Jonathan Glazer directs a major film about the Shoah, Grand Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival

“The Zone of Interest” is Jonathan Glazer’s first film, ten years after “Under the Skin”, a return to cinema with a moving film

Coming from music videos and advertising, Jonathan Glazer is a rare director since The Area of ​​Interest is his first film in ten years, after his very successful Under the Skin with Scarlett Johansson as an exterminating alien. He addresses a completely different subject with The Area of ​​Interest, where he portrays the commander of the Auschwitz extermination camp, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, attached to their residence near the camp, ignoring the hell they live next to. Never has the Shoah been discussed with such asceticism: overwhelming.

Rare modesty

The commander of the Auschwitz extermination camp, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their children, live in an “idyllic” pavilion adjoining the barracks. When he is appointed to other positions, his wife pushes him to do everything to convince his superiors to keep him in his position, in order to remain in what she considers to be a “paradise”.

Demanding in his rigorous staging, where millimeter framing would be one of the fine arts, Jonathan Glazer creates with The Area of ​​Interest a film of rare modesty on the delicate subject of the Shoah in cinema. The Höss couple’s delightful pavilion surrounded by gardens, the object of all their attention, is much more important than the extermination of Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals, the efficiency of which the camp commander strives to improve. Disturbing dreams depicted in black and white negatives are also very significant and disturbing, like an outlet for repression.

Mise en abyme

From the camp, we can only see a few barracks behind a surrounding wall, while black smoke discreetly rises in the distance. The roar of the crematoriums is incessant and we hear the daily merry-go-round of the trains, or a few howls and gunshots, while the couple cultivate their flowers and their vegetable garden in indifference to what is happening next to them . We will see very few deportees on screen, and they are completely trivialized. Unsaid, put into abyss, the horror only acquires more force behind these images of flowers, of countryside parties, or during the donations of clothing stolen from prisoners, distributed to relatives, or even when the wife says she found a diamondintelligently” hidden in a tube of toothpaste.

Chilling, The Area of ​​Interest plays on ambiguity at its end, showing Commander Höss who seems affected, retching, faced with the horror he is responsible for, but who is unable to regurgitate. The contemporary images of the Auschwitz camp memorial museum stand out from what precedes them, and are they really necessary? Attached to the relationship between image and music, Jonathan Glazer called on composer Mica Levi, who signs a remarkable score, to which the director entrusts a large place as a true actress in the production. Grand Prize at the last Cannes Film Festival, The Area of ​​Interest deserved the Palme.

The sheet

Gender : Historical drama
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Actors: Sandra Hüller, Christian Friedel, Ralph Herforth
Country : United States / Great Britain / Germany
Duration : 1h46
Exit : January 31, 2023
Distributer : Bac Films

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