The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest

The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.

  • Released:
  • Runtime: 105 minutes
  • Genre: Drama, History, War
  • Stars: Sandra Hüller, Christian Friedel, Maximilian Beck, Daniel Holzberg, Sascha Maaz, Wolfgang Lampl, Freya Kreutzkam, Stephanie Petrowitz, Marie Rosa Tietjen, Max Beck, Johann Karthaus, Ralph Herforth, Medusa Knopf, Lilli Falk, Nele Ahrensmeier, Ralf Zillmann, Imogen Kogge, Julia Polaczek, Martyna Poznanski, Luis Noah Witte
  • Director: Jonathan Glazer
 Comments
  • sadmansakibayon - 12 June 2024
    We humans are all Monsters
    The Zone of Interest is a hard hitting meditation on the banality of evil and how people rationalise and ignore the worst atrocities so as to feel comfortable in their lives. The story follows a family who lives in Auschwitz, but not in the camp itself, in a house next to the camp, literally sharing a garden wall with the camp, the head of the house is the camp's SS commander. As the family lives its domestic dramas the spectre of what is happening next door is always present, tea parties are punctuated by gunshots and screams in the background. In one of the most effective scenes Glazer uses Ozu-like static shots of the garden and its beautiful flowers while the background noise of incinerators, screams of pain, shouts of anger and shots keeps playing, fading to red.

    A particularly relevant film in this moment in time as the West, much like the family in the film, refuses to look over the wall at other genocides so as to be able to sleep comfortably at night secure in their preconceptions about the world, while the horror continues. Particularly fascinating are the few moments when characters seem to question themselves about what is going on such as when the grandmother who comes to visit wakes in the night to look at the hellish chimney of the ovens, or when the commander gets a glimpse of the future, but they are in too deep, nothing materially changes.
  • alexeykorovin - 26 May 2024
    One of the best WW2 movies
    2 remarks: 1) I'm a Jew and had relatives killed in the Holocaust, 2) I prefer German and Japan-made movies about WW2 because I believe that war stories are more accurately told by losers than winners.

    This movie does a great job showing what attitude most(?) or at least Nazi Germans had towards Jews and in general to what was happening in the 1930s-10940s. That is, "normalization". Because Jews aren't humans, they are cockroaches which need to be exterminated so that the proper humans (Germans with blond hair and blue eyes) could build the happy society of the future.

    Although I'm a Jew, I kinda built empathy with the characters - this is the huge success of this movie. And by the middle of the movie I was feeling that this Auschwitz camp is really a nuisance to all these good German people trying to lead normal lives. Why are there so many Jews to kill? Can't somebody just kill them faster? Why is there noise coming from behind the walls? Somebody (like the movie's protagonist) should take smart measures. E.g. The rotating gas chambers. There you could quickly put the Jews in and get the ashes out. I even started feeling respect for this guy. He has these innovative solutions for everything. He is almost married to his job and undergoes "professional deformation": when attending a party (with other Germans and highly ranked Nazi members) he imagines how such crowd could be gassed efficiently. What a great guy, a true workaholic which mediocre people don't give enough credit to.

    In that regard, the few pieces that condemn Nazis even feel out of place and look like they're there only there to not make the movie look pro-Nazi (if any idiot would imagine it to be pro-Nazi, yet I guess the possibility is still there). Like, in the middle there is a poem of some camp victim. I guess, with those pieces removed the movie would have an even stronger effect! It would be the strongest if by the end of the movie the viewer would feel "normalization" to the fullest, and only maybe in the very end there would be a scene where it's all shattered again. I dunno, I would love to see Russian or American (better Russian, since Russians are bad, right?) bombers eventually bombing the town and then some evil dirty drunk Russian soldiers coming and destroying everything, and the protagonist getting hanged for his "alleged" crimes (in "reality", just being a great person but on the wrong side of history). But yeah, this just wouldn't be let thru. There are still too many real Nazis out there, so the issue remain still surprisingly politically sensitive.

    The scenes with a modern museum of Holocaust (which come close to the movie's end) are strong. To me that was a reminder that no one actually cares about those ancient events anymore. Like, when was that? 1940s. Gee, that's like ages ago. It's like discussing Napoleon. Boring! Was it when the Americans defeated Stalin? Who cares. Haha a pile of old shoes. Why not throw that trash out? Imagine your typical 12-year old, working-class kid who watches TicToc celebrities. Now he's forcefully brought to this museum as part of some history class. And he has to watch this old crap and waste time learning about how some Jews were killed. Like, Jews? Aren't they bad people? Like, greedy and stuff? You get the picture. And the lady cleaning the ovens (btw these oven were made by Bosch which is a great company and made great ovens) - that's just genius. Because the museum is where middle-class people come. It must be clean. If dust gathers on an oven, it looks disorderly and visitors will complain that they received poor service for the price they paid for the museum admission.

    I honestly would give this movie a 10/10 if it had LESS critique of Nazis, for an even more morbid atmosphere that would eventually come to total numbing and normalization. But instead, the movie's attempts to stay politically correct and within limits of various sensitivities take away some of it's power and end up a 8/10. Still, it's one of the best WW2 movies.
  • 0w0 - 15 May 2024
    a 140min film, that could have been done in 14
    When you reach the end of the film, you're not crying... you're not gasping... not shuddering... not left speechless... not anything...

    you're just sitting there, saying to yourself: "all that time, and they wanted to show me THAT?"... i honestly was just sitting there the whole movie through, thinking "well the good part has to come soon", but it never came. This movie has no 'good part'. This movie is a drawn-out statement which shows that there's two sides to a coin... and it takes 140minutes to show you the side of the coin that isn't traditionally shown in movies... that's it... 140minutes to show something so simple, that could have been shown in 14minutes flat.