The Zone of Interest doesn’t go there, and it wasn’t going to. The cold and taciturn performances from Freidel and Hüller are designed to not create sympathy for the subjects, which is perfectly fine. Rather this film was just going to sit there and listen. That’s the experience it was aiming for, and, in doing so, it participates in a layer of its own “how could they.” The trouble is, like the Nazis portrayed in the film, the answers to that question are “quite easily” and “quite comfortably.” Because their needles don’t move, neither do yours against its painful pace.
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