The zone of interest

[SupremeCommanderServalan]

Anyone else seen it? It was an interesting watch, but I have a question re the plot and whether we ever found out what the letter from the mother said?

[SleepingStandingUp]

Just came out. No. I assumed she couldn't stand being so close to the camp

[SupremeCommanderServalan]

What did you think of the film @SleepingStandingUp ? While watching it I wasn't sure, but it has stayed with me since.

[IPartridge]

I've seen it today. I think the mother was disturbed by the camp. And a bit unnerved that her daughter and family were so blasé about it.

I'm also not sure how I feel about the film as a whole. It was a brave move to make something with so much being unsaid and unseen

[EachandEveryone]

I’m going tomorrow I don’t know what tp expect really

[EachandEveryone]

I enjoyed it it feels strange using that word. Lots of elderly Jewish people in the cinema and younger ones. No one left laughing and joking. It was silence from the minute it started. So many questions. How were those kids not affected? How do you move on from it? I think the granny just couldnt take it. Christ the wife left me cold. I hope she gets an oscar but she wont.

[BuffysBigSister]

Saw it this morning with my niece. We both thought it was a great film. I kept thinking of Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil". I thought the sound was particularly noteworthy, always that grinding hum in the background and the barking dogs. For mood it sort of reminds me of Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, also a disturbing film which stayed with me long after viewing.

[LlynTegid]

Thanks everyone for your views, hope to see it later this week. Of interest to me as written by Martin Amis and because three of my ancestors died in Auschwitz in 1942.

[SleepingStandingUp]

@SupremeCommanderServalan

What did you think of the film @SleepingStandingUp ? While watching it I wasn't sure, but it has stayed with me since.

Enjoyed is a weird word but I'm glad I saw it. I think it was beautifully done, and so much more moving for the subtlety. You had to WATCH it to get it. You couldn't be half engaged, because you'd miss the bits they ignored.

[Getabloominmoveon]

agree with everyone above. It’s a haunting film, as it should be. Understated, yet deeply disturbing to see life going on ‘as normal’ in that setting. However it also
indicates the psychic impact on everyone, the grandmother most obviously, but even the Commandant in the end.

Mica Levi’s soundscape is amazing.

[Nitgel]

oh gosh this film, what a rabbit hole to go down. There are pictures of the house in the daily mail. it's so bizarre.

Unseen photos reveal inside of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess' luxury villa | Daily Mail Online

[MozzieMayhem]

I’ve not seen this yet but really want to. I could be wrong (and hope this isn’t spoilery for the end of the film), but I believe that after liberation of the camp or after the war crime trials, Hoess was hanged in the garden of the house? I could be misremembering that though.

I visited the Auschwitz sites with the Holocaust Educational Trust when I was about 17-18, and one of the things I found most disturbing was the houses that are still there, almost up against the back fence of Birkenau. When we were there, there was a cat wandering through the site that had presumably come from one of the houses close by. I just can’t imagine living so close to the site of suffering and horror on that scale - it’s really stayed with me.

[LlynTegid]

@Nitgel not a total surprise that the Paper that Supported the Blackshirts would show photos of the house.

[usernother]

Can anyone explain the significance of Hoss vomiting near the end?

[onceandneveragain]

@LlynTegid

@Nitgel not a total surprise that the Paper that Supported the Blackshirts would show photos of the house.

you're absolutely obsessed with this, you've mentioned it on previous threads
seriously get over it, it was nearly 100 years ago, everyone involved is long since dead, DM wasn't the only paper who "supported" the blackshirts and pretty much every newspaper has been on the wrong side of history at some point
https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2011/dec/06/dailymail-oswald-mosley

[Bassetlover]

Going to see this next week. Really curious to see but expecting it to be quite disturbing. I visited Auschwitz several years ago so I think it will bring back memories of that.

[AgentProvocateur]

Is this streamed or in cinemas? (Im not in the U.K.)

[usernother]

It's in cinemas atm, but not all cinemas.

[Jojo104]

Is this film too disturbing for a 16 year old?

[MinnieTruck]

@usernother

Can anyone explain the significance of Hoss vomiting near the end?

It was basically saying how much his body was impacted by the evil crimes that he was doing. All throughout the film, he was portrayed as not caring about his actions but towards the end, it’s as if his body could no longer accept the disgusting things that he was doing. There’s a good discussion on Reddit about it, you should have a look

[usernother]

@Jojo104

Is this film too disturbing for a 16 year old?

It's a 12a but I wouldn't take a child that age to see it. A 16 year old should be ok though.

[usernother]

Thanks @MinnieTruck

[LlynTegid]

I went to see it, having also visited Dachau a couple of years ago, the feeling that those around must have known something was definitely there. Although he did not die there, one of my family was at Auschwitz for all the period the film seems to portray, and I did imagine him in one of the buildings represented in one of the scenes.

Agree about the soundscape helping to emphasise the haunting.

[Bassetlover]

Saw it last night. It's definitely worth seeing at the cinema as the soundscape is chilling. I've also visited Auschwitz and just cannot imagine witnessing that horror. The younger son did seem affected by it at the end, I thought. I agree that Rudolph being sick was supposed to represent his body/psyche's response to the evil he was committing. It demonstrated the banality of evil, for sure.

[beccahamlet]

I thought it was excellent. Haunting.

[vincettenoir]

It was very clever and affecting. I thought it was a brave film because it was so understated. But it worked well.

I did think the last portion of the film, when it followed Hoss after he left the family home was not as engaging. It would have worked better for me had the whole thing been set at the family home. That was where we really got the juxtaposition between what was going on behind one wall and the next. And I even found the retching a bit hammed up. It is a trope you see a lot in tv and film but not in real life.