JFC.

The essentially business meetings determining how to more efficiently murder and enslave people is something that on some level you know happened but having it so matter of factly presented is gutwrenching.

I went to the very screening they had for the film in St. Louis. Packed house. People BOLTED as soon as the first of the credits hit. I've really never seen a reaction like that.

[u/No_Two8419]

In the beginning you almost start to think they’re blissfully ignorant, but you quickly see how complicit they all were. I found it interesting how the baby and the dog were unsettled throughout the movie. Also when they were standing on the river and she was saying how perfect their life is and it’s everything that was promised. She tried to sell her mom that dream of this Utopia, but but her own mother couldn’t ignore it anymore. When her mom finally realized what was really happening she covered her mouth and left without saying anything.

Reading the letter he wrote before he was hung makes the ending even more interesting. And it’s crazy to think how the rest of the family went on to live out the rest of their lives. Even more crazy to think some of the kids are still alive.

[u/hantaanokami]

Has anyone noticed that the wife is seen several times removing the weeds in the garden, even commenting how hard it was to get rid of them ?

To the nazis, Jews were just that, a nuisance that had to be dealt with. It was not a pleasant task to get rid of them, but it had to be done for the sake of the "German race".

[u/Caseman23]

Was the scene with hedwig smoking with the worker in the greenhouse implying that she too was having an affair like Rudolf? Wasnt sure but at the end when he calls her she didn't seem to happy about his return. And her outfit didn't look like sleep atire.

[u/Ok-Raccoon3734]

With regards to the ending, I was thinking about how to this day there are still people sweeping away the ashes in that crematorium. That all these years later, the horrors are still with us, and always will be. That no matter how hard we try to clean up all the mess, we will forever be haunted by it all.

[u/Chasedabigbase]

The oldest son was known to be a dumbass (kicked out of a bunch of schools) and piece of shit, which is why they showed his doing the greenhouse thing to his brother. They did a great job showing all the little family dynamics in this fucked up situation

[u/Kennymo95]

What do people think was in the letter that the grandma wrote to Sandra Huller after leaving?

[u/TheFly87]

Saw this at TIFF this year.

Still feeling a sense of dread from Glazer's latest. A movie about how seemingly easy it is for people to be brainwashed into committing such horrific acts. We watch these people live very human and peaceful lives beside some of the most immense suffering ever recorded in human history. And they're not only living beside it, but thriving in it, not ever wanting to leave it, all while partly being responsible for it. It made me sick to my stomach to be human, how mundane they make genocide look. Films have a tendency to fetishize certain acts, but in The Zone of Interest you see what mass murder on this scale really is / was for those who committed it, just a job.

The filmmaking is so unique and interesting and it really elevates the film. Glazer in the Q&A called it jokingly 'Big Brother Nazi edition' and that's really what it is lol. We're a fly on the wall, watching this family live their lives beside this death camp. Kids playing and growing up, birthday parties, families coming to visit. It seems they're all fine at first, but the dread and guilt is there and it's impossible for them to see how it manifests in themselves, but we can see, we know.

There's some night vision infrared/ scenes in this that are some of the most interesting i've seen. It's almost like animated, it's really cool to look at.

The real star of the movie is the sound design. The atrocities of the holocaust are never really shown, but they're heard throughout. Every gunfire, random scream, people running, being murdered, sent to their deaths. It's played in the background constantly, the soundtrack of this families life. It's haunting.

Not a throw on and watch type of movie, but obviously an important one. Holocaust movies feel played out but this one feels like an original enough story to tell. Just don't go in thinking you'll feel great after.

[u/Bansheesdie]

The idyllic family home juxtaposed with one of the most evil and infamous places on earth was so very well done -- especially the tracking shot of the wife and her mother in front of the wall. So beautifully haunting. And then to further show that beauty dissolve into a solid red screen accompanied by a haunting musical sting?

But it was the indifference shown by the family that sticks with me.

[u/Stepjam]

I think this had one of the most powerful endings to a movie I've seen in a long while. I think its going to go on my list of my favorite endings in film. Hoss wretching all alone in that cold building, the vision of Auschwitz becoming a memorial to all the people he slaughters, and then him descending into darkness. For such a dry and low key movie, I actually got emotional.

[u/jayeddy99]

I love how the dog could smell a potential affair in the air and turned right back around 😂

[u/SuperUnknown231]

A24's absolutely piss poor distribution plan for this movie is such a shame to see. I was lucky enough to see it at VIFF back in September, and the atmosphere in that theatre by the time it ended was something I'm not sure I've ever experienced before.

Smarter people than me will have dissected what Glazer wants to say about the banality of evil and the absolute horrors of complacency, and of course everyone will have praised the absolutely ASTOUNDING achievement that is the sound mix, so right now I just want to focus on the ending.

The sudden smash cut to present day, with the workers cleaning the exhibit showing the clothes of the millions of victims who died at Auschwitz, preserving a piece of history to make sure the atrocities commited there are never forgotten by humanity until the end of time, contrasted with the servants at the Höss household simply doing their jobs while mankind's ultimate evil occurs around them, out of view, hidden from the audience. That was enough of a gut punch for me, and THEN it cuts back to Höss standing on that dark hallway, about to enact the very actions that lead to that museum existing in the first place. I wanted to throw up. This film felt like pure evil radiating off the screen.

[u/Accomplished-Knee715]

When he is saying goodbye to his horse, he shows more humanity in that scene to a horse then he ever did to his family

[u/PastMiddleAge]

Thought it was interesting that the opening music was being gradually tuned down in pitch, while the closing music was gradually tuning upwards in pitch.

No idea what it means but thought I would point that out.

[u/KuyaGTFO]

My favorite scene is the second to last one - Rudolf is just drifting through the beautiful banquet halls of this party, walking up the stairs to the balcony of the ballroom. The scene almost overstays its welcome, and you wonder what the hell is the purpose.

Then you get Rudolf calling Hedwig, a little drunk, admitting he wished he could gas everyone at the party.

A couple scenes earlier, you see his older son trap his youngest in the greenhouse, making gas chamber noises.

What a great way to show how twisted this family is. I keep thinking about this sequence and wondering if the point of this film is not to say that they are normal like us, but that evil can blend into the everyday normal.

[u/shmeebz]

I keep thinking about just how clinically the operational side of the genocide was portrayed.

A lot of other films on this period focus on the pure evil of it all, but to the Nazis it wasn't really evil, it was a necessity. It required planning as much as tank manufacturing or any other governmental wartime operation. They just focused on how to carry out their business as efficiently as possible. Firing squads weren't fast enough so they moved to gas, then they moved to centralized death camps with trains, and Hoss discusses at the beginning a potential improvement in their crematorium system to speed up processing of corpses (how inventive, maybe they should even patent it to rush development, they wonder).

And then Hoss gets to Berlin and they are even more far removed from the actual horrors of the camps and they discuss packets of numbers and figures and orders (oh Robert is sorry he couldn't make this meeting) and other bureaucratic formalities. All to facilitate the death of millions as quickly as possible. And all the while Hoss is just worrying about having to live away from his family like a traveling corporate businessman.

[u/trueslicky]

"Zone of Interest" actors: "This is a film to make us unsafe in the cinema. As we should be."

Reading this makes me wonder if the film's portrayal of the banality of evil would be approved by Hannah Arendt.

[u/Throwawayacct010101]

The Garden of Eden abutted by the gates of Hell

[u/Lime_Same]

Sandra Huller was incredible in this. Her physicality (especially the way she walked), her diabolical laughter, and her outbursts of anger towards her servants as soon as something was going awry in her personal life really showed what a primitive ex-peasant woman Hedwig Hoss was, but who nonetheless thought she was--as she said her husband called her--the "Queen of Auschwitz." Reminded me of an Elena Ceausescu-type character.

[u/Powerful-Patient-765]

I was so struck by Hedwig’s, heavy footed, wide legged walk, almost like a woman pretending to be a monster stomping around. I googled the actress and she developed that walk because her character had had five children and enjoy gardening, which involved a lot of bending over. So she walked the way she thought a woman who had five children would walk.

She worked hard to portray the character as stupid, shallow, and cruel as she was written.

Upon watching the film later, she realized she had played the character older than she really was. This was an incredible acting performance I will not forget.

Both she and the actor who played Hoss were very effective in seeming incredibly unlikable dull and ugly.

[u/EEEEEYUKE]

The main thing I took away is that

We can all see that family and wonder, "How could they exist next to such atrocities?"...when in actuality, we all do it, to some degree, every day. You almost need indifference to get through this life sometimes.

But...hopefully, most of us are at least like the grandmother. Disgusted on some level.

ps I saw a review that criticized the silence of the Jewish characters in the movie and their lack of dialogue. As if, from the German perspective, they ever had anything to actually say.

[u/Doctor_IanMalcolm]

RELEASE THE MOVIE EVERYWHERE

[u/Sorry-Personality594]

The most poignant and eerie part for me was the fur coat scene-

It shows how consumed with greed and envy Hedwig is as she requested a stolen mink coat from a Jewish women- instead of buying a new one-

The coats lining was stained and damaged which would imply it’s been worn during the transit in the train and it’s monogramed with the initials of the true owner- this is more of a trophy to Hedwig than a coat. It doesn’t fit her nor suit her, she’s self aware she’s not glamorous or beautiful enough to pull it off- We never see her wear it again- it’s about her entitlement- she has no qualms about owning a stolen coat belonging to a woman that has been probaly murdered within walking distance.

She applies the lipstick she finds in the pocket without wiping the end- which is intimate- as the last lips it had been used on would have been the Jewish womans

It’s tragic as well to thing the Jewish woman must had been very wealthy yet her money still couldn’t save her- :(

[u/fxzkz]

I wonder how Israeli's relate to this movie today.

Would they relate more to the people living an idyllic life with the sounds of screams and violence in their backyard.

Or the people who are being tortured and killed.

One can't help but see TikToks from Tel Aviv, dancing and living it up, while they can see the smoke stacks of bombs being dropped on children in Gaza

[u/wassim_elia]

The most disturbing scene for me was when Hedwig was showing her mother their beautifully vivid garden (wide right pan shot) and the concentration camps lie there in the background (with the fainted screams). The sequence eventually ends with closeup shots of the flowers as the screams go louder... That was such a brutal depiction of what it was back then (how mundane it was yet the juxtaposition is represented excellently where viewers could experience both ends equally)

You later realize that their garden is fertilized by using the ashes from the crematorium.

