(**)

There may be a justified reason for making a film about the horrors of the Holocaust and keeping the victims in the background as sound effects. But that reason remains allusive as this depiction of a German Nazi family living next door to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp unfolds.

Dad, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), and mother, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall), parent their kids. They host a mother-in-law and have barbeques as if their coldhearted life is normal. Both chastise the hired help and treat them with disdain. As the couple contemplates his career and a possible job relocation, it’s as if their lives are the sun and moon and nothing else matters. Not even the monstrous events next door. 

It’s likely British writer/director Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin) thought this approach to retelling the story of the annihilation of millions of Jews might be a fresh vector. But the unsettling juxtaposition of a blasé German Nazi family’s everyday selfish experiences backdropped by screams for help and furnaces spewing human ashes is effective for about 10 minutes. That contrivance overextends its iffy welcome long before its 106m ending. 

Hüller and Friedel are suitably despicable. Scenes of the father and his children being infected by the ashes from burnt bodies in a stream they swim in don’t’ provide enough justice for what they’re doing. 

In fact, nothing on screen warrants an audience’s attention. Anyone who wants to learn more about the horrors of Auschwitz can do better. Especially if they witness what’s going on behind the house the Höss’ family lives in firsthand and not as a nuisance, which is how it is presented.

The only element that seems on point is Łukasz Żal’s extraordinarily clear cinematography.  Which is low praise for a misconceived film that proves that just being unsettling is not a definitive statement. 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-vfg3KkV54

For more information about the New York Film Festival go to  https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2023/ 
Visit Film Critic Dwight Brown at DwightBrownInk.com.