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The Zone of Interest’s Final Moments Are a Nazi Workaholic’s Nightmare
What if Rudolf Höss isn’t vomiting out of remorse? What if it’s his own irrelevance dawning on him instead?
Jonathan Glazer establishes his formal conceit immediately, pushing all the horrors of Auschwitz just beyond the frame line and focusing instead on a blissfully unperturbed Nazi family going about its daily routines in the periphery of the camp. The film’s last few minutes take place in Berlin, far from the concentration camp Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) oversaw, and far from his family, still living in the perfect dream house they built next door. The Zone of Interest presents Höss as a decidedly bureaucratic monster: the mass murderer as wormy careerist who sees the Holocaust — this unfathomable evil he’s directly committing — as a mere professional accomplishment.
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