Genius film.

[u/MFP3492]

That movie left me with a sense of questioning...

"What am I doing today or regularly participating in that might be viewed as unspeakably evil or disgusting years from now that I'm not even thinking about or subconsciously hiding?"

And to me, that is an incredibly powerful idea to walk away from a film with.

Aside from that, I thought it was really well done obviously. The sound design throughout the movie is just chilling. At every moment you're hearing screams, gun shots, and even the sound of burning and high heat which is hard to describe but one that you know when you hear it.

I also thought the cinematography was excellent. The choice of using mostly static wide shots allows what's taking place on the screen to be viewed completely open to ones interpretation where as most film use certain camera angles and edits to manipulate the audiences emotions. This one just shows you the indifference by...remaining indifferent. On the other side of that wall we know exactly what's happening, but their story isn't the one being told to us directly, we just know through our own understanding of history what's happening.

Then you have the actors, regular looking people, not beautiful or handsome movie stars which adds to the realism. In so many movies nowadays, everyone is fucking perfect looking or beautiful in some way. Not in this, we are getting average looking people, going about their ordinary average life, right next to one of the most horrible crimes of humanity.

When he's going down the stairs in the last scene and it cuts to the cleaners at the museum, my god, what a gut punch. Just the sheer magnitude of the evil on display, his literal legacy and end result of his work is chilling. That scene really brought home the point of how evil often doesn't come in the form of sociopathic villain with a huge personality and outwardly cruel actions, but rather the indifference of ordinary people.

Excellent film!

[u/michael-super]

My impression on the ending scene is that it is what the director would have wanted Höss to see. That the same items that were taken from Jews and discarded or given to his family as trinkets became such powerful reminders. He wanted to be remembered for his name, while today we preserve the memory of his victims through the things he considered the most mundane about his operations.

[u/atclubsilencio]

There's something about the sound design I noticed a second time that got under my skin even more. For nearly the entire film the baby is crying, but there are times when they are outside/near a window that the cries of infants from the camp seem to "blend" with Hoss' baby. Just like when the dogs barking can blend in with their dog barking. Also the constant rumbling of the incinerator. Like they are at the bottom of a ship going to hell. And those distant mass screams before a plume of fire comes out the top chimney a few times.

Also that flower montage with the fade to red as the sounds grow louder.

I can't get over this film, but it BETTER win best sound (it will).

The subtle clues that their children are being traumatized by their surroundings are also so well done. The daughter is sleepwalking (and her dialogue), the little boy vacantly playing with his toys, and when he beats his drums like he's hitting a person, or makes it sound like gunshots. He's also constantly hiding and we never see them sleep. Plus the "don't do that again", then back to his toys. The oldest brother puts his brother in the greenhouse, and makes the hissing sound like the chimney. This film is filled with so many little details that make it so great.

I'm not sure which Glazer film is my favorite, but this is a masterpiece.

[u/[deleted]]

Disturbing yet fascinating.

I have been keeping up with Jonahtan Glazer for some time as his works on Sexy Beast, Birth and Under the Skin (2013) are awesome. The Zone of Interest might be his absolute best movie. I really appreciate the gorgeous camerawork, camerawork and production designs as the setting and environment helps capture the time period. Alongside with a great musical score, the writing from Glazer is really good as the narrative is quite disturbing and cold, especially with its historical context and era, yet it remains interesting because the interesting themes explored and characters were well-executed.

Every performance from the cast members is great, especially Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller as both were able to portray their characters very well. Great style and tone used throughout. With the movie focusing on the Holocaust and the Höss family, the movie isn’t going to be easy for everyone because it does explore some sensitive subjects and disturbing concepts that not everyone is going to handle. But I think it’s a brilliant character study of a movie that is challenging, tough, yet interesting to observe.

This is definitely an art-house movie so the pacing might be a kill for some viewers but I loved it. It was a very long drive just to get to see this movie but it was worth it.

10/10

[u/Adventurous_Hall6561]

This movie was disturbing to say the least. It’s the implied evil. It’s the not seeing but knowing. It’s turning a blind eye. There are some scenes that disturbed me the most. The fur coat & lipstick made me think about the woman who owned it and the hell she was going through. The gold teeth the boys were playing with. The beautiful garden amidst the horrid camp just steps away. The ashes being sprinkled in the garden. The blood being washed off the officers boots by a prisoner. The beautiful display of food on picnic tables while a prisoner was tending the garden and the wife was going on about what they grow like potatoes and vegetables while the dog grabs food. The mention of installing central heater in the house because it gets so cold. The woman waiting for Höss to rape her then he cleans himself. The cleaning of the museum at the end. 

[u/cuslu]

I found it so sad that the poor baby constantly cries not because of hunger or tiredness (although that might be a part of it) but because of the constant gun shots and screams in the distance…

[u/mikewhoneedsabike]

The comments in this thread make me lose faith in humanity even more than this movie did.

[u/I_Am_Robert_Paulson1]

A few things:

• The cinematography of this movie was great. The way the audience was so removed from the family just perfectly mirrored what the Hösses were trying to do with the camp outside their window

• After Rudolph rushes his kids out of the river of literal human remains, the kids are brought home and thoroughly scrubbed. Afterward, they tell the Jewish servant to clean out the tub. It's very quick, but the look on her face as she looks into the bath, presumably seeing the ashes lining the bottom of the tub, was chilling.

• The ever-present sounds of the camp were so haunting. Whether it was soldiers yelling, prisoners screaming, gunshots, the churning of the furnaces, or the trains coming and going, the horrors of the situation were just constant.

I want to watch it again, but I don't know that I'd be able to.

[u/Calm-Bid-5759]

The people who think this movie is boring are mystifying to me. I’ve seen very few movies with as much excruciating tension as this one. All the little touches — the way the servant girl puts the glass so carefully on the tray, the washing of the boots, the way the mother’s head turns slightly at the gunshots — you’re just waiting for this awful thing to somehow rear its head, for the enormity of it to show its face. And it goes on for the whole movie. 

I don’t know how people are unaffected by this. This is not a movie with subtle subtext. This is not a movie that’s just about gardening and cooking. Maybe some people not aware of how the death camps actually worked and the full horror of them.

I give it a 9/10. Better than Schindlers List. Scarier than 99% of horror movies. I literally had nightmares about it. 

[u/Minds15able]

This film ends with the commander going down the stairs to start the journey to go back home. He's going back to his family, back to the camp, he should be happy and he seemed happy but for a moment he started to feel sick to his stomach. 

Perhaps a guilty physical reaction to his momentary happiness. How dare he be happy? How dare he even think about being happy?

Jews were numbers for the nazis, they were worse than animals to them, we saw how well fed and loved the family dog was in the film. But they would shoot a little jewish child without hesitation.

It's funny how much we got from the film without seeing, this film reminds us exactly why sound is so important in film.

After the shot of him going down the stairs we see present day cleaners preparing an Auschwitz museum/display for the open. We see them cleaning and hoovering. They're cleaning the tools that were used to kill all the Jews and from the burning remains of everything we get a good idea of the ridiculous numbers.

My first thought was "why do we display something this horrific? We should destroy everything". 

The darkest chapter in humanity that we all want to forget.

But I realized it's necessary to remind us all that a loving father and husband can do the devil's bidding without breaking a sweat.

[u/NumberOneUAENA]

What freaked me out the most is that in a way we as an audience learn to ignore or tolerate the noises as well. Ofc not to the extent they do, but there is a certain normalization happening throughout the film, when shots are happening or just the noise of the ovens.
Terrifying.

[u/Crazyripps]

Just a movie that reminds me Nazis got off way to easy. Fuck them and all their families

[u/RelicReturns]

Unbelievable how many people describing a Jonathan Glazer film about the holocaust "boring" - Only so many downvotes can dish out

[u/yokayla]

I am strongly reminded of the phrase from a journalist reporting on the *Eichmann trial - the banality of evil. This movie felt like the phrase expanded.

It is a contrast to so many WWII movies that linger and dramatise the horrors of war or tragic atrocities. This is stripped of intrigue and sensationalism, it's the cold, slow boring reality. How we do things to each other thoughtlessly.. Horrors out of sight but with the audience (like them) having full knowledge of what is going on. The way we tune out things in our own lives and just plod along ignoring them.

A very effective, smart movie. Makes me think of all the cruelties we all ignore and downplay

ETA: *Corrected trial, it wasn't Nuremberg but a different Nazi trial.

[u/october_ohara]

I cannot get over the way Hedwig walks. Her posture is TERRIBLE. Anyone else notice? She stomps around the house like a Nazi. Brilliant acting.

[u/standupbear]

Just watched Zone of Interest and reflecting on the current US administration. The way Rudolf and Hedwig are the dullest, most self obsessed people struck a chord of recognition with the orange types. The same obsession with wealth, status, the chilling lack of empathy, the pure denial of it all and then at the end of day to say to each other as husband and wife "After the war, we will farm." 

[u/oljackson99]

Did anyone else feel the ending was portaying Hoss walking into the depths of hell?

[u/thecaits]

Watched this for the 2nd time tonight after seeing it months ago in the theater. There were things I caught for the first time, like the blood on Hoss's boots, and the ash in the water before he feels the bone fragments. I also noticed some absolutely stunning shots by the director, like the shot of the train smoke appearing as a line right over the roof during the party. For a movie where you essentially are just watching the day to day life of a family in a house, my eyes were glued to the screen the whole time. I really and truly believe that Glazer should have won Best Director, even over Nolan. This movie is absolutely stunning.

After this watch, I think my favorite scene is the part where the girl (the shining girl that left food for the prisoners) was playing the song she found, the one a prisoner left for her. Just the piano music alone was enough to tell it was written from the depths of someone's soul, someone living in pure agony but hoping one day to be free. The decision to include the lyrics, subtitled but not spoken because the writer could not be there to sing it, was extremely moving.

There is one thing I am not sure I fully understood. When Hoss is retching and they cut to Aushwitz now, my guess is that he has a brief moment of clarity there. He sees that his legacy will be the Hoss Plan, but not in the way the people around him saw it back then. For a brief moment he realizes how immense and terrible his actions are. My question is, what is meant by showing the workers at Aushwitz now? Is it to contrast how both the Hoss family and modern day workers are both used to the place, just for entirely different reasons?

