Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 5, 2024

McDaniel

On many lists of the best films of 2023, German-language Zone of Interest is the latest Oscar-nominated World War II movie. What sets it apart from other Holocaust dramas is we dont see the horrors inside the concentration camps next door.

The camera stays on the human beings on the other side of the wall, German Nazi commandant Rudolf Hss, his wife Hedwig, and their children, who have carved out a pretty idyllic abode for themselves.

The film reminds us that everyone is the hero of their own story.

Were living how we dreamed we should, Hedwig tells her husband when standing by the scenic river nearby, which provides a relaxing place to swim when the ashes of the dead arent floating in it. Everything we want at our doorstep.

While Hedwig gives grandma a walking tour of the lovely house, beautiful garden grounds and pool, we faintly hear the shouts, gunfire, and sometimes see the billowing smoke from the incineration of Jews being exterminated. Its always there beyond the rose-vined wall that separates their oasis from the German Auschwitz concentration camp.

And thats what makes the movie so memorable. Intentionally treated with dispassion, the terror just never quite comes into focus.

Its a story of perspective. Showing the main family as pretty normal human beings with hopes and dreams, the barely-acknowledged hell always looming on the other side of the wall is a disturbing contrast.

The movie doesnt fall back on the visual shock of the atrocities of the Holocaust like so many films before it. We dont see the graphic killing or the emaciated workers, because Dad leaves his work at the office; it just so happens that his work is mass genocide.

Rudolf is a proud, ambitious leader, and it feels as if by not showing the other side of the wall, the Nazis arent seeing it for what it is. Worse yet, it forces the audience to feel complicit, almost numb to whats happening. And that look at humanity is what will stay with me for a while.

The true ending of this dark history is that Rudolf and his comrades achieved their goal of being remembered, just not in the heroic light they hoped.

4.5 / 5

Scott McDaniel is an assistant professor of journalism at Franklin College. He lives in Bargersville with his wife and three kids.

Read more:

Movie review: Zone of Interest a startling perspective of Holocaust humanity - Daily Journal

Category: Holocaust
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