I heard quite a bit about Best Picture Nominee #9 before I saw it, but going into the film, I still wasn’t entirely sure what it was going to be like. While more of an experience than a story, it’s incredibly effective at what it does.
Rudolf Höss is the commandant of Auschwitz. He lives with his wife Hedwig and gaggle of children in a picturesque house that’s literally right next to the camp. Everyday, as the sounds of human suffering are audible over the wall, the Hösses indifferently live their best lives.
As I said, the narrative is fairly minimal here. There’s a bit of forward plot motion—Rudolf worries over news that he’s to be transferred away from Auschwitz, Hedwig’s mother comes to stay with the family—but a lot of it is just domestic scenes of comfortable life. Pool parties, canoe rides, visits from friends, the kids playing. While Rudolf works in the camp every day, we only see him inside it once, and then we only see his face, not anything that’s happening around him. The rest of the time, the Holocaust is something that appears to only tinge the edges of the family’s lives.
It's so creepy. It’s so creepy. For a slow-moving film with very little onscreen action, the tension is always present in the distant sounds of screams and gunfire, in the sight of the crematorium smoke in the background. And whenever anything nudges the atrocities a little closer to the forefront, the revulsion increases exponentially. When Rudolf removes his boots before entering the house and a servant washes blood off of them. When Hedwig and her friends sit around chatting about the expensive things they’ve “acquired” as the Nazis take all the Jewish prisoners’ belongings. When Rudolf is consulted about the new ovens that can burn 400-500 “loads” at once. It makes you shiver.
This makes the day-to-day recreation and mild marital squabbles just as creepy, seeing how human Rudolf and Hedwig are, seeing their kids grow up with the wall of a death camp serving as their garden wall. As we’re chillingly aware of the monstrous things Rudolf is facilitating offscreen, and how nonchalant Hedwig is about benefiting from them, it doesn’t seem right for Rudolf to sing to his crying baby or pass out slices of his birthday cake. But of course, this is important, because Rudolf and Hedwig are human. They’re not monsters, unfathomable creatures who are evil Just Because. Every day of the happy, cozy life they’re building, they are choosing to be where they are and do what they do.
As I said before, I’d mistakenly thought that Anatomy of a Fall was up for both Best Picture and Best International Feature, but only The Zone of Interest is. Jonathan Glazer is also nominated for both his directing and his adapted screenplay, and the film received an immensely well-deserved nod for Best Sound.
Sandra Hüller, who played Sandra in Anatomy of a Fall, is mundanely despicable as Hedwig. It isn’t the first time an actor plays a major role in two high-profile Oscar pics in the same year, but Hüller is excellent. Hedwig couldn’t be more different from Sandra, which only highlights her talent further. I’m not familiar with Christian Friedel, who plays Rudolf, but he’s remarkably effective, equal parts family man and Nazi war criminal.
Warnings
Strong thematic elements, intense violence alluded to offscreen (including what is likely an offscreen rape,) disturbing images, language, and drinking/smoking.
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