How one girl conveys hope in the evil world of “Zone of Interest”

There’s something about sound that turns the human spirit upside down. Such is the case with director Jonathan Glaser’s latest film, The Zone of Interest.

The film follows the daily life of a family. There is a birthday celebration. A pet dog likes to follow its owner from room to room. A daughter who has sleepwalking problems.

However, these are not normal times and this is not a normal family.

The characters in question are Rudolf Hess, the Nazi commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp, his wife Hedwig, and their five young children. His family lives in an upper-middle-class suburb, but he has one small problem. It shares a wall with Auschwitz.

From the camp’s opening in 1940 until its liberation in 1945, more than 1.1 million men, women, and children were systematically murdered at Auschwitz. More than 11 million people were murdered in the Holocaust, 6 million of whom were Jews.

But Glazer’s camera never focuses on mass murder. Instead, the viewer is left with just a few impressionistic shots. There are flowers grown from human ashes, and shots of running red water as Hoss cleans the heels of his boots after a day’s work.

Viewers will never go inside the gates of Auschwitz, but they will hear about its horrors. A constant ambient soundscape hints at the unfathomable horror within. The sound of gunfire in the distance, the sound of machinery, the growling of a dog, the whistle of a train, the shrieking of parents separated from their children. Glaser’s depiction of the Holocaust is made all the more shocking because we never actually see it unfold.

“Director Glaser wants us to imagine living just like Rudolph, because his daily life is not affected by what he did or saw inside the concentration camp.” wrote author and director Enid Tihany Zentelis on Talkhouse. “The Holocaust has been so well written and analyzed by historians that no matter what country or time period we consider, it is a great example of humanity’s continued capacity for violence, depravity, and an astonishing lack of empathy. It would be an ideal study.”

Described by the Guardian as a “study in extreme cognitive dissonance,” Zone of Interest does have a ray of hope in the form of a young girl.

According to the Guardian, the film was shot with an infrared camera and switches from a hauntingly mundane atmosphere to nighttime scenes in which a young woman moves “almost like a ghost in front of the camera.” “[She] Secretly move through a construction site under the railway that leads to the camp. She places apples in the dirt for the starving prisoners on duty to find the next day. ”

This particular scene is the result of Glazer’s chance encounter with a 90-year-old Polish resistance fighter. This woman, called Alexandria, was only 12 years old when she rebelled against the Nazis and began hiding apples and other food for prisoners at Auschwitz.

In conversation with Alexandria, the woman revealed that while she was sorting out the food, she discovered a small sheet of music, written by composer Joseph Wolff, a prisoner of Auschwitz and a survivor of the war. There was found.

“She lived in the house we photographed,” Glazer told the Guardian. “It was her bike that we used and the dress that the actor is wearing was her dress. Sadly, she passed away a few weeks after we spoke.”

But her defiance became a ray of sunshine for Glaser in the darkest of subjects.

“That small act of resistance, that simple, almost sacred act of leaving food behind, is so important because it’s a single light,” he told the Guardian. “I really didn’t think this movie could be made at that point. I kept calling Jim, the producer, and said, ‘I’m going to be in it.’ You can’t do this. It’s too dark. ” I felt it was impossible to show complete darkness as it was, so I was looking for light somewhere and found it within her. She is a force for good. ”