THE 100 BEST WAR MOVIES: 21. The Grey Zone (2001)

 

                When I taught the Holocaust, I present my students with a dilemma.  You are a Jew working in a concentration camp.  To stay alive, you have the job of removing the corpses from the gas chamber and bringing them to the crematorium.  One day a little girl is found alive among the bodies.  You and your fellow workers have to decide whether you will risk your lives by trying to smuggle her into the female population or turn her over to the S.S.  This dilemma is based on an actual incident.  That incident is part of the plot of a movie entitled “The Grey Zone”.  The movie was directed by Tim Blake Nelson (the goofy Delmar in “Oh, Brother Where Art Thou?”).  Looks can be deceiving, he was the only member of the cast or crew who had read the Odyssey.  He wrote the play that the movie is based on and then the screenplay.  His research came from the book Auschwitz:  A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli.  The movie was filmed in Bulgaria.  Actual plans for the camp were used to make a 90% scaled replica of the crematoria and barracks.

                There have been many Holocaust movies, but few have dealt with the Sonderkommandos.  These were the “special units” that removed the bodies from the gas chambers.  They were given better food and housing, but they joined the corpses after a few months.  The movie is set in Auschwitz II – Birkenau in August, 1944.  Dr. Nyiszli (Allan Corduner) meets the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele and decides to collude with him on his human guinea pig experiments.  He figures the arrangement will help keep his wife and daughter out of the gas chamber.  He also has the attitude that at least some science might come from the experiments.  The other plot line involves a plot by some of the sonderkommandos to blow up the crematoria and the gas chamber.  They are aware that the clock is ticking on their employment.  In order to blow up the buildings, a trio of extremely brave women are smuggling gun powder to them from the munitions factory. 

            The movie hits several Holocaust images – the band playing as the Jews enter the “showers”, the burning of the Hungarian Jews in pits, the sorting of belongings.  However, the movie is not interested in depicting life in the camp.  In fact, the sonderkommandos are living a much better life than the typical prisoners.  They are literally feasting in their comfortable barracks.  This is not “Schindler’s List”, it is closer to “Escape from Sobibor” because it deals with resistance to the “Final Solution”.  Unlike that movie, “The Grey Zone” digs deep into ethics and choices.  The sabotage plot is going well until Hoffman (David Arquette) discovers a young girl among the bodies.  Nyiszli is brought in to help her recover.  He is let in on the plot.  Now we have two dilemmas.  What to do with the girl and should Nyiszli use his new knowledge to save his family?  He is under pressure from an S.S. officer named Muhsfeldt (Harvey Keitel) to tell about any plotting in exchange for preferential treatment for Nyiszli’s family.   These two arcs will get us to the explosive final scene.

ACTING:   A+                 

ACTION:   N/A

ACCURACY:  A0        

PLOT:  A+                   

REALISM:   A 

CINEMATOGRAPHY:   A  

SCORE:  not memorable 

 

SCENE:  the revolt

            “The Grey Zone” is an outstanding movie.  The reason it is not well known is it is grim, even for a Holocaust movie.  It also did not get much in the way of marketing.  It made less than $1 million! The budget was a measly $5 million.  Not a lot of it went to the cast, which is not all-star, but does have some excellent actors.  Harvey Keitel is great as Muhsfeldt.  The character is not your typical evil Nazi and is not predictable.  In fact, the whole movie is unpredictable – other than the obvious failure of the plot.  David Arquette plays against type as Hoffman.  He has a very powerful scene involving a Hungarian Jew who argues with him before going in the gas chamber.  It is one of several shocking moments in the movie.  The standout among the cast is David Chandler as Rosenthal.

            Aside from the great acting and interesting blend of cinematography (mostly hand-held and some POV), the strength of the movie is in the provoking of thoughts.  Should the girl be saved?  Is Nyiszli a villain or a man doing whatever it takes to save his family?  Are the sonderkommandoes in need of redemption?  Most importantly, what would you do in the circumstances the movie posits?  The film is a welcome addition to the Holocaust subgenre of war movies.  It is instructive of the sonderkommandos and covers several aspects of Auschwitz that are seldom portrayed in Holocaust movies.  It also is based on a true story so there is a history lesson here.  (See below for how accurate the movie is.)

            “The Grey Zone” is one of the top five Holocaust movies.  It is tough to watch because most of the movies in this subgenre have relatively positive endings.  This one is entertaining, but depressing.  Shouldn’t you be depressed when you finish watching a Holocaust movie?  I’m not criticizing movies like “Schindler’s List” or “Escape from Sobibor” because they tell true stories and those stories emphasize the strength of the human spirit.  But we need movies that question human behavior and decisions made under difficult circumstances.  Thank God this movie will be as close as you get to the “what if?” scenarios Nyiszli  and the gas commandos faced.

