The Zone of Interest is not quite like any film-watching experience you’ve had before it, telling its story through the perspective of the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, as they strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp. The film doesn’t focus on the horrors that family name caused, but rather the “ordinary” life they set out to lead — all as the unspeakable was unfolding on the other side of the wall. Jonathan Glazer creates an experience that feels like being sucked out of your seat and thrown into a time capsule. The cinematography is some of the best I’ve ever seen, especially with a film in which what you don’t see is the true thematic weight of the film.

Christian Friedel and Sandra Huller lead the film but are captured almost entirely through wide shots, as to not quite allow you to get close to these historical figures of evil and rather portray them in their seemingly cold and mundane lives. The sound editing is faint yet visceral, and sickening as a result. This is a film where the smallest of details are what create the true big picture — perhaps the echoing of a scream in the background that is never addressed by the characters as they go about the scene, or something small a character finds in the frame that he then hides from his children. This is how Glazer brings about the attitudes of people believing they deserve the best through hard work and a picturesque lifestyle, all while their lives are entangled in systems of evil. In addition, the metaphorical framing of objects in the house or stories and poems told create the most chilling of images in the most seemingly “innocent”. Mica Levi’s musical score isn’t ever-present in the film, but when it’s there, it sums up the film’s dark tone with an almost hellish omen of sin and sorrow. Though we’ve seen disturbing films about the evils of the Holocaust such as Schindler’s List and The Pianist, what this film dares to do is show the delusional ignorance of a wicked, bigoted people that was completely normalized to genocide. It’s a difficult yet haunting and essential watch that’s not only sadly relevant, but expertly told through the conjunction of sound, cinematography, and editing through Glazer’s singular vision.