There are films that last a long time. This is the case of The area of interestan extraordinary film by Jonathan Glazer, submitted by Great Britain to the Oscars and showing the daily life of Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), commandant of the Auschwitz extermination camp, his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their children.
There is no opening image, the screen is black. The music composed by Mica Levi evokes the presence of tortured, tormented souls, of ghosts who want to tell their story. Then, the colors illuminate the cinema room. A picnic by the river, children, parents. Laughter and singing, then the return home. The house is surrounded by a wall that hides the other side.
Because the other side is the Auschwitz extermination camp, where no fewer than 1.1 million people were killed by the Nazis, most of them Jews from Eastern Europe. On the other side we only see the roofs of the barracks, the chimneys of the crematoriums and their menacing light at night. We only hear their noise, this growl of a monster that is never satisfied. Gunfire regularly rings out amidst the oncoming trains, barking and shouting. The muffled cries that neither Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), nor his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), nor their four children hear, the eldest is intent on examining dentures and teeth under a magnifying glass, before falling asleep.
Life follows its daily course. Hedwig receives friends, tries on a sumptuous fur coat, finds a lipstick forgotten in a pocket by the former owner whose fate we imagine, without seeing the prisoners who come to polish the commander’s boots or to deliver to the family the fruit of the spoliation of millions of Jews. She plants flowers and vegetables, while Rudolf admires the swimming pool where the children play in the summer. Because in Auschwitz the weather is beautiful, even if the winters are harsh, as Hedwig points out. The garden is her passion, and this house is a kingdom that she has built and of which she is the sole owner.
But Rudolf receives an order from Berlin: he will be transferred. Promoted. And Edvige gets angry, asks her husband to convince her to stay at home with her children. In Auschwitz. In this life that she describes as perfect. In the shade of the field.
Jonathan Glazer, who gave us the uncanny 10 years ago Under the skin with Scarlett Johansson, has chosen not to show anything of the atrocities that take place on the other side of the wall, in the camp that has become a museum and memorial and of which we will see some images at the end of The area of interest. We can only imagine, trembling as we hear the clicking of guns and the barking of guards and their dogs. Echoing the powerful images of the feature film – which the filmmaker cuts with a red screen and a negative scene – we think of Hannah Arendt’s formula on the “banality of evil”. Let’s remember the details of The Auschwitz album on the efficiency of Rudolf Höss, on the industrial organization of the extermination camp.
We lose all orientation, all notion of humanity. We no longer know whether the notion of “crime against humanity” created in 1945 by the Nuremberg Tribunal is sufficient, whether it manages to describe the horror. And we wonder whether it is possible to atone or make amends for such a crime. To never repeat it again.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
The area of interestGrand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, will be released in theaters on January 19th.
2024-01-19 01:00:00
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