HISTORICAL ACCURACY:    The movie accurately depicts the work of the sonderkommandos.  These were squads of Jews who were forced into the “special units” when they first arrived at the camp.  Their job was to remove the corpses from the gas chambers and transport them to the crematoria.  It was not unusual for them to come into contact with the bodies of dead family members.  In exchange for this work, they were isolated from the rest of the prisoners and lived in their own barracks.  The barracks was nicer and they were well fed.  They were given food, medicines, and cigarettes accumulated from the victims.  The feasting shown in the movie was probably exaggerated, but they certainly were better off than the other Jews.  They also were protected from being shot by the guards for minor infractions or just because the guard was having a bad day.  Since they were “bearers of secrets”, they could not be allowed to survive, so every three months or so they were liquidated.  The replacement sonderkommandos’ first job was to dispose of their predecessors.

            The incident involving the young girl (she was probably around 15) was based on Nyiszli’s recollection.  He volunteered as a doctor and caught the attention of Josef Mengele.  Mengele put him to work doing autopsies and helping with his experiments.  Some of this involved Mengele’s twins.  His work and a bribe saved his family from the gas chamber.  They all survived the war.  Some historians dispute his information about the Sonderkommando. The girl possibly survived by being under the crush of bodies with her face pressed against the wet floor.  When the men discovered her, they called for the doctor and he revived her.  At this point, he brought the matter to Oberscharfuhrer Eric Muhsfeldt who he had a relationship with through his work with Mengele.  Nyiszli thought he could convince the officer to let the girl be filtered into the female work groups, but Muhsfeldt did not think the chance of discovery was worth it.  He had a guard shoot her.  The incident involving the girl was not connected to the uprising.

            The plot to blow up the crematoria and gas chamber is based on an attempted uprising by Sonderkommando XII in Auschwitz.  Small amounts of gunpowder were smuggled from the munitions plant on site by three Jewish women – Ester Wajcblum, Ala Gertner, and Regina Safirsztain.  The trio passed the explosives to Roza Robath who was part of the resistance.  The planned rebellion had to be moved up when word spread that their time as body disposers was about to come to an end.  On Oct. 7, 1944 they attacked the SS and Kapos with two machine guns, knives, and grenades.  They killed three and wounded twelve.  Part of a crematorium was destroyed, but for the most part the uprising was a failure.  Some did manage to escape, but were soon recaptured.  200 were executed in a manner similar to the movie.  The four women were ferreted out after the event, tortured, and executed.

            Erich Muhfeldt was a mass murderer who was executed for war crimes after the war.  He participated in the mass executions that attempted to cover up Madjanek when the camp was destroyed after the escape.  He then ended up at Auschwitz and was in charge of Sonderkommando XII.  He did have a creepy relationship with Nyiszli similar to the one shown in the film.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

 

            “The Zone of Interest” was one of the most acclaimed films of 2023. It was directed by Jonathan Glazer. It was only his fourth feature film in a career that includes many commercials. He wrote the screenplay based on the novel by Martin Amis. The title refers to the restricted area around Auschwitz from which Polish people were relocated. Glazer made the decision to make the movie more of a nonfiction account of the Höss family during its stay in a house abutting Auschwitz. In the book, Amis gave the husband and wife fictional names, Glazer used their real names. He spent two years researching, including using the Auschwitz archives to get a detailed picture of the family during that period. Most of the movie was filmed near the camp in a house that was near the actual house. The house was renovated to match the Höss home. A garden was planted that was blooming when the shooting began. The production cost $15 million and it made $52 million. It premiered at Cannes and won the Grand Prix Award. The initial showing earned a six minute standing ovation. At the Academy Awards, it won for Best International Film and for Best Sound. Glazer was nominated for Best Directr and Best Adapted Screenplay. It won a BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language. The movie won many other awards and was one of the best reviewed films of the year. Steven Spielberg called it the best Holocaust film since “Schindler’s List”.

            The film opens with a family on a picnic. They look wealthy and normal. There are five kids and a nanny. The  father is a German officer (Christian Friedel). They return home to a nice house that shares a wall with the Auschwitz concentration camp. They have several servants and Jewish prisoners work in their verdant garden. It turns out that the seemingly typical father is the commandant of the camp. In one scene he listens to a presentation on the new crematorium while in the next room his wife (Sandra Huller) brags to friends about stuff that was taken from the Jews. Hoss takes his son on a Jew hunt. It’s an idyllic life. The only thing that mars it is a fishing trip is ruined by ashes from the crematorium floating by. Höss is peeved. How good is their life? When Höss gets a promotion that would entail leaving, he begs to stay and his wife is livid that she will have to leave paradise. I’ll just leave it here as a cliffhanger. Although the movie has no scenes in the camp, there is a subplot involving a Polish girl who tries to help the inmates.

