In
her landmark book The Origins of
Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt examined the close kinship between Stalinism
and National Socialism. Surprisingly, it
did not cost her many friendships amongst the intelligentsia. Of course, her think-piece reporting on the
Eichmann trial in Jerusalem would be a different matter entirely. The defining controversy of the philosopher’s
career is logically the focus of Margarethe von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt (trailer here), which releases today on DVD and Blu-ray
from Zeitgeist Films.
As
the film opens, Arendt has settled into a relatively comfortable life as a
naturalized citizen, teaching at the New School and tolerating her husband
Heinrich Blücher’s discrete infidelities. The Mossad has just captured Adolf
Eichmann—news that electrifies Arendt’s Jewish colleagues. Intrigued by the implications of the trial,
Arendt offers her services to New Yorker editor
William Shawn as a correspondent, which he accepts because she is Hannah
Arendt.
To
the bafflement of old friends, the frustrated Arendt becomes preoccupied with Eichmann’s
bureaucratic blandness and his willingness to surrender his status as an individual. It seems rather strange how divisive her
resulting theory of the “banality of evil” was at the time, considering how
thoroughly it now informs our collective impression of Eichmann and other war criminals
of his ilk. Perhaps even more contentious,
her critical observations regarding the miscalculations of some National
Socialist appointed “Jewish Councils” to engage in some forms of temporary
tactical acquiesce are not as widely held, but they are far from uncommon
complaints today.
Von
Trotta’s Arendt captures the
intellectual swagger of Arendt and her circle, as well as the still relatively
buttoned down tenor of the very early 1960’s.
The New School still looks much the same from the outside, but
chain-smoking is most likely frowned upon in lecture halls. It is a quality period production that looks
true to the era during the scenes in both New York and Israel.
Frankly,
von Trotta and co-writer Pamela Katz are not above playing favorites,
portraying Norman Podhoretz as a knee-jerk hyper-ventilator, whereas Mary
McCarthy is faultlessly down-to-earth and sympathetic. Still, the depiction of Arendt, as written by
von Trotta & Katz and played by Barbara Sukowa, is remarkably complex and
even-handed. Viewers fully understand
just how thoroughly Arendt’s emotions are subservient to her intellect. What was once a defense mechanism becomes problematic,
preventing her from anticipating the furor stemming from her articles. Von Trotta shrewdly resists the lure of an
easy ending, ending the film on a decidedly ambiguous note.
