The sign “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work makes you free”) is pictured at the main gate of the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland. Reuters/Pawel Ulatowski

At a time of rising antisemitism, when college presidents are okay with calls for Jewish genocide and younger Americans are getting false information about Jews from social media, an informative film about the Holocaust could be helpful.

Unfortunately, the new film, The Zone of Interest, removes Jews from the Holocaust. I knew this going in, as it’s based on the Martin Amis novel of the same name, which focuses on a Nazi (Rudolf Hoss) who is the commandant of Auschwitz, as well as his wife and children.

We see Hoss in his underwear, doing mundane things, with his family acting like regular people. Who cares?

There are movies that focus on Christians who resisted the Nazis, either with violence or means of protest. There’s the 2001 film Conspiracy, with Kenneth Branagh as SS General Reinhard Heydrich, one of Heinrich Himmler’s top deputies. The film centers on the Nazi leaders who came together for the Wannsee Conference in which details of the Final Solution were agreed upon. They are fine films. One can make a Holocaust movie without Jews if it has an emotional punch regarding the epic brutality that took place. This film doesn’t even have a slap.

The Zone of Interest is the most offensive Holocaust movie I’ve seen.

You are supposed to be enamored by the fact that the actors didn’t know where the cameras were. I’m not. There is supposed to be some harrowing feeling seeing the smoke rise from the most notorious death camp in history, without seeing any of the actual Jews in pain. In one of the most bizarre cuts in film history, the movie suddenly jumps from the Holocaust to see current day shoes belonging to Jews who were slaughtered by Nazis behind museum glass. Don’t give me shoes. Give me the people who stood in them.

I was well aware that The Zone of Interest was shot near Auschwitz, and that the house of the commandant was re-created based on the exact specifications. What a complete waste of time! I was well aware the supposed “point” of the film was to show that Nazi families were regular people who played with their kids. Then, the father went to a death camp where Jews were slaughtered in systemic fashion in numbers never seen in the world.

But the movie fails as art. The key is to make someone feel something. There must be conflict. There is virtually none in this film.

As Hoss, actor Christian Friedel is completely mechanical, no doubt on purpose, so he is not to blame. Whenever we see him, there is no reason to care. Are we to think he is ordinary like you and me, and we could have done the same as he? No, we would not all have done the same, and if some of us would, that’s not an excuse for a boring movie.

I am not surprised to see many critics praise the film when it should be lambasted. That is due to what I call “The Emperor Has No Clothes Phenomenon.” It must be an amazing film, or else they admit they are not intellectual enough to “get” what director Jonathan Glazer is doing.

Nonsense.

You may ask: “Isn’t the point to show that people were able to go about their lives and then be evil? Isn’t this a message relevant today — that we shouldn’t go about our lives and ignore carnage that is taking place all over the world?”

That could only be achieved if there was something in the film that was worthwhile.

I’m well aware of Hannah Arendt and the phrase “the banality of evil.” That isn’t an excuse for a movie that is devoid of feeling and effort. There is no tension in any scene. We deserved a better movie than this.

The author is a writer based in New York.