Film / The Zone of Interest

"The vines will grow and cover it all"

"The heartfelt time we spent in the Höss house will always be among our most beautiful holiday memories. In the East lies tomorrow. Thanks for your National Socialist hospitality."

— A note left in the Höss house guestbook

The Zone of Interest is a 2023 drama film directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Under the Skin), starring Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller. It is (very loosely) based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Martin Amis.

Rudolf Höss (Friedel) is an SS officer and commandant of the infamous Auschwitz death camp. He lives in a pleasant little house next to the camp with his wife, Hedwig (Hüller), and his five children. As the crematorium constantly churns next door, the Höss family lives a mundane but joyful life, completely indifferent to the human suffering occurring on the other side of the concrete wall.

The film premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. It was released in theaters on December 15, 2023, distributed by A24.

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This film contains the following tropes:

• All for Nothing: The ending symbolizes how — in a stark contrast to Rudolf's pride over an "operation" named after him — Auschwitz and its legacy will eventually become a memorial museum and a respectful tribute to the victims of Nazis, not the Nazis themselves, least of all Rudolf, who isn't particularly well-known outside of history enthusiasts.
  • At several points in the film we cut to night vision sequences of the Polish servant girl hiding apples for the Jewish prisoners. Later in the film we overhear how two prisoners got executed over fighting over an apple. The implications are haunting.
• All There in the Manual: The screenplay reveals that the Polish girl seen in the night vision sequences is named Aleksandra.
• Bittersweet Ending: Played with. Rudolf has learned nothing and never will. If he ever had any humanity, it has slipped away from him and leaves him unable to function even in Nazi society where all he can think about at a party is the most efficient way to gas the room. The horrible work at Auschwitz continues. But the Nazis will lose the war, Auschwitz will be liberate and Rudolf will be caught and hanged. Auschwitz becomes a memorial to the victims while Rudolf and many like him will be forgotten.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: If the Hӧss family was ever disturbed by the terror on the other side of the concrete wall, they certainly aren't anymore. Notably, Hedwig's mother visits the house, and while she seems to have no qualms with Nazi ideology, she's horrified enough by the sight, sounds, and smells of the crematorium in operation that she leaves in the middle of the night — whereas even the young children are so used to it that they have no issues sleeping soundly and playing outside.
  • The Auschwitz Museum janitors in the Distant Finale nonchalantly clean the museum, the same places where the mass killings were done, estabilishing a contrast with Rudolf.
• Cue the Rain: It's bad enough when Rudolf realizes that the river he and his children are wading in is having human remains dumped into it — and then it starts to rain, soaking the children with precipitation contaminated by the operations of Auschwitz. The adults have to scrub them clean of all the ashen rain, and a houseworker is taken aback by the (unseen) amount of human ashes left over in the tub.
• Deadly Euphemism:
  • "The zone of interest" is what the area that would become the Auschwitz death camp was called while being constructed.
  • Hedwig and her friends refer to clothing items confiscated from Jewish concentration camp inmates as coming "from Canada" - referring to the Kanada warehouses of Auschwitz, so named for being a perceived land of plenty.
  • Rudolf sends a communication to other concentration camp employees to make sure, when "picking the lilacs", they do not "bleed" - one of the many strains of sexual violence implied by the film.
• Dissonant Serenity: The Movie. The Hӧss family enjoys a beautiful bucolic life while the Nazi death machine churns away next door. The whole crux of the movie is exploring the kind of callousness and inhumanity that would make Dissonant Serenity possible in such an environment.
• Distant Finale: The end of the film flashes forward to the present day, where various janitors maintain Auschwitz, now preserved as a museum.
• Distracted by the Luxury: While Hedwig and Rudolf at least seem to be true believers in the Final Solution, they're also shown relishing the material goods of their positions; Rudolf hoards Allied money, and Hedwig enjoys going through the clothes and jewels of Auschwitz victims.
