Sandra Huller, Oscar nominated this year for her dazzling performance in Anatomy of a Fall, delivers another awesome portrayal in THE ZONE OF INTEREST.

THE ZONE OF INTEREST is nominated for five Oscars in total, Best Film, Best International Feature, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound, and Best Director, Jonathan Glazer, up against Huller’s Anatomy of a Fall director, Justine Triet.

Zoning in on the interest of this film, one is unequivocally reminded of Hannah Arendt’s phrase The Banality of Evil. Huller’s Hegwig Hoss is the happy hausfrau of husband, Rudolf, commandant of the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

In a house adjacent to the camp, she is the commandant of home making, directing her domestic staff and tending the beautiful garden.

There is a tendency for all stories of cruelty and atrocity to resemble one another. Not here. The sheer intentionality and obscenity of the Shoah is shown as mundane. The ordinariness of bland bureaucracy and the typical and traditional day to day of domestic life is depicted in close proximity of a hecatomb in this unique, compelling and chilling film.

The Teutonic mastery of mechanics that leads to titanic misery is portrayed as matter-of-fact, matter of business, efficiency of genocide the target of engineering logistics, the nine to five of a father and husband and his aspirational wife.

The legendary lens man of Cold War and Ida, cinematographer Lukasz Zal, uses natural light to give a sunny disposition to a grim and dark unseen background.

The sound design by Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn infuses THE ZONE OF INTEREST at an immersive molecular level, the audio reinforcing the visuals, stimulating the imagination with aural cues that range from the sublimely subtle to ambient saturation.

Mixed with Mica Levi’s eerie music, the soundscape creates a seamless sonic sensation. This is credible acoustics rather than incredulous loud sound and fury that signifies nothing. The sound of THE ZONE OF INTEREST significantly signifies something. Something profound, something sound. And resounding. A masterpiece.