2024-01-19 01:00:00
There are films that last a long time. This is the case of The area of interesta remarkable film by Jonathan Glazer, submitted by Great Britain for the Oscars and which shows the daily life of Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), the commander of the Auschwitz extermination camp, his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their children.
There is no opening image, the screen is black. The music composed by Mica Levi evokes the presence of tortured, haunted souls, of ghosts wanting to tell their story. Then, the colors light up the cinema room. A picnic by a river, children, parents. Laughter and songs, then the return home. The house is surrounded by a wall which hides the other side.
Because the other side is the Auschwitz extermination camp, where no less than 1.1 million people were killed by the Nazis, the majority of them Jews from Eastern Europe. On the other side, we only see the roofs of the barracks, the chimneys of the crematoria and their menacing light at night. We only hear their noise, this growl of a monster never satisfied. The shots of firearms ring out regularly amid the arrival of trains, barking and shouting. The muffled cries that neither Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), nor his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), nor their four children hear, the eldest being busy examining dentures and teeth under a magnifying glass, before falling asleep .
Life goes on its daily course. Hedwig receives friends, tries on a sumptuous fur coat, finds a stick of lipstick forgotten in a pocket by the former owner whose fate we imagine, without seeing the inmates who come to polish the commander’s boots or deliver to the household the fruits of the spoliation of millions of Jews. She plants flowers and vegetables, while Rudolf admires the swimming pool in which the children play in the summer. Because the weather is beautiful in Auschwitz, even if the winters are harsh, as Hedwig points out. The garden is her passion, and this house is a kingdom that she built and of which she is the sole mistress.
But Rudolf receives an order from Berlin, he is going to be transferred. Promoted. And Hedwig gets angry, demands that her husband get her to stay at home with the children. At Auschwitz. In this life that she describes as perfect. In the shadows of the camp.
Jonathan Glazer, who gave us, 10 years ago, the disturbing Under the skin with Scarlett Johansson, chose not to show anything of the atrocities taking place on the other side of the wall, in the camp which has become a museum and memorial and of which we will see some images at the end of The area of interest. We can only guess, tremble as we hear the clicking of pistols and the barking of the guards and their dogs. Echoing the powerful images of the feature film – which the filmmaker cuts with a red screen and a negative scene – we think of Hannah Arendt’s formula on “the banality of evil”. We remember the details of L’album d’Auschwitz on the efficiency of Rudolf Höss, on the industrial organization of the death camp.
We lose all bearings, all notion of humanity. We no longer know if the notion of “crime against humanity” created in 1945 by the Nuremberg tribunal is sufficient, if it succeeds in describing the horror. And we wonder if it is possible to atone for or repair such a crime. To never repeat it again.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
The area of interestGrand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, hits theaters on January 19.
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