Loosely based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Martin Amis, British-born writer and director Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” is indeed a rarity: an art-house Holocaust film. It is more than that, of course, but the chilly, austere photography, ambient, dissonant score, and minimalist, emotionally detached dialogue suggests Terrence Malick by way of Stanley Kubrick, and a half-dozen other 1950s Western European neo-realists.
In the book, the identity of the two lead characters were fictionalized versions of Rudolf Höss (pronounced “hess”) and his wife Hedwig. In the movie, Mr. Glazer uses their real names, eliminates a major character, and includes facts not present in the novel. These minor changes transform a slightly vague and ephemeral work of literature into something ominous and disquieting.

Paradise Bordering Hell
While far from palatial, the grounds and interior of the Höss residence could be referred to as sprawling. Resting on the banks of the Sola River with impeccably manicured lawns, multiple gardens, a greenhouse, and a swimming pool, it was a relative paradise literally sharing a border with the most infamous and evil death camp in human history.To drive this contrast home, Mr. Glazer opens the movie with a four-plus minute stretch of black screen accompanied with a slow-building orchestral and choral cacophony of sound followed by the Höss family frolicking in the Sola. Outside of coming into contact with some poison ivy or oak, no one has a care in the world.

What’s Yours Is Now Mine
Additional scenes showing Hedwig Höss trying on a confiscated fur coat and gleefully finding hidden gems in Jewish-owned toothpaste tubes speak volumes. The property of captured Jews was automatically transferred to the Nazis.
The only scene taking place within the walls of Auschwitz shows Rudolf Höss from the torso up standing still as the screams of Jewish prisoners and gunfire are heard in the background.
Déjà Vu
In making his film, Mr. Glazer (“Sexy Beast,” “Birth,” “Under the Skin”) offers us a blindingly obvious example of past abhorrent behavior and, without making it totally obvious, a warning flare of how to not repeat the same mistake. At the time he made it, Mr. Glazer couldn’t have possibly anticipated what has taken place since Oct. 7, 2023.With the unwarranted and wanton Hamas attack on Israel two months ago, the events depicted in “The Zone of Interest” are eerily prophetic. How could something so abhorrent and unimaginable 80 years ago be supported by so many people worldwide?

Sadly, it has.
The persecution of Jews is very real and unfortunately, has become in vogue in certain circles and places of “higher learning,” and it is as equally scary as anything taking place in this film.
What does it say about humanity as a collective, when we “evolved” over 80 or so years only to regress into a state of ignorance and disrepair with such wanton disregard? It’s shameful and embarrassing, to put it mildly. Are we not capable of recognizing past wrongs, and blanket assumptions, and moving forward? Have we so devolved as a society to not recognize such Cro-Magnon mindsets?
We’re entering 2024, people, not 1939. It’s time we started acting like it.
