Jonathan Glazer didn't make a movie about the Holocaust. Not really. He made a movie about a garden. He made a movie about a swimming pool, a family breakfast, and the mundane stress of a husband getting a promotion at work. That is exactly why The Zone of Interest is so profoundly upsetting. It doesn't show the horror. It asks you to listen to it while you watch a woman pick out flowers.
Honestly, most "historical" films try to make you cry by showing you the tragedy directly. Glazer does the opposite. He bets on the fact that your imagination is way worse than anything he could put on screen. By focusing on Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and his wife Hedwig, the film captures what Hannah Arendt famously called the "banality of evil." But it does it with a cold, technical precision that feels more like a nature documentary than a drama.
The Horror You Hear But Never See
The "Zone of Interest" was the actual term used by the SS to describe the 40-square-kilometer area surrounding the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. In the film, this zone is a paradise. Hedwig Höss, played with a chilling, frantic normalcy by Sandra Hüller, refers to herself as the "Queen of Auschwitz." She has a beautiful garden. She has servants. She has a greenhouse.
And just over the wall?
Smoke. Constant, rhythmic, gray smoke. The sound of distant screams. The mechanical hum of the crematoria. The occasional gunshot.
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The sound design by Johnnie Burn is the actual protagonist of the movie. He spent a year researching the specific sounds of 1940s machinery and weaponry. He didn't want "movie sounds." He wanted the reality of what it sounds like when an industrial death machine is running 24/7 next door to a children’s playground. The juxtaposition is nauseating. You see a toddler playing with a beetle in the grass while, in the background audio, a life is being ended. It’s a sensory assault that forces you to acknowledge how easily humans can tune out the suffering of others if it means maintaining their own comfort.
How They Filmed It (It Wasn't Normal)
Glazer didn't use a traditional film crew. He didn't want actors "acting" for a camera. Instead, he built a working house near the actual site of Auschwitz and rigged it with up to ten hidden cameras. The actors were often in the house alone. No boom operators. No directors standing two feet away shouting "Action!"
The cameras were controlled remotely from a basement or a trailer outside. This created a "Big Brother" vibe. The actors—Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller—just lived in the space. They ate, they argued about their kids, they cleaned. Because the cameras were hidden, the actors never knew which one was "on" them, or if it was a wide shot or a close-up.
This technique stripped away the vanity of performance. There are no "Oscar clips" where a character gives a soaring speech about morality. Rudolf Höss doesn't twirl a mustache. He worries about the logistics of his "work." He talks about the efficiency of the new ovens the way a middle manager talks about a new software rollout. It is terrifyingly corporate.
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The Thermal Imagery Subplot
There are these strange, haunting sequences in the film shot in thermal infrared. They look like ghostly fever dreams. They follow a young Polish girl who sneaks out at night to hide apples at the prisoners' work sites.
Why thermal? Because it was pitch black. Glazer wanted to show a "glimmer of light" in the darkness, but he didn't want to use artificial movie lights that would ruin the realism. These scenes are based on a real person Glazer met—a woman named Alexandria who had been a member of the Polish Resistance as a child. She actually used the bike seen in the film. She actually hid the food. By using thermal cameras, Glazer makes the act of "goodness" look alien and otherworldly compared to the "normal" daylight world of the Nazis.
Why This Movie Matters in 2026
We live in an era of compartmentalization. We scroll through horrific news of global conflict or climate disaster, then immediately look at a recipe for sourdough or a video of a cat. The Zone of Interest isn't just a history lesson. It’s a mirror.
It asks: What are you ignoring so you can enjoy your garden?
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The film's ending is one of the most debated sequences in recent cinema. Without giving too much away, it jumps through time. It connects the past to the present in a way that feels like a punch to the gut. It reminds us that "the zone" isn't a place in Poland in 1943. It’s a state of mind. It’s the ability to build a wall—literally or metaphorically—between our comfort and the consequences of the systems we support.
Practical Insights for the Viewer
If you haven't seen it yet, or if you're planning a rewatch, keep these things in mind to get the full weight of the experience:
- Wear headphones or see it in a theater. The visuals are only 50% of the movie. The audio track is a separate narrative running parallel to the images. If you don't hear the background, you miss the point.
- Pay attention to the kids. The children in the Höss family are the barometers of the environment. They aren't "evil," but they are being shaped by the proximity to horror. Look at the boy playing with the gold teeth or the daughter who can't sleep.
- Research the real Rudolf Höss. Knowing that he was eventually captured and executed on a gallows built right next to his villa adds a layer of cosmic irony to his "domestic bliss" in the film.
- Notice the colors. The garden is hyper-saturated. The flowers are almost too red, too vibrant. It’s an artificial attempt to mask the gray ash that occasionally falls from the sky.
Don't go into this expecting a narrative with a traditional beginning, middle, and end. It’s an installation. It’s an experience. It’s meant to make you feel complicit. When the screen goes black and the discordant music by Mica Levi starts to roar, don't look away. That discomfort is the entire reason the film exists.
To truly grasp the legacy of this story, look into the memoirs of the survivors who worked in the Höss household. Their accounts provide the context that the film intentionally leaves out, grounding the technical mastery of the movie in the devastating reality of those who lived—and died—on the other side of that wall.