The Zone of Interest explores evil

The Zone of Interest is a study of people whose lives were lived in the immediate vicinity of an infamous German concentration camp in occupied Poland during World War II. In focus is the family home of the camp commandant of Auschwitz Birkenau, Rudolf Hoss.

It is, if you like, historical fiction, drawing attention to the contrast between what went on within the camp with family and work life outside it, but the point for writer and director Jonathan Glazer is much more than that. How did the Hoss family (almost) ignore what was going on and how did the wider German society seem to accommodate it?

The film's stark look helps us consider the things that are at issue. An exception to this stern aesthetic is a travelling shot of garden beds luxuriant with flowering plants, as Hedwig Hoss shows the grounds to her visiting mother.

Another thrill is receiving unexpected items of clothing, jewellery or perfumes once worn by the inmates next door. Hedwig claims a fur coat for herself and shares fashionable underwear with her domestic staff.

In scenes shot in black and white, we see the figure of a young Polish girl, a character who also really did exist, hiding food in the prisoners' workplaces after dark.

Clearly, what is being explored here is the celebrated term "the banality of evil" put forward by philosopher Hannah Arendt. That it wasn't so much collaborators as it was ordinary citizens going about their daily business who made it possible for the Nazi regime to carry out its genocidal program. People who believed they were doing their job, that doing what was expected by the powers that be would enhance their careers. For ordinary citizens to be complicit, all they had to do was live their lives and ask no questions to consolidate the evils of their social system.