One of the cruelest films nominated for the 2024 Oscar, it is an allegation about evil and violence. That, from a family’s point of view. But no, just anyone, but the wife and children of the commandant of a concentration camp. Tape The area of interest, by Jonathan Glazer, analyzes the Holocaust from the perspective of Rudolf Höss’s environment. This was the visible head of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex on two occasions. First from May 1, 1940 to December 1, 1943. Then, between May and September 1944. On both occasions, the machinery made up of crematory ovens and other forms of torture, They murdered more than a million people.
The feature film is a free adaptation of the novel of the same name by Martin Amis, published in 2014. But Jonathan Glazer, who also wrote the script, took the fiction, the result of long and careful research, and transformed it into something more. Close to an almost scientific exploration of the lifestyle of the Nazis of the time, the film is much harsher and more frontal than its literary version. If in the book, there are three protagonists who tell about life on the outskirts of the concentration camp, in the film there is only one. Furthermore, the director dispensed with using a fictitious name and used the real name of the figure on which the character was based. The war criminal Rudolf Höss emerges from the cinematic story as an ordinary figure.
In fact, much of the film delves into the common life of his family members. The film, which uses its considerable visual resources to avoid embellishing or ennobling life inside Auschwitz, is chilling in its realism. Especially by showing in detail the way in which day-to-day life went on within the security fences of the complex with silent placidity. In contrast, and beyond the contemplative close-ups and still shots, violence is barely hinted at with columns of smoke and sporadic screams. Therefore, the premise tries to delve into the banality of evil not through messages or dialogues, but by embodying the concept through its characters.
A window to moral degradation
But how real is what counts? The area of interest? Was such a daily life possible within a complex dedicated to mass murder? The answer is terrifying and is included in the book on which the film is based. The writer Martin Amis used data from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum to place his characters and give them a realistic tone. And although the figures in the narrative are not real, the story that is told through them is. Namely, that while he commanded the camp, an estimated 1.1 million men, women and children were murdered. The majority were Jewish, but also a considerable proportion of the Polish population.
At the same time that such barbarism was occurring, Höss’s family led a comfortable life in the Auschwitz complex. Just as the film shows, the so-called Interessengebiet or area of interest, extended to 15 square kilometers. Far enough from the crematorium ovens and other concentration camp buildings to allow members of its leaders to enjoy relative tranquility. But so close, as to make it easy for them to carry out their tasks of stewardship, direction and leadership of troops.
In the case of the Höss house, it was on the grounds of the oldest part of the concentration camp, Auschwitz I, and included a spacious house and a garden. In fact, according to the German commander I would write During his confinement before being executed in the same place, life was “placid and quiet.” Furthermore, it had no connection – at least, in physical proximity – with the horrible events that were occurring a little further away.
War in a domestic perspective
If something surprises, both from the source book and the movie The area of interest of Glazer, is the fact that ordinary life was possible in a place surrounded by horrors. A point on which Martin Amis’s narration places special emphasis by making it clear that the problem of evil, As the Nazis understood it, everything depended on the orders to be followed.
Rudolf Höss, who was executed on April 16, 1947, due to his crimes against humanity, took his family to the area. Not only that, but for years, she raised her children near the place where hundreds of people were murdered every day.
In the same way as in the novel, Jonathan Glazer’s film shows horror from an icy distance. Which suggests that the concept of modern evil is much more elaborate — and fearsome — than one might suppose. Something that the Oscar-nominated film makes clear and shows in all its cold rawness.