AREA OF INTEREST
Score: 5
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Cast: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Freya Kreutkam, Ralph Herforth
Year: 2023
Premiere: January 19, 2024
At first glance, what we see resembles an idyllic paradise: a sunny, flowering garden and a luxuriant greenhouse, in front of which is a large, beautiful house with a happy family living there. Our eyes need one more moment to focus the bottom of the postcard and then terror emerges: A high concrete wall covered with barbed wire surrounds the veranda, and a chimney looms behind it belching smoke and ash. The house where the incident took place The ‘area of interest’ is right next to the Auschwitz extermination camp; and the generation that lives here, led by the infamous SS commander Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig, spend their days celebrating birthday parties, tending to frequent visitors, and enjoying their idyllic lives while thousands of people are exterminated and murdered. a few meters further.
It is the first film made by British director Jonathan Glazer in 10 years. Yes, it speaks of one of the most terrible atrocities committed by humankind, and it also speaks of complicity in marriage, tender care for loved ones, and hard work deservedly rewarded; things that we all understand and desire to engage with the completely indescribable. In doing so, he pays attention to the rhythms and details of Höss’s daily home life. its disturbing normality.
We gradually discover that Hedwig is using. freshly gassed women’s clothingThe prisoners brought provisions to the door of the house in wheelbarrows, and the children collected gold teeth. But we couldn’t get into Auschwitz. The dividing line between the seen and the unseen and between the heard and the barking of a doghuman screams, crackling flames, hissing trains, gunshots– and that mental indoctrination is responsible for silencing, is both the big issue of ‘The Concern’ and the main tool it uses to shake us. Glazer just needs our prior knowledge. holocaust to make sure we get a perfect visual of the horror, and the way he handles it turns his film into one of the most devastating cinematographic explorations of how this could happen.
He applied to shoot hidden cameras film actors from a distance and refuse to engage emotionally with charactersand this official distance is a reflection of Höss’s attitude towards Auschwitz. They know very well what is there, but they have distanced themselves from it. They do not see Jews as human beings and they no longer even notice the stench given off by crematoriums. Although your body immediately reacts to the poison of your actions, your mind is immune to it. Hannah Arendt described such behavior as “the banality of evil,” but ‘The Concern’ portrays it more like this: a self-imposed loss of consciousness, or simply as indiscretion. How far are we from that garden, from that greenhouse? How much of the suffering that occurs outside our sphere of concern are we willing to ignore?
Thinking of an answer is as complicated as imagining a cinematographic experience more impressive than the one this film offers because of its clarity of observation. The coexistence of the strangest cruelty and peaceful daily lifebecause his morality and aesthetics are open to question, because he lacks self-control while contemplating the depths of human depravity. can’t hide his angerand because it haunts the viewer long after they have left the sights and sounds behind, it always reminds them that whoever says History is something in the past is a liar.