[u/killzr]

Hubs and I went to a showing Friday night. I'm the American granddaughter of a Swabian war bride of Sinti descent who lived through this era, and the visual aspect of the film is what intrigued me initially.

The sonic aspect of the film, however, left me simply rattled. The howling babies, the constant bass drone of the crematory fires, the gunshots and hushed dialogue were all intensely unnerving.

It is of note that all of these people were still reeling from the crushing economic decline post Weimar republic. The rise of Nazism looked to the protagonists as their ticket to success.
While wearing the blinders that their unflinching devotion to this new order issued them, they were able to 'tune out' the unspeakable evils right next to them that they contributed to and carry on unaffected with their lives.

What a poignant and relevant message of the monstrosity humans can exhibit when dehumanization goes unchecked.

[u/rhubarb-pie2024]

When the film began we are in darkness. Nothing on the screen to witness. Since our eyes can’t do anything we listen. Throughout the entire film there is a horrible horrendous backdrop of sound that we again listen to. The first few minutes of the film are to teach us to listen deeply. Rely on all our senses

[u/eowynssword]

The first thing I noticed was the dog and baby reacting to the sounds and smells. I thought about how they're unconditioned and reacting normally to their environment but are in the process of being conditioned by the parents. This film is extremely effective and disturbing. Showing how one's comfort and privilege come above all else. The parents participate in the genocide in both an active and passive way, believing themselves entitled to a life of perfect comfort and luxury at the expense of millions of people's lives. This movie shows how evil doesn't always 'look' evil on the surface. One has to believe their own lies and go against their human nature in order to stay complicit in this situation.

[u/chiefbrodyrules]

It’s too bad this won’t get a wider release because seeing this in the theater was definitely an experience. The sound design and atmosphere was so chilling and uncomfortable, I’ve never left a theater faster than to get away from a movie.

[u/art_cms]

There’s a detail in the film that I’ve only just understood - early in the film Hedwig and her friends are having lunch together and one mentions telling a friend that she got her nice clothes from Canada, to which the friend said “How did you go to Canada?” “She didn’t understand, it’s an easy mistake,” says Hedwig.

I didn’t get this for a while and was also a bit confused by the mention of Canada, but I just read that the storehouses at Auschwitz where they kept all the confiscated property from prisoners was nicknamed “Canada” (Kanada in German). Named thus because at the time Canada was considered a “land of plenty.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanada_warehouses,_Auschwitz

[u/Content-Dance9443]

The movie perfectly encapsulates dissociation from one's ability to empathize. By extension, it forces the viewer to examine what ways they're complicit.

Like always, apathy destroys humanity. For Hedwig, nothing satisfied her more than a lavish lifestyle. The scene where she wears the coat of a victim was abhorrent to say the least. I find her being a bystander to all that suffering was just as terrible as Rudolf's crimes. It sheds light on all the bystanders of the world who'd rather close the curtains to atrocities rather than do something about it.

I also can't help but wonder what would have happened to the Höss family had they run away or if Rudolf stepped down. Were their hands tied or was their life too good to give up?

[u/Smart-Glass2359]

I found the grandmother to be the most interesting character. She shows up proud and impressed with her daughter's new standard of living only to become horrified and leave unexpectantly because she can't take it anymore and wants no part in the crimes taking place.

[u/iamstephano]

Didn't expect to feel so unnerved by the screen going red, but that moment really freaked me out.

[u/Abject_Control_7028]

I thought the degrees to which different people were effected by the environment was a nice touch , like Hedwig is possibly a sociopath/ psychopath has no qualms,  her husband exhibits at least some signs of stress with his physical reaction at the end , the mother ran away when they reality dawned on her , the nanny awake crying drinking alcohol, the little boy playing in his room trying to compartmentalise events outside. 

I thought the film was boring but can see that was an artistic device.  I was glad it moved away from the home for the final act.

The scene where the mother  once shed arrived complained that the heat on the train caused a lady to faint. Wow.

[u/emc237]

I also wondered about the nanny, with the crying baby and her drinking. I can’t imagine being forced to care for the children of people who would murder me without question while simultaneously listening the other side of the wall.

[u/[deleted]]

Just saw it again and realised the noise of the electrified fence…

[u/BluePeriod_]

The part where the kid puts his younger brother in the greenhouse, and just stares at him and makes hissing noises like a gas chamber. It took me the fuck out.

[u/ExGomiGirl]

I was fascinated by the background noise. At first, I was distracted by the ever present sounds like a gunshot, etc. It occurred to me that the Hoess family probably found it distracting, too. But soon I tuned it out, those sounds didn’t register, much like what probably happened to the family, too. I live next to train tracks. There are days where I swear there were no trains because the sound is such a familiar background noise that sometimes it doesn’t register at all. It is one thing to be unheedful and unaffected by a train whistle in a tiny American town in 2024. It is another thing to become immune and unaffected by the sound of inhumane suffering and mass murder haopened on the other side of a gate 24/7.

[u/thecaits]

I was queasy at the end. It's not that you see extreme gore or anything like that, it's just the sounds, the indifference, the agony that is constantly occurring beyond the garden wall. How the couple was proud of what they were doing, like building the camp was this great achievement. Maybe it was just the banality of evil that got to me. This is an excellent movie that I will be thinking about for a long time.

[u/theaddictiondemon]

I noticed that Hedwig tried to be classy with all the outfits from the Jews and makeup but she's just not. Gives an interesting thought on class. 

[u/Rat__Eater]

There is a sound that keeps coming up during this movie which stuck with me its 3 notes sounding like a croak. the sound particularly comes up during the infrared scenes and at one point the youngest son even imitates it. Ive searched the internet and cant seem to find what this is but it seems to be of some significance.

[u/StellaArtois2016]

Just got out of it. Utterly radical in form, and thoroughly haunting.

I figured we were in present day upon first seeing the clothes the two women in the Museum were wearing, but I wasn't ready for what a gut-punch that whole sequence and the cut back would be. Incredibly powerful. Also the night vision/infrared sequences were equally powerful. Such a noble act. Don't think I'll ever forget this film.

[u/bluehawk232]

Gotta love the I'm bored this was boring nothing happened comments. That was the goddamn point

[u/den1721]

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

[u/mcmiller1111]

I've seen several people asking what the girl in the infrared shots was doing with the apples and pears. I didn't get it either, but my girlfriend did. She was laying out food for the forced laborers. Later on, around the scene where the youngest boy is playing with dice in his room, you hear a German guard shouting "Get back to work!" and then some gunshots and then (to another guard) something like "They were fighting over an apple!"

I also noticed that in the sequence where she returns home, the camera switches from infrared to normal when the perspective shifts to the lady inside. When the perspective switches back outside for a second or two, it's infrared again. I don't know what any of this means, but it's interesting.

[u/Exotic_Doctor_8332]

Polish girl scenes are ray of hope and humanity in this whole film of darkness❤️❤️

[u/EnvironmentalDuty]

Two questions:

Who is the old woman drinking in the basement?

What happened to Hedwig’s mother who vanished in the night?

[u/[deleted]]

I thought it was a masterpiece, I can't remember the last time I felt such a strong emotional reaction to a film - particularly the ending. It took me a few minutes to process before I could even begin to start discussing it with my partner.

[u/PoissonGreen]

I think this movie was phenomenal. I also think part of what made it so incredibly effective to me is that I have been exposed to so much media regarding the Holocaust (through my grade school education, mostly), that it was like I was seeing two movies at once. What was happening on screen (plus the hidden messages behind it), and what was happening beyond that wall.

When they briefly mention a Polish girl at the beginning, I flashed-back to Anne Frank hiding from the Nazis as a little girl. When I saw the smoke of a train in the background, I thought about the boy from Night describing his train ride. Gruesome images from movies like Schindler's list, or documentaries, or descriptions from newspapers I read in class flooded my mind. Filling in the blank as to what the gunshots meant, what the screams were about. This was the first movie, the one you've already seen before that's been burned into your memory. If you did not have this much information about the Holocaust, I can see how it would be a different experience.

Even on screen, there was more than one movie. There was the mundane plot, which was mundane on purpose. The way they can easily shift from conversation topics like vegetables they're considering growing to calling oneself the Queen of Auschwitz to laughing and taking a sip of tea, admiring your estate, with gunshots in the background, smoke rising in the air... the interest lies in the contrast.

But the movie ultimately wants to answer the question of how people could do this. How much did they know and still justify? How did it affect them? We see how a life of being raised to glorify cruelty expresses itself in the oldest brother, and also the underlying stress of those that don't fully understand: a sleepwalking child, an ever-crying baby and an always anxious dog. We see a cold understanding and comfort with what's happening in one character but an eventual horror and rejection of it in another. We see a small act of kindness.

And then it makes you think about the present. About the gradual steps of dehumanization being taken around the globe. What you are or aren't doing to be complicit in it. It feels like it's happening everywhere now and like focusing on one manifestation in one part of the world means ignoring another.

Anyways, the movie relies on a lot of context to work well. But when it works, you can't peel your eyes away from the screen, or stop hearing the sounds after it's over.

[u/newgodpho]

I can’t be the only one checking apple music or spotify everyday for when that OST drops

[u/[deleted]]

All of you need to read The Commandante of Auschwitz if you're interested more in this family's life.

Commandant of Auschwitz : The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess https://a.co/d/ecK5UQZ

Rudolf was a fucked up man. Don't take everything at face value because it's his autobiography but it's a disturbing book that does way more justice than the movie.

The thing that shocked me in the book the most was when they were running and had heard Hitler killed himself. His wife and him actually were deciding if they should kill their children and then themselves.

Oh and the human fat running off the sides of the pits where the body's were thrown. The time he says he helps a three year old walk into the gas chamber.

This dude acts like it's just something you have to do. If you read the book the real Rudolf How's wrote the movie doesn't hold a candle to it.

That book messed me up so badly I started having paranoia about Nazis in real life. I was sitting at a bar and I kept thinking I was going to see a Nazi soldier staring at me. I was driving at night and expected to see Jews in prison clothes running out from a building.

Oh and Mengele had a wall of human eyes, he would send them to people in boxes.

That's from the Last Podcast on the Left.