• Dramatic Irony: Rudolf and Hedwig often muse about how much the former's work is important to the Reich and how it should be considered with more regard. Nowadays, Auschwitz is the first (sometimes only) concentration camp that anyone can name on the spot, with its liberation by the Soviet Red Army on 27 January 1945 being remember all over the world as the International Holocaust Rememberance Day.
• Drone of Dread: The constant industrial activity of the death machine next door is omnipresent throughout the film. Mica Levi's score, when it shows up, also features this.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Rudolf loves his wife and is a very loving and active father to his children, going on canoeing trips and reading to his daughter at night. However, rather than make you sympathize with the man, it only serves to highlight how callous he is to show such love and care for his family while overseeing such atrocities without any real emotion.
• Everyone Has Standards: Hedwig's visiting mother is hardly sympathetic to the plight of the Jews on the other side of the wall at first, and seems quite proud of her daughter for the life she's attained. However, when she sees the crematorium in operation through her first night at the house, she's horrified enough to leave in the middle of the night.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Dilla, the family dog, obeys its owners' commands but is agitated throughout the entire movie.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Hedwig's mother does have some standards, but she's shown smugly reminiscing that she lost a street auction for a pair of curtains, and wonders if the owner is in Auschwitz without any emotion.
  • While Hedwig is genuinely proud of Rudolf's achievements, she refuses to leave Auschwitz even though it means being separated from him because she's so proud of the house she's built.
• Faux Affably Evil: Rudolf reads his children bedtime stories, is polite and affectionate to his wife, and loves his horse. He is also the commandant of Auschwitz, sexually extorts his inmates, and orders prisoners to be drowned for minor infractions.
• Final Solution: Taking place at the height of Nazi Germany, the film follows Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss as he comes up with newer, more "efficient" ways of exterminating Jewish people.
• Foregone Conclusion: No matter what Rudolf and his family may feel about it, the Third Reich will carry on the extermination until its downfall and, after the war, Auschwitz will be remembered as the epitome of the Holocaust and its horrors.
• Foul Flower:
  • Rudolf's almost comical rant about "picking the lilacs" is implied to be about the SS guards raping the prisoners.
  • Hedwig takes great care of the garden, and sends flower bouquets as gifts to other high-ranking officers. She is completely unfazed by the fact that said flowers are separated only by a wall from the death camp.
• Heel Realization
  • Hedwig's mother seems completely indifferent to the suffering of the Jewish prisoners at first, but during the night she’s unable to ignore the horrors of the camp and leaves her daughter’s house in the middle of the night.
  • Rudolf possibly has one in the final scenes, when he's caught by fits of dry heaving followed by a vision of the future, when Auschwitz has become a museum and the Holocaust is remembered in all its infamy. After a brief hesitation, however, he continues like nothing has happened.
• Historical Domain Character: Unlike the source material, whose commandant is named Paul Doll, the characters here are explicitly the real-life Rudolf Höss and his family.
• Housewife: Hedwig is dedicated to building a beautiful household and garden for her husband and their multiple children while he goes and works. This would be all fine and good, except her husband is a Nazi bigshot and she's blithely ignoring the human cost of her house and home.
• Ignored Epiphany: The ending sees Rudolf faced with a vision of the future: the Auschwitz death camp preserved as a museum detailing the atrocities of the long-gone Nazi regime. He only stares blankly before continuing his journey down a flight of stairs into darkness.
• Implied Rape: Although it is never shown or discussed directly, a strain of sexual violence runs through the film. Rudolf warns fellow SS guards to take care while "picking the lilacs" so that they don't "bleed", and on the phone with another SS member tells him that he'll "see him at selection", where he will "have his pick" of new Dutch concentration camp inmates. We also see him washing his genitals after (it's implied) having sex with an inmate in his office.
• In Name Only: While Martin Amis’ novel was inspired by Rudolf Hӧss and his family, their names were changed and a number of subplots were added. This adaptation uses the real names and does away with all subplots, putting the focus squarely on the family living at Auschwitz.