            It helps your viewing experience if you know what Glazer was trying to accomplish here. He was not making a typical concentration camp movie where the German officers are pure evil. He chose Höss because he was actually not “mythologically evil”. He is no Amon Goth. He is much closer to Adolf Eichman, a Nazi that became the poster boy for the banality of evil. Knowing that Höss is being ironically portrayed as a bureaucrat helps make the movie less boring. I have seen a lot of Holocaust movies and this one stands out because the main characters don’t fit into the standard stereotypes. The Höss family could be any German officers family. They do not appear to be a SS officer’s family. That is the point of the movie. However, Glazer is not a revisionist or Holocaust denier. You will hate the Höss family.

This movie justifiably won an Oscar for sound because it uses background noises to remind the viewer about what is taking place on the other side of that wall. Sound designer researched the sounds associated with the camp and compiled a detailed list of the various noises like the furnaces, boots marching, gunfire, and ghastly human sounds. One recurring sound is that of a motorcycle engine that was ordered by Höss to block some of the other noises that might upset his kids.

To give the film a day in the life of the camp commandant and his family feel, Glazer had more than five cameras set up in various rooms and kept them running throughout the days the actors worked. (Glazer described his approach as “’Big Brother’ in a Nazi house.”) No crew were in the house for the filming, so no credit for cinematography. However, the outdoor night scenes involving the Polish girl were filmed using an infrared camera provided by the Polish military. Those scenes are surreal. Glazer acquired 800 hours of film. Enjoy being a fly on the wall of the Höss domicile. Watch the cute kids go about their lives oblivious to what is happening nearby. As their mother describes it, it is a wonderful environment to grow up in.

“The Zone of Interest” is an overrated movie. It takes advantage of the fact that there are plenty of movies tearing into the Nazis for the Holocaust. But in setting itself apart by showing an evil family as being normal, it goes too far in the other direction. Is there a place for a film like this? Certainly. There can be little doubt that the German people produced men who saw mass murder as a job that should be done efficiently. There were leaders like Goth who were sadists, but there were others like Höss who worked hard (and complained about it) to prove they were the best man for the job. It is ironic that Hoss was so efficient, he got promoted out of his dream job. This type of irony makes the movie Oscar bait for intellectual critics. But for the average viewer, the movie might come off as boring. Nothing really happens. No servant drops a tray. And the movie is a bit pretentious. Okay, we get it, evil can be cloaked in normal clothing. The acting is banal and none of the children are developed as characters. Spoiler alert: the movie has no closure. We don’t get the payback for the idyllic stay at the Auschwitz house.

Please make sure you don’t watch “The Zone of Interest” until you have seen at least ten other Holocaust movies. It deserves to be seen, but as an outlier that points out that evil can take the guise of normalcy.

HISTORICAL ACCURACY:  The movie is much more accurate than the book. There is nothing in the movie that is far from the truth. The incidents in the film either happened or could have happened. The big problem is the movie drops us into the Hoss family’s life when Rudolf Höss was already commandant of Auschwitz. At this point, he appears to be a factory manager who is interested in making his factory run as efficiently as possible. He is just a cog in the wheel (as he himself described his role during imprisonment after the war). However, my research shows that he was not a German who was corrupted by the system and ended up doing things he would not have done if he had a choice. He joined the Nazi party early on and in 1923 murdered a schoolteacher. He spent eight years in prison. In 1934, he joined the SS and began working his way up through the concentration camp system. At one of those camps, he forced prisoners to stand in below zero conditions for hours, resulting in over 100 deaths. Höss was not simply an efficient officer who was just following orders. He was evil, although the movie does not make this clear. He was so efficient at killing that he was promoted to supervise the creation of Auschwitz. He was the longest serving commandant of the worst death camp. He served from May, 1940 through November, 1943 and then returned to head the camp from May, 1944 to January, 1945. The movie makes a big deal of him leaving the camp in November, 1943 and his wife’s insistence in staying. Hedwig is accurately portrayed as a fanatical anti-semite, but a mother who only wanted the best for her children. In the film, it is unclear whether she knew what was taking place at her husband’s place of business and her husband claimed at his war crimes trial that she did not know, but that strains credulity. The “crisis” of Rudolf having to move to Berlin as a reward for his management of the camp and was due to his beyond the call of duty efforts to kill as many Jews as possible in as little time as possible. He initiated the use of Zyklon B, partly because he felt shooting the Jews would be too hard on the soldiers mentally. Hoss cared about his men. Eichman was one of his bosses and sort of a mentor. In May, 1944, Höss’ dream came true when he was sent back to his beloved villa to supervise Operation Höss. This was the extermination of 430,000 Hungarian Jews that were shipped to the camp and killed in 56 days. This boring character in the film was one of the top 5 most execution-deserving war criminals of WWII. You sure don’t get that impression from the movie.

             As far as the subplot, it is based on Aleksandra Bystron-Kolodziejczyk (possibly the longest name that has appeared in one of my reviews). She was a Polish girl whose father was sent to a concentration camp. In 1941, at age 14, she joined the Home Army. She would pass messages back and forth to prisoners. She did leave food for them. Glazer dedicated the film to her. Her bike and dress were used in the film.

GRADE  =  B-