If the awards gods rule justly, Sandra Hüller will be a first-time Oscar nominee three weeks from now. And, potentially, she may a two-time nominee in one year. Already the winner of the European Film Awards European Actress award for Justin Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” the German born actor is a contender for Best Actess and in the Supporting Actress category for Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.” Hard to complain when both of the two films you starred in win both the Palme D’Or and the Grand Prix (second place) at the Cannes Film Festival and become fixtures on critics’ year-end top 10 lists.
READ MORE: “Anatomy of a Fall” dominates the 2023 European Film Awards [Full List]
Intriguingly, Hüller plays two very different mothers in both films. In “Anatomy,” she portrays a somewhat celebrated novelist who is accused of murdering her husband in their isolated home in Grenoble, Switzerland. In “Zone,” Hüller portrays Hedwig Höss, the wife of Rudolph Höss, the commander of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Glazer’s drama is a haunting portrayal of mankind’s complicity as a genocide occurs a few hundred feed from the Höss’ home and Hedwig is right at the center of it.
Speaking to The Playlist last month, Hüller admitted she first turned the role in “Zone” as she was scared to tackle this topic. It turned out she wasn’t the only one who questioned the overall nature of the project. For a number of reasons.
“It was very obvious from the beginning that Jonathan had the same doubts as me,” Huller says. “Yeah, he felt the same pain about this topic and he didn’t want to go there. So, he kind of forced himself to be a part of it, and I forced myself to be a part of it too. Because it is something that has been pictured so many times and in ways that I don’t agree with sometimes. Which doesn’t mean it was wrong or anything. I think, at that point in time, it was probably right, but not anymore. And because we’re trying to find ways to deal with this part of history, with the atrocities that have taken place then, so I think it’s not easy to find a way how to tell it, and why, and to find the right approach. I think that Jonathan made such interesting and right decisions considering the art department, where we would shoot, and how we would shoot, the whole camera work of [cinematographer] Łukasz Żal, and all these things were very important to me and my decision.”
Told from what initially seems as though it’s a neutral perspective (it’s not), “Zone” unfolds to show not only the Höss family showing off the home and garden the Jewish prisoners have had to service, but their neverending indifference to what is truly going on around them. At one point, Hedwig gets frustrated that Rudolph has been re-assigned from the camp which means they potentially could lose her dream home. In moments such as those, it was important for Hüller not to generate any undue sympathy for her character.
“I mean, the script has a quality that is also very rare, because it is meant to be really flat,” Hüller says. “There is not so much happening in this. It’s simply just watching people living their everyday lives, which is something that normally we wouldn’t agree to be part of because we feel like, where’s the story? And in this case, the so-called story, which is not a story, which is the truth and what has really taken place, is happening somewhere else. And we agreed altogether that the more boring, and, I don’t know, colorless, and empty the lives of these people would be, the more right it would be. So we just simply try to be in the most normal situations.”
One creative tool that Glazer uses to capture the horror of the proceedings is by including sounds from the camp that would be audibly heard by anyone standing in the Höss’ backyard or even inside their home. As the Höss clan pretends all is well in the world you often hear screaming prisoners, the constant churn of the cremation furnaces and gunshots, among other historically accurate sounds. For the most part, Glazer makes sure none of the German characters respond to these sounds. That is except for when Hedwig’s mother comes to visit.
“I mean, we knew that this point would come. We knew that there would be a gunshot scene when we were playing in the children’s room and Hedwig Höss is explaining to her mother how beautiful everything is and how she made it and blah, blah,” Hüller says. :And we didn’t react. Normally, you would. Yeah. It was really interesting that the body already knew that these things would happen. Normally you would get scared for a minute, you would jump a little, and we didn’t. It’s really, really strange.”
Glazer spoke to Hüller and the cast about what the sound design would be and how Mica Liva’s music would be integrated, but purposefully added the sounds in post. She reflects, “I’m very grateful that he didn’t use these sounds, which would’ve been weird. I mean, there are people living in this area, and imagine what it would’ve been like if you would’ve had giant speakers. So the ignorance of the people that we try to play was very much easier to embody without the sound, of course. Which doesn’t mean it wasn’t in our head constantly. We were in this place, we were literally 100 meters from the former camp.”
Unlike other film productions, Glazer and Zal set up satic framed shots throughout the Hüller house to capture the cast moving through the space. This meant that there were no camerapeople inside the house as the actors shot the film and the lens pullers were in the basement beneath them. Hüller found this choice “fascinating” and beyond a simple artistic technique.
“The surveillance created an atmosphere of constantly being seen, also as a human being, being judged all the time. All the details would be in the light. You could not hide,” Huller explains. “Also, as a person, you could not hide your personal feelings. You would have to deal with it at that moment because sometimes the takes were really long. We shot for 45 minutes straight and started the scene all over again because sometimes people wouldn’t say anything and we didn’t know what was going on. So we had to find out ourselves. But it never felt like an experiment that was made or was done with us. It didn’t feel manipulative or anything. I strongly felt that we were doing the same thing together.”
Hüller adds of Glazer’s choice, “He wasn’t using us or anything. I didn’t have that impression. He was very transparent with all the things that he would decide. His directions were very clear. And when we didn’t know what to do, we just did it again and maybe we found out something that we didn’t know before. So it was [trying] to find a constant approach to find the right thing, if there is any. And no, I wasn’t unnerved to buy any of that. No, sometimes I felt it must’ve been hard for the people sitting in a basement and pulling the focus. That was something that I couldn’t deal with so well.”
The other film on Hüller’s promotional agenda is the afforementioned “Anatomy,” which opened in theaters in mid-October and has been a mainstay of guild and industry screenings since September. There are theories on whether Hüller’s character truly did killer her husband or if her young son, comes up with an aliby to, effectively, save her from nonfiction. She says she’s approached by viewers who have very passionate opinions about the ending of the movie.
“Some share theories, some felt very seen, and some say that it triggered something in them or made them realize something about their relationship,” Hüller says. “They are always very intimate statements.”
As to whether Hüller has her own opinion on her character’s potential guilt she adds, “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’m honest. I really don’t know. So, I like to discuss with them what is the possibility of this and that. Yeah.”
“The Zone of Interest” is now in limited release. “Anatomy of a Fall” is available for digital download