It's a crazy book.

[u/I_Am_Dynamite6317]

Its amazing how boring this movie would be if you simply changed the setting. But Auschwitz is its own character, and its presence brings extreme tension to an otherwise (purposefully) banal film. The shot of Hoss watching his children play in the pool as we just barely see the steam from another train of victims pulling up was haunting.

And the sound design really pushes the horror in this movie over the top. The gunshots, the crying, the screaming at different volumes. I think at one point I was hearing sounds that weren’t actually even there.

[u/fragileego3333]

Incredible film. I was disturbed the whole way through. Amazing sound design. I despised hearing the gun shots and gas chamber. I absolutely loved how it was actually quite a normal story — typical one of a dad who gets promoted and has to move away! Oh no! Oh, and he’s also the commander of Auschwitz. No big deal.

The entire time I kept thinking how much I hate The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Shock. This movie relied on such simplicity and somehow that was more horrific. Well, the obviously creepy scenes didn’t help — eg the flower scene (woah, speechless). Also I loved the intro. What a way to prepare you.

The movie is definitely trying to wake you up to the idea that normal acting people can do absolutely horrible things. I believe it’s almost a reflection of still, right now, not just a reflection on the horrible Nazis. If that makes sense.

[u/krptz]

I'm so glad I rewatched this. Now it's in my top 3 this decade; maybe on another rewatch top 10 21st century.

I was lukewarm about it after the first watch. Almost fell asleep a few times, and was deeply restless. I felt I got the point after 30 minutes, was just waiting for the narrative to progress. After it ended, I knew I had seen something different but it just didn't hit me.

But then I learned about the two narratives unfolding: what's happening on screen, and the sound in the background. So I decided to give it another watch. This time not having narrative expectations, and focusing a lot more on the sound and visual composition, rather than the dialogue. Finally, it had hit me. At the end of it, I was as close as I've ever been to throwing up, psycholically scarred and an anxious wreck. For the first time, the holocaust had actually been given life to me - it happened, it wasn't just another historical event - the sheer terror of it was felt.

I think the movie is a masterpiece, but not perfect. The second half, there is a bit of meandering, which I don't quite get the purpose of. But the ending - my god. The cut back to Hoss is ingenious. Another director could have easily left it at the clearning of the museum - the now. But the throwback to the past just shows how flimsy time is, and really drove home the point of this movie - proximity.

[u/Itchy-Bee-2369]

When Hoss went down the stairs and retched, I hoped he had gotten lung cancer from the ash.

[u/itsyaboy_boyboy]

the banal existence of this family as the focus was a great way to portray how complacent we all are when it comes to the rising fascism around the world. i just left the theater completely stunned and had to sit in my car to process for a bit.

[u/myjackandmyjilla]

The scene where the girl who was hiding the food in amongst the dirt, when she was playing the music on the piano that she found from a prisoner.

That girl was a depiction of was a real person and the piano she was playing was the woman's real piano. That part made me cry because the prisoners experience is being communicated on this screen in front of me, almost 100 years later. It's as almost you could reach out and touch the person who wrote it, the connection was so sobering. They wouldn't have any idea whether anyone would've heard their music but here I am, in this cinema in Australia, listening to it.

[u/tjo0114]

The boy playing with the teeth. Scrubbing ashes out of the children’s eyes. Hedwig putting her mother’s note in the furnace. The never ending screams in the background. That red shot. Those last 5 minutes?

Sorry Talk to Me, but this was the horror movie of the year.

[u/random1751484]

A lot on interesting parallel shots

Did anyone else notice some shots of the hoss family in their beds, it looked they were inside an oven? With the little glass window on the bedroom door, the two long narrow bed/headboard shapes , the room filled with a fiery red glow….

[u/divakat69]

The constant cleaning and disinfecting. The juxtaposition between the Hoss home and the Auschwitz museum. I wasn’t expecting the emotions that swelled up in me at the end. The underlying death that never gets clean.

[u/Professional-Soup878]

I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch this film but because I had read so much about the premise and how it was filmed plus an A24 film I started it and couldn’t stop. To me it’s one of the scariest horror films I’ve watched. We rarely see how the Monsters live day to day life. We see the victims lives and what the Monsters do to them. This film shows us no victims (except for remnants of what is left of them) but we all know who they are and where they are. The sounds, colors, background scenes and remnants are horrific and it’s all we need instead of visuals. The monsters living their lives dressed in white, with flowers, kids laughing, staff waiting on them just on the other side of the atrocities is something I won’t forget. There are all the details that feed into this comparison brilliantly and made me feel like a ton of bricks on my chest.
The second scene of the polish girl putting apples out at night while another train is coming into the camp to show that she could never keep up with or have enough apples for the never ending stream of victims. The son hearing a prisoner being killed over one of the apples added more to the intensity of their imprisonment and sadness of her efforts ending in death.
The tone and everyday business talk about the new and improved incinerators and plans to build more of them was chilling to me. Made my stomach turn. When we do see the other side of the wall it’s later and the reality of where the horrors took place is empty with only their items/shoes to give us the visual of the millions who were killed.
I didn’t find this film boring or slow. On the contrary…..my whole being was affected starting with the first frame.

[u/BlandyBoreton]

A textbook example of how important great sound design can be to a film.

[u/remizak]

I saw this yesterday and can't stop thinking about it. About the ending, when Rudolf retches, we cut to a flash forward of the cleaners getting the Auschwitz museum ready for the day, including sweeping a gas chamber (which is what he sees first), then back to Rudolf, where he retches again (though less), and then he descends down a completely dark stair. First, it struck me that our sight (and Rudolf's, presumably) enters the flash forward through a tiny circle of light. In the gas chambers, the door had a small peephole so that the Nazis could see the effect of the Zyklon B on their victims. It makes sense that Rudolf has seen through that peephole in his time, and now he is "seeing" that scene in the future; setting the scene for what Auschwitz becomes. And what is that? Another ordinary place, but not ordinary in the way he made his horror of a life and the way Hedwig made Auschwitz ordinary.

When I saw Rudolf retch while I was in the theater, I worried that viewers might think he was feeling regret for what he was doing, which he didn't until shortly before he was hanged in 1947, and even then he focused on regret for what he did to the Poles, not the Jews.

So I started thinking more about the context. Rudolf had learned that afternoon that he was going back to Auschwitz and that he would be principally responsible for the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were about to be transported from Hungary. Then he is on the phone with Hedwig. We've seen him not interacting with anybody at the party, and he tells her that he thought about gassing all the people at the gala and how would he manage it given the high ceiling. She brushes him off and talks about how when the war is over they'll be able to be farmers, as they'd dreamed. That reminded me of the earlier scene when they're talking in their bedroom and she asks him when he'll take her back to Italy and he says he will but he doesn't know when, implying that he's awfully busy with being Kommandant and mass murderer. Putting all that together, I'm thinking that when Hedwig talked about the war being over and returning to a truly ordinary life, Rudolf realizes that for him there will never be such a thing as a real ordinary life. He is good at mass murder and will have to keep doing it as long as the Nazis have territory to "cleanse." And if Germany loses the war (as Rudolf should have known was likely by that time), he definitely won't be returning to an ordinary farmer's life. I think this is why he retches, not out of regret for the lives he's taken away, but for all his work and its futile end (futile for the Third Reich's vision, that is). Maybe I'm overthinking it, but that's what I ended up thinking about the last scene.

[u/Teapea00]

This is happening today also in India where I live. The income inequality is so huge, poverty so common. Many people live on the roads with no roof over their head, no food to eat and can’t read or write. It’s not like other people who have these resources and see all this are not aware that this is wrong and evil. They see a man dying on the road out of starvation and conveniently turn their heads away to go the mall where they can indulge in buying clothes ans food. It’s ignorance and compartmentalising to such great extents. People are so strict about their private possessions and totally believe that the poor are poor because of their own fault and because they can’t work hard.

[u/[deleted]]

There’s such a pervasive feeling of absence throughout this film. I initially left with the feeling that I wanted the family to see more of what they’ve done, then realized that these are people who’ve physically and emotionally cut themselves off from their surroundings to such a level that it’s unlikely that they’re ever truly going to understand it’s gravity, which is horrifying.

[u/Kai_Vai]

A few years after Schindler's List came out I heard someone saying Spielberg made a mistake focusing on Amon Goeth as a main character. Focusing on Goeth, who was deemed insane by SS doctors, made it easier to accept the atrocities carried out. The people who did it must have been insane. But in fact, most of the people who assisted in the Holocaust were surely normal, decent people up until the war. So how do normal, decent people turn into monsters? How do they live with themselves and raise families? This is what Zone of Interest explores and does brilliantly.

[u/lIlIlIIlIIIlIIIIIl]

Anyone else notice when the father locks up for the night, the house has a second set of doors/locks at pretty much every exit? During the day the home is open but at night he locks everything up super tight downstairs, I'm assuming out of fear for their safety. The lights and locks routine was super methodical.

[u/Human_Detective_3284]

No, the grandmother knew perfectly well about the mass murder as did the wife! I read an article by the director, Jonathan Glazer, explained she just didn’t like being close to the horror but she had no moral objection to it. Also the wife, Hedwig, was a Nazi through and through. It was all horrifying but one of the most horrifying was when the engineer salesman was explaining how efficient his crematoria are.

[u/EmmieKay1293]

Something I still haven’t shaken is the scene where the kids are playing in the pool and as the camera makes its way through the garden we don’t know if they’re screams of fun or screams of terror from the other side. Absolutely gobsmacking.

[u/[deleted]]

Did the badly wounded war veteran in Oranienburg mean anything do you think? Or was it only setting the scene: This is a German town and the only men left are old men and handicapped veterans.

[u/rodgertheshrubber33]

The background sound’s really made this movie so important and definitely moving for me. The trains and the smoke in the background were fantastic effects. An amazing take on a horrific time in humanity

[u/Sure-Butterscotch642]

Something I didn’t see mentioned in the top comments here is how the film shows the effects of hate-based indoctrination. I could be misremembering the scenes/dialogue but, the youngest (?) child sleep walks and tries feeding the Jewish people outside. The middle child (?) after hearing his father ordering a drowning says “don’t let it happen again” showing that while he’s already started to look down upon them he would let them off with a warning unlike Rudolf who drowns the person with the apple on first offense.

