‘The Zone of Interest’ and the Art of Evil
There are only a few pieces of art which I could, or would, describe as being evil. Jonathan Glazer’s ‘The Zone of Interest’ is one of them.
That is not to say that the film itself has a message of evil, or that its directing, acting, or production are tainted by morals I take issue with — take for example, a film like ‘Sound of Freedom’ whose conspiracy-theory narrative is one I find to be repugnant and insulting. Instead, the evil of ‘The Zone of Interest’ is inherent to the subject matter and the themes explored within.
For those unfamiliar, the 2023 film focuses on the Höss family, whose patriarch — Rudolf Höss — is the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz. As a high-ranking Nazi, Rudolph and his family live just outside the concentration camp’s walls. Met with critical acclaim, the film has recently been nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards, earning its place as one of the few international films to receive such a nomination.
It’s sufficient to say, any film dealing with the Holocaust will be a disturbing and upsetting watch in one way or another. However, ‘The Zone of Interest’ does something different in its use of the visual, and more crucially, auditory, medium which elevates it to this place of evil.
Within the first few minutes of the film, it’s clear that something is amiss, or perhaps more accurately, just plain wrong. I could feel it not just in my heart, but in my mind. A black screen pulsates with a barrage of music (some of the only time music is heard throughout the film) mixed with the sounds of birds, machinery, screams, and gunshots. It’s a hypnotic and nauseating introduction and, as a person with epilepsy, I can say it’s the closest experience I’ve ever had watching a piece of film that captures the same feelings I’ve experienced before and during a seizure. And then, once the unbearable sense of rising panic stretches on just long enough for you to start thinking, ‘How can I escape?’ there’s a hard cut to a happy and healthy family enjoying the serenity of a river. So, begins, ‘The Zone of Interest.’
The initial impulse with any film is to compare it with other films of similar subject matter and tones. I’ve had friends ask me how this is comparable to Steven Spielberg’s ‘Schindler’s List’ while other reviews have compared the film tonally and visually to the work of Stanley Kubrick. These are fine comparisons to make, but neither really gets to the crux of the film or the emotional impact it had for me. Instead, my mind went to other forms of art, namely paintings.
I thought of paintings like Francisco Goya’s ‘Saturn Devouring His Son,’ Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica,’ and Ilya Repin’s ‘Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan.’ There are two key elements in all three of these paintings and the film which ultimately serve their macabre natures — history and humanity.
‘The Zone of Interest’ is based on facts. Its characters are true to life and the settings are ones which we can and do visit and tour today. Similarly, all three paintings also drip with history. Goya’s piece, though mythological, is heavily inspired by the Peninsular War and the Spanish Inquisition. Picasso’s is a reaction to the Bombing of Guernica in 1937, making it the only other piece with a direct link to World War II and its fascism. And Repin’s work depicts the Russin Tsar Ivan IV after he murdered his own son in 1581. Knowing the depictions are of historical events, or are based on such, I believe, makes these pieces of art all the more disturbing. That’s because they are not fantastic horrors which are impossible to comprehend. They’re tangible.
And though his film is rooted firmly in history, director Jonathan Glazer himself is keenly aware of the modern implications The Zone of Interest’ has. “I was determined to make it not about then, but about now,” he said in a Rolling Stone interview. “Because this movie isn’t a document. It’s not a history lesson. It’s a warning.” That kind of warning is potent precisely because it has precedent to refer to. It’s the actions and behavior we see from the Höss family that highlight just how easy it can be for people to block out atrocities.
And that leads to the second aspect of the film and evil art — they all involve people. Throughout ‘The Zone of Interest,’ we can clearly see the juxtaposition between the manmade and nature. Nature is depicted as being beautiful, untainted, colorful, and yielding lifesaving produce. It’s a tranquil river, a bouquet of flowers, a bushel of apples. Meanwhile, everything constructed by humans is sterile, machine-like, cold, and rigid. There’s a empty, blank wall that separates the Höss family garden from both Auschwitz itself and the nature that surrounds the concentration camp. We can see the Höss’s try to cultivate and control nature in their private spaces, just as we can hear the Nazi’s do with the prisoners on the other side of the camp wall. And in both cases, it’s because they believe it is their right to do so — it is their “living space” after all. But these acts and spaces can only be achieved by humans. The smokestacks, polluted rivers, and gunshots heard within the camp are all unnatural, but they are human.
This fact alone is not just unsettling but itself, evil, because we are the ones who are tarnishing the world through our efforts to either ruin or control nature instead of just living in harmony with it. At its core, ‘The Zone of Interest’ and all these other pieces of evil art show acts which are, terrifyingly, only ones which can be done by humans. They focus on humans: killing, exterminating, and consuming others. Each act creates generational suffering which abhors us and points a mirror to our own behavior as individuals and as a species, in the past and with an eye towards the future.
There’s humanity without hope, humans doing the most heinous acts that could never be found in nature, and the perpetrators and enablers becoming so desensitized, that their evil deeds are no longer perceived. The sights are quarantined and the sounds ignored. ‘The Zone of Interest’ shows a sickness of the human condition and, most terrifyingly, a wickedness that can and is only found in humans. This is what makes it evil art, but crucially for us as viewers, essential art. The uncomfortable is necessary if we are to have any chance at changing our nature and disavowing the evil we see and hear.
