Video Area of ​​interest, written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, inspired by Martin Amis’ novel of the same name, tells the story of the Holocaust. About the Shoah. About what happened in Auschwitz. In Poland under German occupation. In 1942, and then in the first months of 1943. Next to a beautiful, clean, apparently large house, in which a traditional family lived, as it is now. German origin. National Socialist family. So he declared and was obviously proud of it. A family consisting of a mother, father, and five children. One is more successful than the other. Healthy, energetic people who go to bed and wake up disciplined, at a strictly defined time. Who respects meal times. It is about a family that, after implementing all those provisions of Hitler aimed at increasing the birth rate among Aryans, now fully respects the Law of Artaman. Which required the Germans to settle outside crowded cities and to respect nature in an exemplary manner.

The house belongs to Rudolf Hess, the commandant of the Auschwitz camp. The camp is several tens of meters away. What is it called? area of ​​interest. Clearly outlined as such. Even here, the German strictness is not lost. Neither in terms of obtaining a living space, nor in terms of creating a space in which forensic professionals work. You have mass murder. You have genocide. Area of ​​interest that means 40 kilometers from the death camps and ovens. Which we do not see as such. Except for the sequence, where both time and film they break and we return to the present. In the museum, where they are cleaning. And where are shoes, dust, and ashes stored?

However, we constantly hear noises, cries of suffering or orders from the SS-Isis, which forever disturb the peace of the Hess house, leaving those who live there indifferent, regardless of age. Indifference has become a state. Way of life Banality. Ignoring suffering. About the crime. The noise will mark only Mrs. Hess’s mother, who comes to visit, a visit marked by sleeplessness and a night of drinking that ends in an unexpected departure. We see only the thick smoke that accompanies Rudolf Hess’s cigar smoke as he contemplates, savors his work, which he considers natural. Or just ashes near the place where the prisoners are building a new extension for the camp. Places where at night he periodically looks for a little girl. Nanny Hessa’s daughter. The little girl also leaves some fruits there. For the Jews who find them.

Lukasz Hal’s room insists on the long, cold corridors of the house, a color that is eerily similar to those in official buildings, to those who live there, to the perfectly regulated work of local women, naturally non-Jewish, that ensures their comfort. And especially in the garden. Dream. With all kinds of flowers. Roses are favorites and a source of concern for the head of the family. Rudolf Hess. Great performance by Christian Friedel. Short haircut. With perfectly tuned reactions. Expert in issuing and receiving orders. In increasing production, innocent people were sent to their deaths. But man also has his sensitivity. For example, in relation to roses, which can suffer due to human negligence. Or especially from a source of pollution that is not even 40 meters from the house. Behind the wall. Behind the barbed wire. In the camp. In the ashes, in the thick smoke coming out of the chimneys. The smoke of fear, against which the windows are very carefully closed at nightfall.

We see the house and garden for a long time, as in a fairy tale. Family pride. Mrs. Hess’s pride. Performed by Sandra Hueller. The same one I saw relatively recently in Anatomy of a fall. A woman’s obsession is the garden. Almost a sense, a raison d’être. Shown like this to a visiting mother after being inconvenienced by rail delays. It is shown whenever there is an opportunity to the wives of other prominent National Socialists. Gentlemen, that is, the SS, openly talk about the technique of burning corpses, about the fact that they need to be improved, about the need to increase the efficiency and return of production capacities. And their words are caught on the fly by Mrs. Hess’s children. This is how the older brother locks the younger one in the greenhouse, taking care to imitate the noise that accompanies the operation of furnaces in the neighborhood. And it seems natural to the child. In the nature of things.

Ladies, the wives of the Nazis, however, are only politely interested in the garden and the house. They are obviously more concerned with what they can find among things Jewish girls deported It cannot be more normal when the property of non-Aryans is confiscated. An elderly woman is both surprised and displeased that she found a diamond hidden in a tube of toothpaste. Jews are tricksters!, – exclaims the lady in question. Even Mrs. Hess is not completely indifferent to the remains of things confiscated from those sent to the camp. The camps, whose names and, implicitly, the number remind us of the moment when Mr. Hess, promoted, that’s right, an unwanted promotion that causes a storm in the family, attends a big meeting where the details (well, German trivia!) of the mass transfer of Jews from Hungary and their bona fide use are revealed. discussed Some will be used in maintenance operations, others will be sent to work to save the increasingly ailing German war machine, others, Kaput. In the ovens. Ms. Hess wonders about a once-luxurious fur that needs to be restored, or tests the quality of what’s left in a tube of lipstick. Mrs. Hess does not think for a moment about evil, about the terrible things that consume the garden. The garden is her paradise. He doesn’t even want to know about hell. One of the children plays with gold teeth taken from a prisoner. The banality of evil. The banality of the crime,

To the great credit of director and screenwriter Jonathan Glazer, he did not want to show us directly, concretely, what it was like in Auschwitz. Let’s feel what was there. – Read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro