"I could have my husband spread your ashes across the fields of Babice."

Not only Jonathan Glazer’s current-career masterpiece, but possibly the artistic achievement of the decade, thus far. It’s difficult to fathom any degree of the filmmaker’s process here, which ultimately magnifies the ubiquitous, stomach-churning evil that so boldly permeates his frames. From the technical and thematic significance of its enveloping overture to any number of the utterly soul-chilling sequences that follow — the final moments being equally haunting and sophisticated — The Zone of Interest at no time compromises, relentlessly playing its harrowing hand with the utmost understanding.

The experience is that of confronting two films simultaneously: the seen and unseen – the wall and the camp. For Glazer, though, there’s no division between either foreground or background. They exist inextricably as the concurrent twin accounts of perpetrator and victim; of how the former seeks to compartmentalize their domestic reality beside the mass liquidation of the latter. Entire stories occur out of sight within the borders of Auschwitz (credit to the genuinely peerless sound design) — just beyond the deliberate scope of the Höss narrative — separated by mere feet of concrete and barbed wire, collectively expressed through a ceaseless off-screen cacophony of systematic slaughter.

Glazer’s accomplished grasp on the layered soundscape reinforces the many facets of his dense terrain. It’s a remarkably affecting dynamic that the writer-director earns scene-by-scene. The sheer depth of each composition staggers from the very beginning, only growing more urgent in horror as the unreserved script, painstaking cinematography, and uncanny editing style fortify the delusion of both household and professional prosperity amid genocide. There’s a pervasive dread to every single element, no matter the set piece, echoed by screams, gunfire, and the roar of bellowing smokestacks. Even the faintest hope — a Polish girl who stashes food for prisoners under the cover of night — is rendered in nightmarish form through stark thermal imagery underscored by Mica Levi’s uniquely disquieting orchestrations.

For some, Glazer’s presentation and dimensionality will be suspect. I can (almost) understand their doubts, or one’s outright disapproval of the work considering its approach. But as I stared into the darkness above my bed for hours after the screening, sleepless well into the early morning, a futility in splitting the film from my being took shape. And that piercing awareness remains now, as it will across the coming weeks. And months. And years.

A pertinent portrayal of historical inhumanity that chronicles the ease with which our species can adapt to the unspeakable. There’s frighteningly little — if anything at all — left of the moral edge separating some from using the incinerated remains of the captive innocent as fertilizer.

Unbelievable filmmaking.

"To tell you the truth, I wasn’t really paying attention. I was too busy thinking how I’d gas everyone in the room. Very difficult, logistically, because of its high ceiling."