← Back to Directory
The Zone of Interest
Movie

The Zone of Interest

2023 • Drama, History, War

Woke Score
7
out of 10

Plot

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

Overall Series Review

The film centers on the domestic life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig in their idyllic home and garden situated directly next to the camp. The narrative focuses on the banal, everyday activities of the family, while the constant, dreadful audio of the concentration camp permeates every scene. The movie is a deliberate and unsettling study of the 'banality of evil,' depicting the perpetrators as self-centered careerists and a possessive family who actively build their life on the foundation of genocide. The characters show no moral or spiritual conflict with the industrial mass murder occurring feet away from their children's play area. The non-traditional cinematic approach acts as a chilling, non-judgmental observation of profound human depravity.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics9/10

The plot functions as a pure examination of systemic oppression, which is a key element of the intersectional lens. The narrative is entirely predicated on a race-based, genocidal hierarchy (Nazism vs. Jewish people). The white male (Rudolf Höss) and his white family are depicted as utterly evil and morally incompetent. Casting is historically authentic, but the plot exists to vilify and deconstruct the ultimate expression of race-supremacist privilege.

Oikophobia10/10

The film is an absolute deconstruction and condemnation of the home, family, and national culture of the perpetrators. The Höss family's dream home and garden, which Hedwig fiercely calls her 'paradise,' is explicitly built on stolen property and the process of mass murder, framing their specific version of 'home culture' as fundamentally corrupt. It respects no sacrifice of the ancestors but instead demonizes the immediate culture and institutions of the Nazi regime.

Feminism7/10

Hedwig Höss is depicted as a powerful, zealous female figure whose ambition is entirely focused on the creation and maintenance of her domestic realm and material status. She is the 'Girl Boss' of the garden, a ferocious matriarch who is more fervently committed to the evil project of the 'zone of interest' than her husband is about his career. Her motherhood and domestic focus are corrupted into tools for maintaining a monstrous lifestyle, subverting the traditional complementary role by making her an equal, even dominant, partner in the family's depravity.

LGBTQ+1/10

The film is a historically authentic portrait of a traditional, nuclear family unit. The narrative focuses on the moral vacuum within the conventional male-female pairing and nuclear family structure. There is no presence of alternative sexualities, deconstruction of the nuclear family through a queer lens, or discussion of gender ideology, keeping the score very low in this category.

Anti-Theism8/10

The core of the movie is the 'banality of evil,' which is a demonstration of a profound spiritual vacuum. The characters exist in a world where moral relativism reigns, allowing them to normalize industrialized mass murder and profit from it without a shred of conscience or faith-based conflict. The ease with which the characters discard morality aligns with the concept of morality being subjective and dictated by power dynamics, even though the film itself acknowledges an objective truth of the evil taking place.