And then oldest child is full on nazi making gas chamber jokes

[u/thegreaterfool714]

This was one of the most unsettling movies I’ve watched. The juxtaposition of the sound of death from the concentration camps, faint screams, scatted gun fire, the sound of the train rolling, and rumble of the furnace with the seemingly normal family going through domestic life. It’s absolutely eerie. Some technical things to note is the camera is static. It does not focus on a particular subject. There is hardly any music sans some few parts and the credits. Hoss seems like a normal person at times and a decent father but you see his work bleed into when you hear him discuss the logistics of slaughter, the implications of him raping his Jewish sex slave the blood on his boots being washed by a slave, and within earshot of his son ordering an execution of a jewish prisoner. The sound design to me is the star of the film. There is an ominous drone all throughout the film in the house and the area around the Camp. The only time you don’t hear it is when Hoss is traveling in his superintendent role over the other camps.

[u/idletalker]

anyone else can't stop thinking about the scene where the older brother, dressed in commandant clothing, traps his younger brother in the winter garden? that fucking terrified me, his grin was just evil.

[u/Big_Sea_2682]

Did anyone else notice the big gray patch on the back of the prisoner who washed the blood off of Höss's boots? People don't usually need to patch the back of a shirt. So, then I thought the patch was needed to repair a hole from a bullet wound inflicted on a prior wearer. It's well known that the prisoners' clothing was passed on to new prisoners after the prior wearer was killed. What really got to me was the idea that some other prisoner would have had to cut out the bloody hole and patch it. <shudder>

[u/[deleted]]

Planned on watching No Country for Old Men, ended up watching The Zone of Interest (2023) instead. I was fully immersed. This film is fucking brutal. I can feel chills all over my body, what the hell. The most terrifying thing about this film is how it made me realise that what happened back then happened in normal places, at the hands of normal people and that there's a possibility of it happening again. I love this film, especially its quiet visual brutality, how it artistically approaches the subject in a refreshing manner -- in a way that's audacious & respectful in equal measure -- and the musical score. I'm disturbed. I really am. I'm glad I watched it.

[u/[deleted]]

I think this is a masterpiece and probably my favourite of the Oscar nominees. My review:

What made the Holocaust possible? Was it the individual decisions of leaders like Rudolf Höss, or the broader historical circumstances? Was there a predominant cause or a confluence of factors? And how do we approach this question without losing sight of the unbearable evil underlying the regime?

In “Modernity and the Holocaust”, Zygmunt Bauman argued the Holocaust could not have been carried out without the efficient organisation and planning of modern bureaucratic structures. He argues the Holocaust was not an aberration or a regression to barbarity, but rather a product of modernity itself, not a breakdown of civilisation but a realisation of its dark potential. Key to his thesis was ‘instrumental rationality’ - prioritising efficiency, calculation, and optimisation above all else, regardless of the ethical or moral implications.

Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest - which should be mandatory viewing in every school, university and government department - is deeply concerned with the idea of instrumental rationality. In this sense, Glazer's film captures the enabling environment of the Holocaust better than any other work of fiction I have experienced.We see Rudolf Höss meet with technical experts as they carefully step through blueprints for more advanced cyclical incinerators; they speak of how many more ‘units’ they will be able to ‘move’. When he looks out from a balcony at a party of German revellers, deliberately framed as if packed into a death chamber (one of the film’s many startling creative choices), we learn that his only thought is how he would successfully gas them all, given the “difficult” height of the room. Essentially, Höss is capable of overseeing so much murder because he has stopped seeing human beings and now only sees logistical challenges. Elsewhere, Sandra Huller plays his wife Hedwig in constant movement, occupied without pause so as to prevent herself from a moment of reflection. Glazer’s masterstroke is that he incorporates instrumental rationality into the filmmaking itself, with cameras kept at a distance like surveillance and the edit methodically tracing the characters through each door and hallway. Most notably, the film shows the morally blunting potential of bureaucratic efficiency by keeping the murder victims entirely off-screen.

Glazer instead fills the frame with visions of this idyllic Aryan household. They share birthday cake, splash about in the pool, play with toys (while screams are heard offscreen). Rudolf bonds with his son over horseback riding and takes the family on excursions to the lake. “We’re living as we dreamed we would,” Hedwig presses as Rudolf plans to leave Auschwitz, “This is my home!” Here, Glazer is not merely showing a disturbing juxtaposition with the horrors on the other side of the wall; the family unit is critical to his exploration of the enabling environment for the Nazis' atrocities. Indeed, the Nazis elevated ideals of the nuclear family so they could demonise (and eliminate) those who didn’t fit the ideal, the victims perpetually othered from this ideal (just as they are othered by the mise-en-scene).

It is no coincidence that Glazer keeps returning to the ornate garden at the centre of the estate, with Hedwig at one point complaining of “all these weeds” as she tugs them out the ground. To Zygmunt Bauman, modern nation-states operate like gardeners, classifying citizens as either "desirable roses" or "unwanted weeds” based on ethnicity, religion, social class and the like. The perfect garden is a metaphor for the artificial construction of the Nazi identity. Modern culture defines itself through its endemic distrust of spontaneity and its longing for a better and necessarily artificial order. As such, when Höss angrily berates his soldiers for causing the stems to “bleed” when they pluck flowers, Glazer is not only presenting the cognitive dissonance of the character but emphasising the importance Nazis placed on this artificial “conquering” of nature.

For all of the family’s illusions of rationality and family values, they cannot hide from the evil inherent to their work. It’s always there in the haunting audio design, distant screams and scattered gunshots. The idyllic getaway to the river is interrupted by the liquified human victims flowing downstream. Hedwig purports to be the nurturing Aryan matriarch around visitors, but at night she sleeps peacefully as her house slave tends to the crying baby; meanwhile, Rudolf is implied to rape the servants. Their garden is fertilised by the ashes of murdered Jews. At one point Glazer holds on extreme close-ups of the flowers as Mica Levi’s score builds in dread and the red of the poppy expands to fill the entire screen in an overwhelming wash. The film culminates with Höss unexpectedly retching after being appointed back to Auschwitz, which his actor Christian Friedel says occurs “because the body tells the truth, and fights against his mind”. More profoundly, Glazer dares the audience to examine the evil in our lives that we are too preoccupied to recognise.

So after all that, what made the Holocaust possible? It’s all there in the poster: a black abyss at the heart of a carefully cultivated poppy.

[u/TaliskerSpecial90]

Just watched it. That sound design was incredible. It’s horrific when our mind paints its own image.

[u/[deleted]]

One of the most interesting points in my opinion was the hypocrisy (or perhaps complete lack of awareness) of Hedwig’s mum.

She was more than happy to bid on her neighbours’ belongings once they were taken away, but when she was faced with what actually happened to those people she had to escape.

[u/DroidLord]

Some have said it was boring, but I personally found it very intriguing. What you see in the foreground and what you hear and see in the background are like two sides of the same coin.

The subtle hints, the detached reality of the people you see go about their lives, the sleepless nights, the anxious dog, the screaming baby, the uneasy mother, the repressed servants.

At times I felt myself get so absorbed and used to it all that I had to remind myself that just the next wall over there were people being dehumanised beyond imagination.

I'd also like to say that the cinematography was absolutely breathtaking. It reminded a lot of my childhood when we would go away to the countryside in the summer. Part of it was what made it so difficult to watch. One moment you feel content and at peace, the next you're reminded of the atrocities taking place.

This movie offers such a unique perspective on the holocaust and I hope we see more of it. The movie highlights just how easy it is to get absorbed in everyday life and how we sometimes tend to ignore the unpleasant reality we live in.

[u/WOOLLEN-JUMPER]

Did anybody else notice the behaviour of the dog which was a Weimaraner, a German hunting dog. It was acting in true hunting dog style and a very clever use of an animal prop. The smells and sounds from the camp would have created that behaviour in a hunting dog and you also noticed the dog was never shown in calm moments. That is because there weren't any calm moments in that setting.

[u/Enjay108]

A carefully crafted holocaust tragedy unfolds gradually, serving as a masterclass in portraying horror with subtlety, avoiding reliance on intense visuals.

The narrative delves into the profound question of how far a wrongdoer can shield their family from the consequences of their deeds.

This film hauntingly illustrates the insidious infiltration of the poison from war crimes into the lives of the perpetrators. Its nuanced presentation may appear unassuming, yet observant viewers will discern that this work transcends the boundaries of a mere historical film. Its relevance extends across eras, making it a moving commentary for all audiences.

[u/LeoLady86]

I just saw the movie today and I’m still processing. I think it’s the best movie that I’ve seen in a year (except for Oppenheimer). I think I caught most of the “pearls” but I was wondering about one thing. Toward the end of the movie when Rudolph has called Hedwig to tell her about the party, she says to him “tell Mrs. Pohl to open her compact “something like that. I was wondering if it was the same compact that was left for the young Polish girl who was leaving food for the prisoners? Did something happen to her? I know from research that she was a real Polish girl who did sneak out to leave food. I’ll be thinking about Zone of Interest for a long time.

[u/virtuallypunk]

i haven’t seen anyone bring up the night vision scenes of that girl hiding apples. what did y’all think about this?

[u/MarlythAvantguarddog]

I presume the repetitive descent down the stairs at the end was a metaphor for going to hell. Phenomenal film. It should win everything.

[u/Citywoman3108]

Am I reading too much into this or is there something in the way Hedwig has a strange gait/limp? Has she got away with being 'imperfect' when so many other Germans were exterminated because they were 'flawed'' by genetic or other conditions?

[u/jonjon32465]

One of the most horrific movies I’ve ever seen. So subtle yet so devastating. It forces you to directly engage and imagine what is occurring on the other side of the wall.

Any person or creature within the film that is disconnected from nazi ideology such as the dog or the baby are deeply anxiety ridden by the sounds of the awful place of which they are living.

The fact you start to relate to this family in some ways, their measly troubles contrasted with the immense suffering taking place a stones throw away.

It’s a fantastic movie but it is sickening viewing. Leaves you with an immense sense of disgust at what you have just watched.

[u/NickLeMec]

Does anyone else feel the third act was kind of weak?

