Does the zone of interest refer to the top or the bottom half of the screen? This is the question I started asking myself halfway into it and I still haven't found an answer. While I'm not as down on this film as some people are, so much of the environment Glazer creates boils down to the contrast between the two halves of the screen. On the bottom half lies a paradise. The vegetation is lush, the small swimming pool in the backyard and the frequent trips to the lake provide a great dose of fun to Höss's children, and the interior of the house looks rather pristine. The top half of the screen is where the reality of their surroundings peaks over the edge. Occasional sounds of screams and gunfire, smoke rising from the incinerators, and steam from arriving trains complicates the serenity down below. Any intrusions the top half has on the bottom half (human ash accumulating on flower petals, unseen dead bodies floating in the river, and concentration camp prisoners working/marching in the background), though fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of the environment, are hard to ignore (for us, at least) whenever the camera fixates on them. A weaker film would've given us a glimpse or two of what goes on over the walls and would've showed the human suffering up close, but Glazer is really careful at how he compartmentalizes us from the Holocaust, linking us aurally through sound rather than visually. With this, he's able to put us in the headspace of Höss's family fairly well, as if we're experiencing his house from their viewpoints.
That said, I felt I got the idea of the film fairly early on. The further I got into it, the more I was beginning to feel diminishing returns as the repetition was growing clearer and clearer. Which isn't inherently bad, but mixing repetition with the abundance of static characters who didn't react much to Auschwitz's intrusion on their lives didn't do it much favors. Hedwig Höss's mother reacting negatively to the burning crematorium was the only time the repetition came close to wearing me down and even that sub-plot was somewhat brief. I also took issue with a significant portion of the final act being set in Berlin and a SS party. Since I had grown largely tired of the film by that point, I initially welcomed the change in scenery only to find the new scenery to be comparably less atmospheric. Also, while I admired the bizarre soundtrack and the uncommon visual abstractions as a curiosity, I'm not sure they fit the tone of the film that well (someone may be able to convince me otherwise for this point though). I don't know if the film will grow on me if I sit on it for a couple days, but as it stands now, I found it to be a fairly mixed bag and I wish I could've responded to it better.
That said, I felt I got the idea of the film fairly early on. The further I got into it, the more I was beginning to feel diminishing returns as the repetition was growing clearer and clearer. Which isn't inherently bad, but mixing repetition with the abundance of static characters who didn't react much to Auschwitz's intrusion on their lives didn't do it much favors. Hedwig Höss's mother reacting negatively to the burning crematorium was the only time the repetition came close to wearing me down and even that sub-plot was somewhat brief. I also took issue with a significant portion of the final act being set in Berlin and a SS party. Since I had grown largely tired of the film by that point, I initially welcomed the change in scenery only to find the new scenery to be comparably less atmospheric. Also, while I admired the bizarre soundtrack and the uncommon visual abstractions as a curiosity, I'm not sure they fit the tone of the film that well (someone may be able to convince me otherwise for this point though). I don't know if the film will grow on me if I sit on it for a couple days, but as it stands now, I found it to be a fairly mixed bag and I wish I could've responded to it better.