The ‘zone of interest’ was the Nazi party term for the 40 square kilometre area around Auschwitz and also the name of Martin Amis’s novel, a very different version of a glimpse into the life and home of Rudolf Höss.

Höss was the longest serving commandant of Auschwitz and responsible for overseeing the deaths of millions. Directed Jonathan Glazer takes a studied and deliberate approach to telling the story of a prominent Nazi without glamour. With multiple stationary and wide angled cameras, natural light and dour and drab recreations of house and dress, the lives of Höss (Christian Friedel), wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their five children epitomise the banality of evil and premeditated ignorance.

We see the minutiae of their lives punctuated with details of horror. Hedwig and her friends joke about a fur coat being from ‘Canada’ – not the country but the term for the store of confiscated goods from camp prisoners. The beautiful garden that Hedwig has designed is fertilised with the ash of prisoners and set against the backdrop of guard towers and flames and black smoke. We never see the atrocities or the victims but the soundtrack is a sonorous maelstrom of factory groans, gunfire, dogs and screams.

Occasionally the screen is black or red for minutes at a time – moments of pause for us as audience members. There is contrasting footage shot with thermal cameras – the only way to shoot in the dark with natural light – depicting the real story of a Polish girl who left food for prisoners at night who Glazer met when she was in her 90s.

There is no great narrative arc, no drama other than that we bring with our hindsight. There is no attempt to make this tense or thrilling. When we cut to modern day footage of the Auschwitz museum, the mountain of shoes is enough to underline the depravity of the Nazi regime and the individuals who blindly carried it out.

We are left to ponder at the perhaps equal culpability of Rudolf who saw and acted and Hedwig who ignored and pretended.