Nazi drama with Sandra Hülser in the cinema from today

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What a wonderful day! How the lake glitters. How exuberantly the children frolic around. How lush and green the grass sways in the wind. It’s hard to imagine a more relaxed summer getaway. A family trip to Auschwitz, Polish: Oswiecim, can be so wonderful.

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But it could also be that Papa Rudolf suddenly discovers remains of bones and ashes while fishing. In a panic, he grabs the children. At home, the strangely obedient employees have to rub the little ones in the bathtub.

The name of the concerned father: Rudolf Höß. Occupation: Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He and his wife Hedwig live with their five children next to the camp. The garden of the Höß villa borders directly on the concentration camp wall: “We’re still planting wine there,” says Hedwig in the cinematic drama “The Zone of Interest,” which is unsettling from the first to the last minute.

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Rudolf Höß has appeared in the cinema before. He had a smaller appearance in Steven Spielberg’s survival drama “Schindler’s List” (1993). In “From a German Life” (1977) by Theodor Kotulla, Höß (Götz George) calmly confirmed to his wife that he would also kill their children if the order came. This is what the real Höß said in the interrogations before his execution in 1947.

From the very beginning, there is a sense of unease: before the screen shines with glaring light, it remains black for minutes. We listen to a cacophony that is hard to define. Is that what Auschwitz sounds like? You can’t relax for a moment in this chilly film. Later we can better understand the noise coming from beyond the wall. Yelling, screams of fear, lashes, shots. The daily torture in the camp. We don’t get to see the people in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Nobody has ever talked about the Holocaust like that. At its festival premiere in Cannes, “The Zone of Interest” was hailed as a masterpiece. Director Jonathan Glazer (“Under the Skin”) won the Grand Jury Prize for the film adaptation of Martin Amis’s novel, and his film is nominated for an Oscar five times.

The ashfall is a bit annoying

Fade into everyday family life: Mother Höß (Sandra Hülser) is busy beautifying her “paradise garden”. Sunflowers, dahlias, roses, beans, kohlrabi (“the kids eat lots of those”) thrive. For him, Hedwig is the “Queen of Auschwitz,” says her husband. Only the ash rain on the flowers every now and then is a little annoying.

However: Hedwig’s mother (Imogen Kogge) cannot ignore what is happening behind the wall when she visits – also because of the hissing of the chimneys at night. She leaves hastily. Hedwig is angry and threatens her house slave: “If I ask my husband, he will immediately have your ashes scattered over Oswiecim.”

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The commander is working hard to increase the efficiency of the cremation ovens: an emissary from the oven company Topf & Söhne has invented a “ring cremation oven”. This makes “continuous operation” possible, according to the expert. Trains carrying hundreds of thousands of Jews deported from Hungary are expected to arrive soon.

At night, Höß and his wife lie in two single beds. A young Jewish woman in the camp has to be used for sex. Rudolf Höß then goes into the cellar and washes off his genitals.

One night we see a girl from the village hiding apples and potatoes in the fields for the forced laborers. The director films with a thermal imaging camera. Another spooky twist in this thoroughly spooky film.

Ban on images of the Holocaust

After 1945 there was an attempt to ban images of the Holocaust. Every illustration means a “trivialization of the event,” said the Frenchman Claude Lanzmann. Auschwitz should not be re-enacted – out of respect for the victims. For his nine-hour film essay “Shoah,” Lanzmann traveled to Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz and other camps for eleven years between 1974 and 1985. He managed without archive images or photographs of corpses.

The ban on images was broken in the entertainment sector at the latest with the fictional television series “Holocaust” (1979), filmed in the gas chambers of Mauthausen. The Italian Roberto Benigni told a concentration camp fairy tale in “Life is Beautiful” (1997).

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The Brit Glazer refuses as much as possible to stage the horror on film. For him, Höß and his wife are prototypes of repression. They are representative of the Germans who settled their lives while the Jews disappeared.

Hedwig twists and turns in front of the mirror in a fur coat brought from the other side of the wall. At the coffee klatch, the officers’ ladies are amazed at how inventive the Jews are when it comes to hiding. Hedwig finds a diamond in a tube of toothpaste – and immediately orders a few more tubes. We viewers are condemned to take on the perspective of the perpetrators.

Can you avoid the monstrous murder by looking away? At night Hedwig puts the schnapps bottle to her mouth. Sandra Hülser said in an interview with the Editorial Network Germany (RND) about her character: “I couldn’t find a moment in which I said: Now I understand why Hedwig acts like that. She was one hell of a perpetrator. That’s why this film was more of a physical approach.”

Shortly before the end, the film jumps to the present: in today’s Auschwitz memorial, cleaners sweep and vacuum the barracks between display cases full of shoes and suitcases. Then the film flashes back again: Rudolf Höß stops on a grand staircase after a party and vomits.

“The Zone of Interest”, directed by Jonathan Glazer, with Sandra Hülser, Christian Friedel, Imogen Kogge, 105 minutes, FSK 12