The Zone of Interest

Christian Friedel is quite effective in his portrayal of the Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss here. He and wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) offer us one of the most stark contradictions I think I've ever seen on screen. The beautifully manicured garden of a delightful family home with an unique next door neighbour. That would be the Auschwitz concentration camp of which he was in control. We follow his selection to run the place, his increasing role in implementing the extermination processes and then gradually, as he is promoted again, their realisation that the idyllic life they want for themselves is doomed. It's the brutal comparisons that work best here. We don't really see anything graphic on screen, that's all left to our already well enough developed imagination. The blissful ignorance of their children, the ample supply of food and the prevailing attitudes that nothing at all is amiss compares frighteningly with the real life ghastliness of those just a few feet across a large concrete wall. I suppose it could have more meat on it's bones - maybe just a little too much is left to our own interpretation and it can be a little slow at times, but it still delivers well as a template for just how many people thought the mass killings was hardly more important than whether or not they'd run out of eggs. It's not an history lesson - there are corners cut and licence is certainly taken with some of the timelines, but it's still a poignant look at human behaviour that's well worth a watch.