One of the most violent films nominated for the 2024 Oscars is a statement about evil and violence.. This is from a family point of view. But no, anyone, but not the wife and children of the concentration camp commandant. Ribbon Area of interestJonathan Glaser analyzes the Holocaust from the perspective of Rudolf Höss’s circle. Twice he was the visible head of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. First from May 1, 1940 to December 1, 1943. Then from May to September 1944. In both cases, crematorium machines and other forms of torture killed more than a million people.
The feature film is a loose adaptation of the novel of the same name by Martin Amis, published in 2014. But Jonathan Glaser, who also wrote the screenplay, took fiction, the product of long and careful research, and turned it into something more. . Close to an almost scientific study of the way of life of the Nazis of that time, the film is much harsher and more frank than its literary version. If the book has three main characters talking about life on the outskirts of a concentration camp, then the film has only one. In doing so, the director abandoned the fictitious name and used the real name of the character on whom the character is based. War criminal Rudolf Höss emerges from cinematic history as an ordinary character.
In fact, most of the film is about his family’s life together. The film, which uses its considerable visual resources so as not to embellish or sanitize life in Auschwitz, is frightening in its realism. Especially because it shows in detail how everyday life goes on with silent calm inside the security fences of the complex. In contrast, other than contemplative close-ups and still shots, there is little hint of violence from plumes of smoke and sporadic screams. Therefore, the premise tries to delve into the banality of evil not through messages or dialogue, but by embodying the concept through its characters.
Window into moral degradation
But how real is what matters? Area of interest? Is such daily life possible in a complex dedicated to mass murder? The answer is terrifying, and it is included in the book on which the film is based. 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 story are not real, the story told through them is real. Namely, that while he commanded the battlefield, an estimated 1.1 million men, women and children were killed. The majority were Jews, but also a significant part of the Polish population.
While such barbarity was taking place, the Höss family was living a comfortable life in the Auschwitz complex. As shown in the film, the so-called Interessengebiet or area of interest extended to 15 square kilometers. Far enough from the crematorium furnaces and other concentration camp buildings that members of its leaders could enjoy relative peace. But so close that it would be easier for them to carry out their tasks of command, control and leadership of the troops.
In the case of the Höss house, it was located in the oldest part of the Auschwitz I concentration camp and included a spacious house and garden. In fact, according to what the German commander wrote during his imprisonment before his execution in the same place, life was “calm and calm.” Moreover, it had no connection – at least no physical proximity – with the terrible events taking place a little further.
War from an internal perspective
If something surprises you, both from the original source and from the film Area of interest Glaser, is the fact that ordinary life was possible in a place surrounded by horrors. A point that is emphasized in Martin Amis’s narrative, making it clear that the problem of evil In the Nazi understanding, everything depended on orders that had to be followed.
Rudolf Höss, executed on April 16, 1947 for crimes against humanity, took his family to the area. Not only that, she raised her children for years next to a place where hundreds of people were killed every day.
Just like the novel, Jonathan Glaser’s film depicts horror from a glacial distance. This suggests that the concept of modern evil is much more complex and terrifying than one might assume. Something that the Oscar-nominated film makes clear and shows in all its cold rawness.
Source: Hiper Textual