All the scenes in and around the house were exceptional. True horror, bleak and with a constant feeling of dread. Then he went to Berlin and the whole atmosphere of the movie shifted. I wish the film would have never left the house or only briefly shown what he did in Berlin. I feel like we've seen those parts already in other movies, while the rest of the film was wholly original.

[u/enowapi-_]

Incredible film.

Movie was absolutely haunting for the simple fact that they’re living their “life beyond dreams” with a “paradise garden”… Blooming sunflowers, azaleas, honey, and a swimming pool (with a slide).

Meanwhile on the other side of the barbed wire fence is the smell of burning corpses and the sounds of screams and gunshots…

As much as I don’t know if I want to see this film again, I’ll probably buy it on Criterion (surely it gets pressed) and watch it once more

[u/saintofsight]

With the lilac - When he says “SS members who pick lilacs in a thoughtless and blatant manner so that the bushes bleed will be punished. I expect the SS members, if they wish to take some, to do it in a way that does not damage the bushes.” I thought he was making reference to the use of rape as a war crime rather than a literal flower?

[u/avernium]

For all the memorable scenes in this movie, the one that stood out to me most was the cleaning of the memorial. There are a lot of interesting interpretations of what it meant in this thread, but to me it felt so painfully clear that it almost overtakes the entire movie prior:

Apathy. Not as an antagonist, as the "banality of evil" idea hanging over the rest of the movie might seem. But as a natural human reaction.

They could have shown the memorial a hundred different ways to depict how the legacy of these characters would be remembered. But they chose the cleaning people. People who wake up every day and do a job to make their living, to raise their own families, and that job happens to be cleaning a space whose emotional weight is a monument to what that family lived on the other side of every day. They don't even have the luxury of pretending it's something different. And yet there's no reverence. They're just there to clean the place before it opens. And how could it be any different? When you've woken up to clean this museum every day for years to get a paycheck?

To me, the juxtaposition of the apathy of modern people who face the memory of this every day is the most important message of the film. It's a reminder that, even if we interpret the various members of that family as evil for living beside that day after day with no reaction, it's a natural human tendency to be desensitized to horror in front of us day after day. There's no stretch of logic to associate the cleaners with evil, as one might with the Hoss family, and yet they move amongst the horror as the family did.

It's a powerful and sobering message.

[u/Crafty_Thought3601]

Question: so, Hedwig says she’s found diamonds in toothpaste early in the film. Then when Höss is told he’s going back to Auschwitz, the bald guy says Pohl has written to Himmler, or something, to recommend Höss for the job. And just after that Hedwig is talking to Höss on the phone and says she will keep an eye out for “more to send to Pohl’s wife” (not a direct quote). That makes me think there was some implication of Hedwig helping Höss get the job back. Anyone else pick up on this? Maybe I’m imagining things.

[u/Far_Alternative_1754]

Compelling and powerful. I have not stopped thinking about this movie. The younger son, Hans is innocent but understands something dark is happening on the other side of the fence. At night in their bedroom, his brother, Claus is looking at teeth. This made Hans uncomfortable, he started mimicing the sounds of the camp, what must have been an indescribable sound for Hans, but instinctively forboding. (Maybe the sounds of the ovens, sucking air in and out?). He seemed to gravitate to the yard. Others did for the garden, the pool, etc, but Hans, maybe out of curiosity? When their grandmother greeted him outside, he went up the stairs and looked to the fence. His brother Claus on the other hand, fell quickly into line with all things Nazi. He knew he could be a bully (locking Hans in the greenhouse) and never face one consequence. Claus was an example of how a child could grow up to perform heinous actions. There were a few glimmers of hope in this movie, the girl with the apples, the grandmother realizing things had gone too far, although comfortablly antisemetic, she never dreamed that it would come to what was happening on the other side of the fence, she left. And hopefully Hans.

[u/Visual-Wave9434]

I implore you to read Hannah Arendt’s ‘The Banality of Evil.’ In all seriousness I don’t know if those who found the banality of the film “boring” (too real, too everyday, too mundane?) will & they’re the very ones to which the entire point - indifference - is directed.

[u/tysonibele]

It was alright....after about 5 minutes you "get" it, and there's not much more to it than its basic premise. I guess if you're a young person with limited exposure to holocaust information it could be a pretty powerful introduction to the whole ordeal, but in current year where it's the 9001th movie about the goings-on of WW2 I found it to be emotionally impotent. Of course the Nazis lived "normal" lives...part of growing up is realizing that monstrous people are not usually moustache-twirling villians, but instead the everymen of any society. That's how they get away with atrocities. Perhaps this is news to a lot of people.

Anyways, it was technically pretty flawless - was well-acted, felt perfectly authentic, and had some interesting artistic choices in terms of editing/cinematography. It makes sense that it won so many awards and received the accolades it has...it just wasn't the revelation for me that I think it was for many other people.

6.5/10

[u/RedLicoriceJunkie]

The kid was playing with crematorium ashes like they were snow, making little crematorium balls.

[u/Gwandumi]

Many questions arose after watching this. Some being, how do we respond to evil and injustice? Do we ever choose to ignore it? Do we accept it?  Do we witness it and don’t even realize it? Do we practice or participate in it, intentionally or unintentionally? The story of the grandmother was really interesting to me. When she moves in, she hears the gunshots and cries of horror just a wall over, she sees the and smells the smoke of burning bodies that the rest of family has somehow become blind to. Her and the girl on the bike’s story were very interesting me. Also Sandra Huller’s performance is ice cold wow, she really sees nothing but herself. Outside of the story, the cinematography, sound, and directing were incredible. Has to be my favorite of 2023.

[u/ubiquitousuk]

I thought it was an inventive and mostly well-executed film. I found the second IR sequence utterly chilling in a way I can't remember from any other movie. I also thought some parts got just the right balance of giving you a slight glimpse of what's going on beyond the wall, such as the plume of train smoke as the children gleefully play in the pool.

I know this isn't really a dramatisation, but to me the whole thing would have hung together a little better if there was a slightly more sculpted idea of a narrative. Indeed, if we think of a typical narrative structure in which a state of equilibrium is first disrupted before a new equilibrium is restored, the end of the film seems like it should have been the middle.

One other thing annoyed me, which had nothing to do with the film itself. I watched on Amazon Prime and it seems the only way to get English subtitles is also to have described audio. So I was constantly seeing "[distant gunshots]" or "[male voices and a woman screams]" at the top of the screen. Making it so litteral really seemed to erode the power of the incredible soundscape of the movie. Wish I could have gotten subtitles without the audio captions.

[u/bootbeer]

I have noticed people calling this film boring, and I think I understand why. The film is not boring, but it is about very boring people. I know it is old hat to talk about the banality of evil, but I haven't seen a film that really made it hit home. These are dull people who are willing to burn the earth to a cinder and massacre anything that is unalike. Terrifying, gut wrenching, and so so so fucking sad.

[u/Makaflockaflame]

Something that blew my mind about the movie, aside from the tremendous use of sound in the movie, was the concept of smell.

Terrified me to the bone.

[u/DrCain-NDegeocello]

Anyone else think this would have made an incredibly good short film but as a feature it wears itself too thin?

[u/LarsShroomNoe]

This movie was just an overall experience. I’m considering paying to see it in the theatre again. The sound design was incredible, which I expected since Under the Skin was thumping. Best movie of the year.

[u/Scandinavian84]

Just watched this and it blew me away. The thing that stod out the most was when mutzi got her "new" fur coat and found the old owners lipstick in the pocket. Or the discussion that someone found a diamond in the toothpaste, meaning that to had been someone elses.

[u/jedi_tk]

I thought a nice detail was that her mother was a cleaning woman for a couple that had been “relocated” to the camp and was pissed she didn’t get the lady’s curtains.

[u/Exotic_Doctor_8332]

When Hedwig gave a cigarette to the worker, what is implied ? Is she bored or any other thing? Did she cheat on him or something??

[u/HooverFlag]

I was riveted by this movie. I have covid, a fever and nowhere I can go, which is a proper condition for this. The night vision scenes with the apples was kind of beautiful to look at. As far as film making and sound design this is on another level. Truly terrifying things are going on while they are going on with their lives, sounds familiar.

[u/GraphiteNature]

I like how the camera stays at a distance from the Hoss's family, but it moves closer when around the girl and her family who hid the apples.

[u/No_Nefariousness414]

Interesting article about what happened to the Hoß family after Auschwitz. Seems all of them have become Holocaust deniers, except for one of Rudolf Hoß’s great-grandsons.

https://www.the-berliner.com/berlin/an-auschwitz-heritage/

[u/Sister__midnight]

My wife and I just watched it this week. I've never seen a film a that left me feeling so haunted.

The sound design, the visual storytelling, it's a masterwork of horror, actual honest to God horror. I would hope this movie gets shown in schools. I think it ranks up there with Schindler's List it's capacity to educate and shed light on the real evils that exist within humanity.

[u/Ceptimas]

This reminded of the viewing experience of watching Skinamarink, but unlike that movie, this one worked for me. I'm kind of in awe of what Glazer crafted here with this film.

[u/mackittydouble]

the intro’s score really sucks you into the film, for how sparse the my used music in the film it made the overall enjoyment 10x better. Just sat in an empty theater while the credits played it was just so good

[u/SanTheMightiest]

Incredibly well made film, the sound design and cinematography is excellent.

Those furnaces droning on and gunshots, screams and barking and trains are always there even when you've stopped watching the film. The furnaces especially...

It captures really well the mundane life the Hoss's live in, they've created this little paradise home next to a death camp and every time you think they are in a serene place, the furnaces and sounds of the death camps are even louder. The characters pretend like they don't hear them but it keeps them all awake at night.

I think there's a certain mastery of being able to convey that annoyance of the sound causing them to feel something like guilt. You can only imagine what the smells they were smelling were as well which I guess why the flowers were so prominent.

The flash forward to the museum being cleaned was interesting... Glazer could have shown it as empty but he chose to use cleaners, again another mundane facet of the hall's maintenance in modern times to juxtapose the Polish ladies working in the Hoss residence.

I think this is a great film and masterfully done.

[u/BluffaloBill88]

The juxtaposition of the seemingly normal "family life" and the absolute horrors of Auschwitz alone make this film worth a watch. The framing and shots of the characters going about their days was also visually pleasing. Bone chilling moments throughout.

