Zone of Interest

It may have seemed like an odd staff outing. 

Two or three times a year, instead of our normal monthly staff meeting, we have an “off-site.” Usually this is some kind of experience that stretches our leadership thinking or ministerial creativity. Our off-sites have been as varied as the Van Gogh immersive exhibit to a behind-the-scenes tour of a football stadium.

This month, we went to a movie theater and watched a film.

The Zone of Interest recently won the Oscar for best international film along with the rare distinction of also being nominated – as an international film – for best picture. 

Why did I want us to watch this film? Not all staff development has to do with leadership principles or time management. There’s also a need for cultural awareness and spiritual insight. 

The film portrays the real-life historical figure Rudolf Höss who was in charge of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. He later confessed to overseeing the murder of three million people. While filmed at Auschwitz, you are not taken inside to view the horrors. You only hear them in the background—gunshots, screams... all form the backdrop of the “normal” life of Höss and his family inside their home just beyond the gates.

As one movie reviewer, writing for the Washington Post, put it:

The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s quietly shattering portrait of family life in Nazi-era Germany, is really two movies in one.

The film that audiences see on-screen – a bucolic domestic drama, filled with children, gardens, picnics, and daily rituals and squabbles – unfolds with quotidian ordinariness. Then there’s the movie we conjure in our minds, with images of emaciated bodies, shaved heads and anguished screams barely audible above the clinking teacups and cooing babies.

Rather than diminishing the horror, it adds to it. Rarely has there been a film that so powerfully portrays how sin and evil can reside in a human life without blushing. 

Many films portray horror by explaining it away—a dysfunctional childhood, a scarring event, mistreatment or abuse. There is a need to say, “Here’s why this person did horrible things.” The Zone of Interest does not delve into such matters. Instead, it simply portrays the deep theological truth that we do sinful things because we are sinful.

And how?

By dehumanizing others and then compartmentalizing our actions against them. Hence the title of the movie itself—the “zone of interest” was the antiseptic term the Nazis used for Auschwitz. The film ends with a telling symbol of Höss’ descent into the darkness.

I asked our staff to watch a 50-minute documentary on the liberation of Buchenwald before we went, a short film that very much revealed the horrors inside the walls of places like Auschwitz. Then we watched The Zone of Interest. The combination was devastating. As noted by a reviewer in the U.K., this year’s most important film about World War II wasn’t Oppenheimer—it was this.

To a person, I was told it was the most moving, meaningful, “best” staff outing we have had together.

Some wept over the sin of the world and how easily it is embraced; others renewed their hearts toward the lost in need of Jesus. All of us realized anew just how dark sin is and how it can penetrate any life,

... including our own.

James Emery White

Sources

Ann Hornaday, “‘The Zone of Interest’: Inside the Banality of Evil, On-Screen and Off,” The Washington Post, January 16, 2024, read online.

Emily Belz, “Evil Is as Evil Does,” Christianity Today, January 23, 2024, read online.

Robbie Collin, “Why the Year’s Most Important Film About the Second World War Wasn’t ‘Oppenheimer’,” The Telegraph, March 11, 2024, read online.

“Greatest Events of WWII in Color,” Netflix, watch here.

About the Author

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.