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?

Yes I had the impression it was something from a body, i thought flesh.

I think Hedwig explicitly said at one point that they were local Polish women instead (when the visiting mother asked "Jews in the house?"), who would have had enough reason to be terrified of the Nazis. Might be wrong though, it's a few weeks since I've seen it- and I suppose Hedwig could have been lying to her mother, though not sure for what purpose.

I thought her mother was a really interesting character. The way she talked about her former employer maybe being in the camp when she first arrived showed someone who'd not just imbibed the Nazi ideology of Jews being an inferior people, but someone who was personally gratified by the persecution of someone who'd previously had power over her.

I think it was human remains he found in the water (you see him holding bone, I think), but I suppose that would mean that there were also traces of Zyklon b in there, hence getting the children scrubbed so urgently.

Yes Hedwig did say they were 'just locals', but surely local employees would be free to leave the employment and not be so scared. The gardeners were Jews.

Even for those who weren't part of "undesirable" groups, the Nazis were a brutal occupying force. "My husband could have your ashes scattered over the fields of Babice" isn't an empty threat. I doubt there were many local Polish women volunteering to go work there, I think it's more likely a case of rounding up a few local women to do it under the threat of them or their families being harmed or killed.

I think she said they were locals to her mother because she didn't want her to know they were Jewish women in the house. Didn't she say to one of them 'my husband could make you into ashes'.

I think her mother didn't want to be near Jews.

screenrant.com/zone-of-interest-movie-hedwig-mother-auschwitz-response/#:~:text=Summary,objections%20to%20what's%20happening%20inside.

There is also a documentary in which the now grown up children of important Nazis coped with the knowledge of what their fathers had done. One man only found peace of mind when he became a Catholic priest; a woman had herself sterilised so that she would not perpetuate the evil genes of a father close to Hitler.
There were several others and it was clear that not one of them was psychologically or emotionally unscathed by the knowledge of their Nazi heritage. I ended up feeling very sorry for them. They were only children when it all happened.

@SammyScrounge I can't imagine what that would be like to have to live with that knowledge.

They were Poles doing slave labour under occupation, not free to leave. The director explains it well in the documentary

Oh i didn't know there was a documentary! Is it on streaming please?

I just watched this, after having been to both Camps on Wednesday. All very chilling to the bone.

Film very hard hitting with the background noises and the smoke of the train goin past with the kids in the pool.

Just joining this thread as the film has dropped on Prime. Amazing soundscape as others have said.. the little children screaming “mama, papa” at one point. So horrifying, I can’t stop thinking about it.

i saw it on prime also
horrifying
more horrifying was the first watch in the cinema.
i dont know why i put myself through it, so wicked

Watched this at the weekend - I think it is an incredible film and will stay with me. Reading some of the reviews I missed some details (eg the water running red when Hoss’s boots were washed) and would like to watch it again, but not sure I can bear it. Sandra Huller was incredible.

I think it’s the sort of film that needs to be watched a couple of times to notice everything

I agree it really needs rewatched and concentrated on. I didn't notice the water running red after washing the boots. The soundtrack is absolutely the star of the film, that's got to win a sound oscar if there is such a thing.

It did win the Best Sound Oscar. I saw it last night when Johnnie Burn brought it along to the BFI.

We were fortunate to get to hear JB talk about how they did the sound, but that didn't make it any easier to listen to some of it again.

Just watched this on Prime. So interesting reading back all these comments. Stunning film, stunning…it’s drifting round my head now..and will do for a while.

it did

If anybody knows I'd like to see the documentary too? I'm not certain I want to sit and watch the film again by myself in my living room, as daft as it sounds.

Watched this tonight on Amazon. The soundtrack is absolutely chilling. I had this sense of dread watching this film, with that low level, but all pervasive hum of death going on in the background. I went to Auschwitz a few years ago, and it was such a bleak, desolate place, the idea of there being a domestic ' paradise ' just next door is so grotesque.

Some info about Rudolf Hess/ Hoss?:

Between 1934 and 1940, Rudolf worked at the Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, which at the time housed mainly political prisoners. He impressed his superiors so much that they appointed him commandant of the newly created Auschwitz. In this role, he transformed the camp into the Nazis’ chief killing center, settling on Zyklon B as the most efficient method of gassing. As he later said, gassing was preferable to shooting because the latter “would have placed too heavy a burden on the SS men who had to carry it out, especially because of the women and children among the victims.”
Rudolf approached the prospect of mass murder with systematic, detached precision. As historian Laurence Rees wrote for History Extra in 2020, “Höss was no mere robot, blindly following orders, but an innovator in the way he organized the killing.” At the camp’s peak, Auschwitz’s gas chambers were capable of murdering 2,000 people an hour.

In his autobiography, Rudolf maintained that Hedwig had no knowledge of the killings taking place at Auschwitz. But the evidence suggests otherwise. The Hösses lived a life of luxury, employing camp inmates as forced laborers and seizing items confiscated from the dead, including expensive furs, cooking supplies like sugar and flour, jewelry, and leather goods. The commandant “made his household so magnificent and so well-equipped that his wife declared, ‘Here I want to live and die,’” recalled Stanislaw Dubiel, a Pole who worked as the family’s gardener, in testimony provided after the war. “They had everything in their household, and there was no way they would lack anything with the enormous supplies of all kinds of goods accumulated in the camp.”

I saw it during the run up to the Oscar's.

Banality of war sounds right.

Also showing the modern day setting. You'd be somber walking around it but every day women come in to hoover and clean and in effect you'd become immune to what's behind the glass.

Glad I saw it once but not one I'd watch again.