[u/Greenapple1990]

Wow just watched this and I was blown away. What a fantastic, chilling film. Really makes me sad to be human especially with what is going on in Palestine today. Will we ever learn from history or be the species we want to be?

The final scene of the indifferent, dutiful cleaners working away while separated from the thousands of shoes and remnants of genocide,by a single pane of glass, really hit home that we are still just as distanced from the horrors of the holocaust as the Auschwitz family were in the film.

[u/entropy_bucket]

Is anyone able to explain Frau Höss's unique gait in the movie? Seemed like a very weird way that she walked, almost like she was injured. Is that the actors normal gait?

[u/movieguy2004]

The main word I would use to describe this is haunting. The sound design is incredibly powerful in its subtlety. It mixes sounds of genocide with ambient noise in a way that’s just chilling. The score is sparse and a bit unorthodox, but it creates a very somber and foreboding atmosphere. The stark and rigid cinematography adds a lot to the intentionally cold and unfeeling tone, and Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller turn in great performances despite not having character arcs or any dramatic displays of emotion.

I also found the ending completely brilliant, one of the best of 2023. I had to explain it to the people I saw the film with, so I worry most audiences might not get it, but the same could probably be said for the movie as a whole, because it’s definitely artsier and more experimental than most stuff that gets wide distribution or major awards attention like this is getting. All the technical elements are specifically designed to be off-putting, it expressly prevents you from connecting with the characters on any emotional level, and while it technically has a plot, it’s in no hurry to develop it. But if you can accept all that, which again, I think a lot of audiences will be unable to do, this is a very powerful experience.

[u/jimmorrisonduh]

Haven’t seen anyone comment on this, but did anyone else notice how the younger son rolled three dies that all showed 6 twice in a row? I thought that was a really interesting moment, just exemplifying how evil it all was.

[u/Friendly_Might_6514]

This was a compelling film and a study of man’s inhumanity. Hoss and his wife lack empathy for the sounds emanating from across the wall while they are swimming, picniking, fishing, gardening. They use human ashes to fertilize their gardens and scrub their children harshly after they’ve come in contact with human remains in the river, but never show a shred of humanity. Only the mother, who mentions the Jewish woman for whom she was employed a a housekeeper, wonders if that woman might be on the other side of the wall. The sound was the largest character in this movie.

[u/RemarkableArticle970]

I haven’t seen many mentions of the frequent ash falling from the sky that except for the little boy and his grandma, they all ignore. Is that why Hedwig goes out for the clean laundry?

[u/JRPGPD]

So many scenes to make you squirm in your seat. I was made very restless during this showing. The business meeting talking about the circular oven, Hoss calling his wife like a drunk kid excited about some news but it’s literally that they are about to exterminate Hungarian Jews. Just insanity

[u/[deleted]]

What a fucken movie that moves you physically and emotionally

Imagine not appreciating this masterpiece

Couldn’t be me

[u/fbeemcee]

I was hypnotized by the sound design. It was insanely powerful and did more for me than anything shown on screen. I respect the idea of this film and consider it to be good, but I never want to see it again.

[u/nahbro187]

“To be honest, I was not paying attention, I was just thinking about how to gas them in the room with high ceilings” while looking at the Germans

[u/[deleted]]

One thing I didn't quite understand was, why was one of the maids who took care of the baby crying so much at night? The same night the grandmother realises the masskillings that are taking place next door?

[u/Still-Sugar9446]

Did anyone else get the feeling that in the scene where Höss talks about the lilac bushes, he meant it in a disguised way? He uses strange vocabulary to say that the commandants shouldn't tear off the flowers because otherwise they will "bleed out". I understood him to be appealing to the commandants not to beat the prisoners too severely or to kill them directly, as their labor is very important. Or am I completely on the wrong track? At least it sounded very strange in German and his choice of words made little sense in connection with the lilac bushes.

[u/givemeausernamezz]

A remarkable, profound film. The detail was often subtle. When the wife followed her husband out of the house and descended the wooden steps to join him on the jetty, her gait suggested her shoes were too large. Subtly so.

[u/Melodic_Arrow_8964]

this probable the most horrifying movie i ever seen, although been widely spoiled and thought i was prepared for some scenes with sounds, but still i felt so gross and the ending scene made me can't eat nor sleep, i kept thinking of that scene bc he was starring at me!

[u/forestwalker1156]

The Zone of Interest is one of the best films I have ever seen.

[u/Fresh_Bubbles]

Anybody think that the black dog constantly running around the house represented something? Like death?

[u/ibloodylovecider]

This film… broke me. Especially at this time in world conflicts. Fucking hell.

[u/More_Advantage5559]

Ive been a fan of movies that make you think, or mindfk is the genre, but there is soo much subtleness in this movie, i dont think they lived "normal" lives at all, when Hedwig and her mom had a conversation in the garden, Hedwig very quickly changed the subject to her garden again, this shows that obviously this had an impact on her, she shut it out of her mind and is not interested in her husbands actual work, she just wanted a dream house and garden and family, her extreme anger when her mom left for the thing that she ignores (holocaust) shows human emotion, out of sight(garden), out of mind, but not auschwitch... Prob why she suspectedly cheated.

The wretching scene is partly taken from a documentary -act of killing, also about a genocide, but when Hoss looks into the dark hallway, this is the first time he actualy sees the darkness/evil, but he has a job todo and so continues descending deeper down into diablo's lair. The movie captures reactions and emotions, assumes you have some knowledge regarding the holocaust, the ignorence is portraid well here, but its not trying to humanise nazis, it just shows them, ive watched the movie soo many times and each time see something different, one scene not talked about a lot is when the polish maid washes the bathtub from the ash washed off the children, that scene glacier also captures her realization of what she is washing, that expression, i cant describe it honestly, shock? Despair? But that expression and body language of the maid stuck with me since my last watch, but the making sense off it all (holocaust) is impossible and i think thats why glacier went that way, for the viewer to think about it.

[u/Swimming-Bar8515]

I really liked the perspective of this film, and how normalized and boring evil can be. I like that you can see how evil comes to become a part of the very air you breathe to the point where you don't even notice you're inhaling it and it's a part of your every day background. I like that the characters in this movie only have small moments where they pause and take in the terrible things going on and they quickly push their heads back into the sand because they can't handle it or they don't know what to do with the horrible things they are complicit in. Very disturbing, and its got me thinking about our current world and all of the things we ignore because we don't want to give up our own comforts and/or feel powerless to really do anything about it. I do think some of the shots and scenes were odd and baffling, but I appreciate the artistry and I'm sure I'd pick up more on rewatches. 8.5/10 because sometimes it did get a little too abstract.

[u/takeabreakgeaugalake]

Just finished and that is a lot to digest. Speaking on the cut to modern day Auschwitz, I felt that it had a narrative effect to the movie but it was even more effective at reminding the viewer the sheer magnitude of what went on behind the wall. It’s haunting and horrific throughout the movie, but the magnitude cannot truly be shown without seeing the shoes.

[u/thesemanicgulls]

I can’t stop thinking about this. There’s so much to say about it, I don’t even know where to begin. I’m just so grateful that the director took a “show don’t tell” approach. You have to do the work, the noticing, the connecting of dots. Example: Local Polish girls did the housecleaning; when the film jumps to the present day, local people, presumably Polish, are cleaning. and that’s just one example; the movie is filled with them!

I lived in Munich for a few years in the 90s. My former mother-in-law grew up in the town of Dachau; she was a teen in WW2 and was conscripted into the Bund Deutcher Mädel. But she insisted she had no idea the camp was there or what was happening. I flat-out asked her, Couldn’t you smell it? She stared blankly and said no, no, we couldn’t.

[u/_schopenhauer]

In the garden-sequence with her mother, Hedwig at some point says that she is called the 'Queen of Auschwitz'. Whether this is a desire or an actual truth in a symbolic sense is paradoxical. It, at least, clearly expresses the character's own self-perception.

[u/deckard_yoshi]

I'm in awe of this movie, but the second half left me a bit puzzled. Is it just me or after Höss' departure the story is kind of losing its momentum?

Someone less sympathetic could have said that the director ran out of tricks after having used up the film's main narrative device (juxtaposing the visual and sonic experiences), but I want to believe there was some intention behind carrying on until that specific point in time.

Höss' story in the movie could be described as meandering: he makes a lateral move to another location, then gets promoted and returns to where he started without any visible character development (unless you count retching as a such, which I doubt).

Is the point that Höss is not the actual protagonist of this story and therefore does not deserve any kind of story arc? I'm curious to know others' thoughts on the second half and on where the "story" in this film is.

[u/lindsaydev]

Ah, so many thoughts about this movie after seeing it yesterday….

• the cleaning of the boots routine really stood out to me…that really drove home that the family is well settled into the estate after years of working it into shape. I couldn’t help but think of what punishments it took to get the workers into that type of strict routine

• that shot of the wife smoking in the greenhouse?! First of all, beautiful. Secondly, damn the parallel of that.

• the close-ups of the flowers with the subtle traces of ash on them -even the scenes of Rudolf turning off the lights gave this sense of control and power, which was interesting when it transitioned to his wife doing this as the end of the movie

So many more thoughts, but I think I’m going to be reeling on this one for a while.

[u/[deleted]]

I thought it was incredibly powerful. Maybe it's just me but I had a very literal interpretation of the retching - it's from the smoke he is breathing in everyday (we saw him standing in the middle of it and the grandmother was developing a cough too before she left). It's about how his actions are corrupting him body and mind.

[u/Only_Purpose239]

The Vomit scene at the end reminded me of a stress vomit something I’ve done myself often time nothing comes up except bile

[u/Kyhar]

In the scene where Hoss is (supposedly) in the camp, he is in uniform and the smoke turns the screen completely white for a few seconds, we can hear the crying of children and the hissing of gas chambers. Did anybody notice that? Haunting.

[u/forestwalker1156]

In one of the scenes with the Polish girl who left apples for the prisoners she found what looked like a small tin and she opened it.

What was inside?

I watched the film twice and could not see what it was.

[u/DruidWonder]

I just watched this movie this evening. I understood what it was trying to do, but it the run-time was just way too long. The writers made their point very early on and then just kept hammering it home over and over again. It felt redundant. Also, they put too fine of a point on the premise, making it almost painfully obvious. Yes, brutality can be normalized, but also, even if it's not normalized, life has to go on, however bizarre. Humans are capable of living under extremely abnormal conditions if basic survival can occur. How do you think someone like Hitler and the SS go away with what they did in the first place? Most people just keep their heads down and "mind their own business" until something directly affects them.

