Hannah Arendt an illuminating portrait of political theorist who coined ‘banality of evil’
2012 film by German director Margarethe von Trotta, with Barbara Sukowa in title role, explores German-Jewish philosopher’s trip to Israel to cover war-crimes trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann, and the controversy that ensued
Philosophy relies on formal logic and the accurate use of words, so it’s difficult to express philosophical concepts on screen, where images reign supreme. But this character study of the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, who coined the phrase “the banality of evil”, is an intelligent attempt to provoke debate and frame the thoughts of its subject inside her quietly turbulent life.
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An accessible script, by director Margarethe von Trotta and screenwriter and novelist Pamela Katz, and a committed performance by Barbara Sukowa in the title role, allow plenty of room for Arendt’s philosophical observations to permeate without obscuring her personal dramas.
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Arendt, who was born in 1906, in Germany, had an eventful life. She studied philosophy with the early existentialist Martin Heidegger and became his lover. She moved to Paris but was sent to an internment camp when the Nazis invaded France. After being freed, she managed to get to New York, where she wrote her most famous book, The Origins of Totalitarianism.
The film is set mainly in New York and Jerusalem, in 1961, when Arendt went to Israel to report on the war-crimes trial of Nazi SS lieutenant-colonel Adolf Eichmann, for the New Yorker magazine. The controversies that arose from her article, and the book that followed, are the focus of the film.
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Eichmann, who was brought to trial after being kidnapped by the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, organised the transportation of Jews to the death camps. Although the prosecution portrayed him as a passionate anti-Semite who relished Hitler’s “final solution”, Arendt felt Eichmann was a dull individual who did not have the imagination to think beyond following orders.
She wrote that the greatest evils are sometimes those committed by insensitive people who simply do what they are told – the “banality of evil”, as she put it. Controversy arose when, in her article, Arendt claimed the well-organised Jewish leaders who dealt with Eichmann may have inadvertently made the Holocaust worse.
Arendt was a trained philosopher, and her detached truth-seeking led to her being labelled unfeeling by male colleagues and critics. Von Trotta works hard to show this professional objectivity, and carefully avoids melodrama. But flashbacks to romantic liaisons, and her deep love for her second husband make clear that Arendt was sensitive and caring outside her professional life.
Sukowa delivers Arendt’s final speech, defending her article to her university students, as a slow-burning tour de force that demonstrates her passion for truth ran very deep indeed.
Hannah Arendt will be screened on July 15 at the Hong Kong Film Archive, as part of German Film Forum 2016 – A Man Can Make a Difference.
