Steven Spielberg Says The Zone Of Interest Is The Best Holocaust Film Since Schindler's List
Jonathan Glazer's Oscar-nominated "The Zone of Interest" is terrifying, and yet, nothing explicitly horrific appears on screen. Using the power of suggestion and ominous sound design, Glazer's film brings us the horrors of the Holocaust without ever actually depicting them. Inspired by a true story, and the novel of the same name by Martin Amis, "The Zone of Interest" follows Rudolf Höss, a Nazi commandant who lives with his family in a beautiful country house.
As it so happens, the idyllic-looking home is right at the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and the atrocities going on beyond those gates are constantly suggested through billowing smoke and off-camera screams and gunfire. It's a chilling, effective film that underscores the banality of evil. Höss and his family are fully aware of the horrors of the concentration camp they're living right up against, and they simply don't care — they go about their lives as if they're on permanent vacation.
"The Zone of Interest" is arguably one of the very best films about the Holocaust. But you don't have to take my word for it — just listen to Steven Spielberg.
Schindler's List
Steven Spielberg made what some might consider the definitive Hollywood film about the Holocaust — 1993's "Schindler's List," a powerful black-and-white masterpiece that took home several Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Using his unique cinematic eye, Spielberg staged several harrowing set pieces that unflinchingly show the atrocities of the Nazis against the Jewish people. It's a difficult film to watch, but it's also an important movie — and one of Spielberg's best.
THR recently published an oral history of "Schindler's List," and during the course of the piece, Spielberg actually singles out "The Zone of Interest." "'The Zone of Interest' is the best Holocaust movie I've witnessed since my own," he says. "It's doing a lot of good work in raising awareness, especially about the banality of evil." There have been other Holocaust films since "Schindler's List," many of them quite effective, but it's significant of Spielberg to hold "The Zone of Interest" up against his own masterpiece.