Proximities of Violence

Abstract

Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023) takes an unorthodox approach to Holocaust cinema, studying the everyday life of the Commandant of Auschwitz and his family in their home just outside the wall of the camp, while never directly representing the violence inside. Voyeurism, extended takes, and unstable points of identification create an ethical crisis for the viewer, who is left questioning the mechanics, and the limits, of empathy. The film offers a sensory bounty: tactile images, pastoral greenery, and heightened sounds. These surface-rich images in particular function in dialogue with a history of Holocaust cinema, complicating already vexing questions of cultural memory and political framing. And the pointed focus on the administration of fascism within the home exposes both the domestic implementation of a “blood and soil” ideology, and the ways in which intimacy and proximity can both uphold and erode the frameworks of war.