Film review: "Hannah Arendt" - a reminder that ideas do matter
by Richard Young
To be sure, German born Jewish American political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is by no stretch of the imagination a household name in 2013. Nor is it likely that director Margarethe von Trotta's fine biopic, Hannah Arendt, now playing at London's Hyland Cinema is going to have patrons lined up in droves at the box office. Especially at a time when the antics of the likes of pop star Miley Cyrus and her ilk and movies about comic book superheroes seem to have captivated so many North Americans for some unfathomable reason. Pity, for von Trotta's film is a powerful reminder that ideas do matter and that evil ideas have the power to do great evil and have dire consequences for humankind.
The film also flies in the face of the apparent anti-intellectualism which has seized North American society. How refreshing it is to enjoy a film in which the characters are depicted as intelligent, thinking individuals for whom conversation and witty repartee are not lost arts.
For the uninitiated, Hannah Arendt was a landmark thinker and writer whose works contributed significantly to our understanding of political power, authority and that scourge of the twentieth century -- totalitarianism. She explored this latter subject in her seminal 1951 book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, in which she traced the roots of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia in the context of Western civilization. I remember struggling with this book as a Grade 12 History student during the turbulent 1960s.
But, it was her controversial coverage of the trial of former Nazi Adolf Eichmann captured in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), that is depicted in this film. Imprisoned briefly in a German concentration camp in Vichy France after the Nazi occupation, Arendt had first-hand experience and knowledge of German persecution of European Jews before fleeing to America in 1941. A film that relies heavily on dialogue as opposed to action, Hannah Arendt is propelled by several powerful performances; foremost by Barbara Sukowa, who plays the pensive, chain-smoking Arendt so seamlessly you may forget this is a bio-pic and not a documentary.
Arendt is at once depicted as a brilliant thinker, powerful speaker, raconteur, yet sexy and playful, especially with her husband Heinrich Blücher played by Axel Milberg. And a writer for whom deadlines were apparently not all that important. One of my favourite scenes in the movie is a telephone conversation between Arendt and her New Yorker Magazine editor during which she makes him feel guilty for calling to ask how her manuscript is coming along.
In the courtroom scenes, real-life clips of Eichmann and witnesses giving testimony, are interspersed with the actors. A wise move as enactments may have detracted from what Arendt came to refer to as the "banality of evil" represented by Nazi underlings like Eichmann in the Holocaust. Arendt's stormy relationship as a student and lover of German philosopher Martin Heidegger is also examined in the film.
In the end, Arendt's insistence that Nazis like Eichmann were unthinking cogs incapable of moral judgement caught in a killing machine and her criticism of some Jewish leaders during the Holocaust cost her friends and brought animosity down on her head. And this is how the film ends - with Arendt on her parlour couch, smoking a cigarette and contemplating what has happened.
Hannah Arendt will not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you are looking for some true adult entertainment and are prepared to be challenged by ideas, it comes highly recommended.
Richard Young is the publisher/managing editor of The Beat Magazine.
