The Zone of Interest

This film is based on the life of Rudolf Höss. After seeing the number of awards it had won, the ratings and the reviews, I was genuinely looking forward to it, but for the last 10-15 minutes I was fighting sleep, and the film isn’t even that long, just 1 hour 45 minutes.

The film was incredibly boring, silent and didn’t evoke a single conflicting or negative emotion. It felt like watching a mediocre drama about a fictional situation. In my opinion, it lacks any genuinely powerful emotional scenes — like, for example, the ending of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which brought me to tears despite not liking the book.

Watching the Nazis go about their leisurely lives — having picnics, gardening, barely aware of what was happening beyond the fence — was just dull. They hear screams a couple of times, some gunshots, and once human ashes drift into the river where they’re relaxing. That’s about it.

I wasn’t really paying attention… I was too busy thinking how I would gas everyone in the room.

I don’t see any lesson, message or real authorial insight here. A lot of people talk about the film’s reflections on the nature of evil, but honestly — most people would live comfortably in such a place if they didn’t have to confront the horrors directly. As Lord Farquaad once said: “Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make”.

I’m not surprised that people commit enormous evil and place their own comfort above other people’s lives. I’m not surprised that humans can adapt to almost any situation, or that it’s easy to make a sacrifice when it doesn’t personally cost you anything, which is perfectly clear from every war happening right now, where civilians die for the interests of politicians. Maybe that’s exactly why this film didn’t work for me: the obvious is obvious to me.

I think the film would have been far more powerful if it had shown the Nazis directly confronting the horrors and actively choosing to look away — for the sake of their comfortable lives.