• Industrialized Evil: As in real life, Auschwitz is the epitome of this trope: a brutal labor camp where death itself has become strictly regimented and industrialized. The crematorium disposing of the bodies makes an infernal noise.
• It's All About Me: Rudolf is obsessed with furthering his own career and Hedwig is obsessed with furthering her social status, with neither of them bothering to stop and think about the thousands of Jews being murdered as a result of their actions.
• Jerkass: Hedwig is ridiculously rude and domineering to the Polish housemaids, on top of actively encouraging her husband's worst traits so she can stay at the top of German society.
• Killed Offscreen: Everybody. There are no onscreen deaths, but between the constant smoke from the chambers, the screams of prisoners, the discussion of deaths, and the gunshots, it's extremely clear what's happening.
• Lack of Empathy: The entire point of the film. While Rudolf and Hedwig are empathetic to each other and those closest to them, they are otherwise completely devoid of compassion for the thousands of Jews that are being slaughtered right next door on a daily basis.
• Lady Macbeth: Hedwig somehow manages to seem just as deplorable as her husband, who is literally the commandant of Auschwitz. Her day to day concerns are simply about making her house feel as much of a palace as possible, nevermind that it is quite literally across the street from the camp, which means the atrocities there can be easily overheard. She treats her hired help like trash and loots the facility that contains all the clothing and personal effects that were confiscated from the Jews, something she is very glib about. And when her mother flees the house during the night with nothing but a note, the next morning Hedwig burns the note after reading it then cruelly berates one of the maids for setting out two plates for breakfast instead of one.
• Meaningful Background Event: Throughout the movie. The camera never shows the inside of Auschwitz, but the sounds—crematoria engines, machine guns rattling, barking dogs—can be heard throughout. The chimneys of the crematoria are often shown in the background, belching smoke and flame. Many times trains can be heard or seen in the background, carrying Jews to the camp.
• Minimalism: The movie is presented in a detached and sparse manner. There are no opening titles, only two minutes of a black screen. The majority of the movie is filmed in static wide-shots. Close-ups are rare, as is any movement of the camera. The editing never does anything fancy like a dissolve, instead relying on hard cuts.The score is absent apart from a few stings and the ending credits. The events taking place in Auschwitz next door are never directly shown, only witnessed second-hand and heard in the background throughout.
• Nice to the Waiter: Hedwig is horrid to her maids, which is in line with what one would expect from the wife of a high-ranking SS officer unconcerned with the genocide her husband helps perpetuate.
• No Antagonist: Without any battles near Auschwitz (yet) or Jews capable of fighting back, the only thing standing in the protagonists' ways is their own Lack of Empathy.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: A local girl risks her life to sneak food to the prisoners... Only for a fight to break out over the apples she's stashed, leading to the prisoners dying anyway.
• Nothing Is Scarier: At no point in the movie do we see any of the violence on the other side of the concrete wall, but we can hear plenty.
• Nouveau Riche: Hedwig has a rather clumsy and ungainly gait — obviously not a poised socialite — and secretly tries on a fur coat and lipstick, both luxuries of which the Nazi regime heavily disapproved. She and Rudolf are both implied to come from modest means before being elevated in the SS.
• Off-into-the-Distance Ending: After having a vision of the future in which Auschwitz is being operated as a museum and memorial to the dead, Rudolf descends a flight of stairs into the darkness. It's obviously symbolic of Höss's fate, arrested by the Allies and eventually hanged on the grounds of Auschwitz in 1947.
• Oh, Crap!: As Rudolf fishes in the river, the water begins to cloud, and he plucks a skeletal jaw from the depths. Realizing that ashes from the murdered prisoners are being dumped into the same river in which his young children are playing, he hastily orders them out.
• Pet the Dog: Used to show how utterly insignificant this trope would be in real life. Upon being sent away from Auschwitz, we see Rudolf tearfully say goodbye to his beloved horse; when we see him in Oranienberg, he's shown cooing over a dog he encounters on the street. Of course, immediately before those scenes, we see him (respectively) wash his genitals after sexually assaulting an Auschwitz prisoner and ordering a prisoner to be drowned for fighting over an apple.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Rudolf, Hedwig, and every willing Nazi that appears in the film are defined by their belief that mass murder of Jews and all kinds of "undesirable" people is justified.
