I decided to check out this movie for its renowned sound design and got a better movie than I bargained for. I expected it to be semi-boring and focus relentlessly on the house next door to Auschwitz where the commandant and his family lived.
But it's actually an eerie and highly effective exploration of Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" concept. Holocaust movies almost always are focused on the actual camps, and the Nazis are strutting goons or at best, conflicted headcases who are easy for the audience to dismiss.
But what if the Nazis are beige bureaucrats who are just trying to do their jobs and fill their quotas? It just so happens their quotas are dead bodies going up smokestacks. Makes you wonder what's just out of sight over that wall in your own life.
But it's actually an eerie and highly effective exploration of Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" concept. Holocaust movies almost always are focused on the actual camps, and the Nazis are strutting goons or at best, conflicted headcases who are easy for the audience to dismiss.
But what if the Nazis are beige bureaucrats who are just trying to do their jobs and fill their quotas? It just so happens their quotas are dead bodies going up smokestacks. Makes you wonder what's just out of sight over that wall in your own life.