The Zone of Interest is a Holocaust film that includes neither visual graphic violence nor torture, but its power will haunt you both during the movie and after its conclusion. In director Jonathan Glazer’s hands the old writer’s adage “Show, don’t tell” becomes “Listen, don’t watch.”
Clinical professor, author, and speaker Scott Galloway states in a recent article:
We hear 20 to 100 times faster than we see, and what we hear stays in our heads longer, often evoking strong emotions… We all hear things; there’s no corner of the globe that’s free from the vibrations that manifest in sound. So we must decide what to listen to. But many of us aren’t listening, and that dampens our abilities and undermines our relationships.
Taking liberties from the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, The Zone of Interest follows Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during World War II. Höss, his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and their children live outside the camp in a picturesque home surrounded by a massive yard, a modest pool, and towering walls. The walls must be high to prevent the Höss family from witnessing the atrocities occurring literally in their own backyard.
Although the family (and the audience) cannot see the nearby horrors, they can hear them: the screams, the gunshots, the sounds of the crematorium at work. These aural reminders of death occur throughout each day. Yet the family reacts as if they’re living in another world because they are. They have chosen what they will listen to.
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