• Pretty in Mink: At one point, Hedwig tries on a fur coat that once belonged to one of the prisoners at Auschwitz.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Deconstructed. Rudolf's evil is mainly contained to his role as overseer of Auschwitz, a role he takes pride in but only in a professional sense and he's otherwise a stern but caring father and husband. Rather than afford him any sympathy, his detachment from the evil he perpetrates only serves to make Rudolf that much more loathsome.
• Rags to Riches: Downplayed. While it's unclear what their life was like before Rudolf became the Commandant of Auschwitz, the family is clearly upwardly mobile. Hedwig's mother even mentions that she used to clean the apartment of a wealthy Jewish woman, and wonders if that woman’s in the camp now.
• Rape Discretion Shot: Rudolf's rape of an inmate is portrayed very discreetly: she's shown taking off her shoes and sitting expressionlessly opposite him. Cut to afterwards, and he's shown washing his genitals.
• Reality Has No Soundtrack: Most scenes play out without music, letting the sounds of what's happening in the camp next door dominate the ear.
• Rule of Symbolism: In the final moments of the film, Rudolf descends a dark staircase, pausing occasionally to retch his guts out. As he continues he stops, looks down a long hallway and seems to peer into the future where he sees the modern day Aushwitz being cleaned, the facility he put so much effort into now a monument to the suffering of its victims rather than the "greatness" of its architects. At this, Rudolf stares and...continues down the staircase, disappearing into the darkness.
• Scream Discretion Shot: Essentially a feature-length one of these, as screams of pained concentration camp prisoners permeate the walls.
• Shout-Out: Rudolf's fit of nausea at the end is a reference to the ending of the documentary The Act of Killing, in which a retired genocidal soldier is hit with a wave of retching as he feels a pang of remorse.
• Sleeping Single: Rudolf and Hedwig sleep in separate beds and have no intimate contact of any kind during the film, making their relationship seem more like that of business partners than a happily married couple.
• Stress Vomit: In the final scenes, Rudolf is caught several times by a fit of dry heaving while descending a staircase. Whether this is due to a glimmer of conscience, which he ignores after few moments of hesitation, to the high expectations that weigh on him or to the deterioration of his health, is left without answer.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Rudolf is far from the idealized Aryan beauty, with his rather geeky physique, while Hedwig is a pretty but rather clumsy and nagging wife. Overall, they would look like a normal petty-bourgeois couple that is awkwardly trying to adjust to a Nouveau Riche status... except that Rudolf's job is overseeing a death camp, with Hedwig being full aware of the husband's actions.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: The concentration camp's noise and activities bleed into the children's play and upbringing: the elder son stays up at night to examine the gold teeth extracted from Jewish prisoners and later locks his brother in the greenhouse while playfully making noises similar to gas being released; the younger son bangs on a drum to imitate gunshots and later pretends to be an officer scolding a prisoner; one of the daughters sleepwalks often and unsettles Rudolf; and the baby cries constantly, rarely at peace.
• Unreliable Voiceover: A voiceover is heard dictating a letter stating all the "achievements" that Rudolf Höss has carried out whilst commandant. Mostly written in a businesslike manner. This is contrasted with Rudolf going through American and British currencies that he has stolen from his inmates.
• Villainous Parental Instinct: Deconstructed. Both Rudolf and Hedwig are devoted, loving parents to their children. However, far from making them more sympathetic, it only highlights their self-interest and depraved indifference to the atrocities happening next door.
• Villain Protagonist: Two, in the persons of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his ice-cold wife Hedwig.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The audience repeatedly sees scenes of a local girl who sneaks past the guards to hide food for the prisoners, then discovers a piece of sheet music written by one. She brings it home and performs it on the piano, and is then never shown onscreen again.
• Workaholic: Rudolf works around the clock to keep the Auschwitz concentration camp running. When he's transferred to another location, Hedwig justifies her decision to stay at the camp with the children by pointing out that he'd probably never be home anyway.

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