Film Review: THE ZONE OF INTEREST

Hedwig and her baby enjoying their garden, next door to a death camp.

I finally watched a film released in 2024 that I had long been wanting to see entitled "The Zone of Interest." Being a Jew who has dutifully seen every other Holocaust movie and TV series and visited the Holocaust Museums in Washington, DC, and in Israel, I expected it would be familiar territory:  Evil Nazis, packed trains, gas showers, random shootings, starving prisoners digging their own graves, orange smoke rising from the crematoria — all of that. I was ready for it.

But I wasn’t. This movie is so different from the others depicting that horrible chapter of history, it’s in a category all its own. There was none of the usual stuff I mentioned above, except for muffled gunshots heard in the distance and a glimpse or two of a belching smokestack. Instead writer/director Jonathan Glazer went in a totally different direction, showing how ordinary Germans dealt with the mass extermination of human beings occurring right under their noses — in this case literally.

It's the true story of Rudolf Hoess, head commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, his wife Hedwig and their young children all living just on the other side of a simple wooden fence from the screams, smells and gunshots permeating their days and nights. Yet they are seemingly untouched, comfortably enjoying the high life in a lovely home staffed with numerous servants, as if nothing is at all out of the ordinary. It’s like, “Oh yeah, they’re killing Jews next door — when’s dinner? Do we have time for a swim in the pool?” 

Half of me regrets seeing it because now I‘m more depressed about antisemitism than ever. And since it’s on the rise, I’m considering staying at home until there’s a pounding on the door and they come for me.

My other half is glad I saw it because The Zone of Interest is such an extraordinary piece of movie-making. The unusual editing and sound direction alone are such that there’s no looking away as chilling images are burned into your brain. The acting, despite it being in German and Polish with subtitles, is impressive. Every reviewer I have read used the word “haunting” to describe the film, and I guess I will too.

It’s haunting. See it.

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