“Did you hear that?” Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss asks a subordinate in German. It’s an example of what makes Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone Of Interest a uniquely devastating Holocaust film. The first challenge thrown at the viewer is one of sound: a black, empty screen following the film’s title. The home of the Höss family—Rudolf, his wife Hedwig and their …
When Christian Friedel was preparing to play Rudolf Höss, the real-life Nazi commandant at Auschwitz who’s the alarmingly opaque protagonist of “The Zone of Interest,” he discovered an audio recording of Höss from the Nuremberg trials. But what made “The Zone of Interest” writer-director Jonathan Glazer, who adapted Martin Amis’ novel, think Friedel would be right for Höss? “There was …