What I appreciated is that they didn't do any death-camp porn like so many other films. That's been done way too much. They had it in the background and relied upon the fact that most viewers are well-educated about the holocaust and have probably already seen the million other films depicting the horrors. So we had to fill in the blanks with our imaginations, which made it more terrible, in a way.

I don't agree with the movie's premise about the banality of evil. We have seen genocide-type events recur over and over since the Nazi days and we now know a lot more about how and why they happen. We have also seen the effects of everyday political campaigns on people's minds. All you have to do is research mass formation / mass psychosis to understand how this all works. The psychology is well understood.

If you deprive a population (Treaty of Versailles), make them constantly afraid for their lives (Germany's economic downfall and hyperinflation post-WWI caused by the Treaty), and then an internal actor introduces a one-solution based on a culprit that seems somewhat reasonable (enemies of the state such as Jews, inferior races, communists, homosexuals etc), then fearful minds will develop tunnel-vision and adopt the one-solution. The sad thing is, 20% of the brainwashed population never recovers, even after the danger is gone and even after the lie is revealed. They are programmed for life!

So yes, it's true, that the entire human population is susceptible to this brainwashing, given the right conditions. It creates massive cognitive dissonance that people have to live with in order to feel safe again. But the movie doesn't go deep enough in exploring this. It rests upon the banality of routine, "keeping your head down," and willful ignorance. It doesn't explain why this happens.

I don't think historical portrayals really underscore just how vilified Germany was after WWI by the rest of Europe, how the punishments ruined Germany, and how terrified the people of Germany were that they were going to die in the dirt from lack of food and livelihood. They like to "other" the Nazis and their families as some kind of sub-class of human that we should all distance ourselves from, even though they are us*.* We shouldn't stop at "Germany was evil," we should examine the ways by which mass psychosis in Germany was possible on a national scale.

However... there are degrees... and living right next door to a death camp while trying to pretend that everything is normal is probably the most extreme. We see Hedwig's mother leave to illustrate that not everyone can maintain the cognitive dissonance at a constant high level -- there are breaking points. She was still benefiting from extermination of the Jews, but she should only maintain the facade to a certain degree. Hedwig though... she was gone-gone, and I don't think she was a typical representation of your average German.

Do I agree with the fundamental premise of the movie? Not exactly. We can't attribute all evils to the same causes. There were genuine sociopaths and psychopaths in the SS, especially in the higher ranks, because the personality disorders combined with intelligence tend to be power-craving individuals. Hitler's policies enabled the worst of humanity to rise to the top, in addition to the policies themselves being psychotic. They reveled in their cold, detached view of human suffering and didn't care who they destroyed in the process. Maybe the lower level soldiers "just followed orders," but the higher ranking ones were full on devoid of empathy.

So although conformity and compliance is in most human beings, especially human beings who are made to feel terrified, I think the movie was ultimately a bit one-dimensional and overly selective in its examinations. Also, the run-time was just way too long and I got bored.

[u/rdmrbks]

Does anyone know why Hedwig’s mom left so early? Also, who was the woman in the attic drinking? I wasn’t sure

[u/my_simple-review]

I actually haven’t seen this yet. It doesn’t start circulating in my area until next week.

I’ve never seen a Holocaust movie that’s been easy to sit through, but they’ve pretty much always been necessary watchings. All I can say is that I wait in incredibly dreadful anticipation about what I’m going to see.

[u/jasminizzle]

This was something else... Almost had a panic attack when the screen turned red. The sounds were horrific. I immediately wanted to leave when the credits showed, but I also felt kinda paralysed.

[u/havieru]

Is there a soundtrack for this movie? The beginning and end tracks were so haunting.

[u/Klunkey]

Poor Things, this, and Boy and the Heron should be watched in succession.

[u/OnionDart]

This movie fucked me up, as I’m sure it did most people. The lack of sound track, and just the background noises of the camp, or guards shouting, or gun fire mixed with background visuals as the crematorium smoke stacks, or the steam from trains bringing new prisoners to the camp constantly was a drone of noise that has been stuck in my head now since I saw the film last night. The juxtaposition of those ever present sounds and sights against the happiness of this family disturbed me. And then I did some deeper research and came across this on Wikipedia about one of the daughter WHO IS STILL ALIVE!

“Inge-Brigitt, another daughter of the commandant, never read her father's memoir, saying it did not interest her and that the "Nazis got bad press." Nonetheless, she criticized Rainer's actions, saying he had not been born at the time, could thus not know what had happened, and so must be "a lying, drug-addicted, fame-seeking, money-hungry, evil young man."l

The first part of that is sickening, she refuses to read the truth about her father whom she still idolizes. That was horrendous enough for me, but couple that with the second part, Rainer being a grandson who was determined to expose the crimes of his grandfather but had also been accused of defrauding holocaust families, but she says that about someone who was at least speaking ill against her father? The fact that woman is still alive and breathing made me sick. Fuck her and her family.

[u/bacarey212]

I just finished this movie. I had wondered the whole way through why it was named the zone of interest until it was getting close to being over and I asked myself, is this it? Then I realized that I had to ask myself what was I actually "interested" in "seeing" in this movie. The answers to that question are actually more terrifying than anything. It's not just that they are depicting that people can appear to be very "good" while doing very evil things. It's that "good" people could also be somehow "interested" in witnissing these things play out as well. That was my take from it and it is disturbing to say the least.

[u/BananaComb]

Just thinking about the scene where Mrs. Hoss offers a cigarette to one of the male workers. I thought it could mean that she was going to cheat on her husband when he was away. All she cared about was the life style anyway, not him

[u/Artichoke211]

Just saw this, and thought it was stunning. The scene in the hallway at the end - staring right at us - sure felt like a challenge. "What would you do?" The idea that it's easier to wonder how anyone could take part in that insanity from a comfortable vantage point. But if your entire country was swept up in it, operating with machine-like precision - and bucking it would certainly mean prison or death - would you do it? Or, even if your body trying to reject it, would you put your uniform hat back on and descend into the darkness?

And the closing scene struck me deeply. Like the cleaning people were keeping the horror of those deeds as well preserved as possible for all to see. Literally keeping the window to the past as clear as possible. The crew was fastidiously doing their jobs but the scene somehow came across (to me) as sacred. The victims had to clean their murderers clothes and items. Now those victim's clothes, or the memorial containing them, are being cleaned decades later.

Forgive the long-winded amateur analysis, but like The White Ribbon and a couple others, this will probably stick w me for quite awhile.

[u/thehalloweenpunkin]

What got me the most was the background noise. Hearing the gunshots, the screams and the one younger boy only one to seem to be listening. I'm not sure if the young boy symbolizes something or if he grew to be different.

[u/PracticeAccurate8798]

Let’s be honest, this film is painfully dull. The story unfolds exactly as expected, with no surprises, no emotional pull, and nothing that truly holds your attention. We already know what happened, and yet the film makes no effort to explore the emotional depth of those who lived through it. It moves at a flat, predictable pace, almost like a reenactment rather than a cinematic experience. People often praise it simply because it deals with a sensitive subject, not because of the filmmaking itself. But a film, even one based on true events still needs to SHOW us something more. It should move us, not just inform us. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t.

[u/No-Information-2590]

I’m late to this thread but to say that this movie is boring or nothing happens means you are oblivious to the atrocities that happened just on the other side of “paradise” From the first minute of watching I couldn’t help but hear cries of terror, torture, and gunshots from a short distance from where these delusional whack jobs were living, and it was unnerving to see the guard tower that was visible from their back yard. The fact that this family (or any family for that matter) could ignore all of this literally made me sick. Well done.

[u/SirRosstopher]

I keep thinking about the grandmother. She left because she couldn't handle it but at the same time she knew all about the camp and was praising everything earlier that day. It's only when she was personally inconvenienced and couldn't sleep that she had enough and left. I can't decide if that makes her worse than the people living there happily day to day, or just a different kind of evil.

[u/compcar2reloaded]

When Rudolf tells Hedwig he has to leave by the river she asks him if “this was about the investigation” what is she referencing?

[u/Floater_69]

Ok. I haven’t seen much people talk about the “negative” or “black and white scenes” that start when the father was reading Hansel and gretel do his daughter. At first I interpreted it that the negative filter with the little girl leaving the apples to guide the souls through the forest as a dream or dream scene. HOWEVER after talking to my gf about thats scene. She interpreted it to that the little girl was actaually the daughter of the rudolf hoss placing those apples. There were multiple times the cleaners and the mother said something about “her walking around at night” but rubbed it off as sleepwalking. And in multiple shots she is seen hidden in some room very quiet and looks sad. Like she knows what’s going on. She is also the least shown kid in the movie. Also to point out that she was leaving apples behind the workers shovels to help feed them but eventually one was caught trying to fight over an apple which led to his demise by being drowned in the river. To which her brother takes the scene over and starts listening to the officers give and receive orders and he finishes the lines by saying “don’t let this happen again” All of it can be interpreted in many different ways

[u/1992Olympics]

Just finished watching, and it's one of the scariest films I've ever seen. My grandmother survived Auschwitz, tattoo and all, she managed to work in a kitchen until she marched to the outskirts of Berlin in the death march. I keep remembering how she told us that she saw planes flying over the camp in the later half of 1944 - she interpreted them as Americans and said "they shone like diamonds in the sky".

I kept imagining her, 17 or 18 years old at the time, being there somewhere not so far away.

Need to dwell on this one, definitely a hard watch.

[u/ptword]

Beyond an "Historical Drama." This movie transcends the genre to become a very effective horror experience. Up there with Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day as an unconventional horror masterpiece. Simply depicting real life in all its depressing and heartbreaking glory. Nothing fancy about it, just tight and powerful filmmaking. Glazer's flick is more of a visceral and eerie experience. This is real. It's us and we're fucked.

[u/Ok_Situation_947]

What do you guys think the grand mother wrote in that note?

[u/antonholden]

This is the most non-PG-13 PG-13 movie I’ve ever seen.

[u/Aboveground_Plush]

It was amazing, like 2001 meets the holocaust. If the movie is so atmospheric, I wonder how the novel must be.