Vita Activa: Hannah Arendt and Banality Revisited

Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism is one of the most significant analyses of National Socialism and Communism published in the Twentieth Century, but all anyone ever wants to talk about is the “Banality of Evil” and her affair with Martin Heidegger. In a way, Origins prefigured Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s influential Dictatorships and Double Standards, arguing Stalin and Hitler were different than garden variety autocrats, because they sought to utterly control all aspects of the individual’s existence rather than merely monopolizing political power. Unfortunately, it is once again all about Eichmann and Heidegger when Ada Ushpiz selectively surveys the philosopher’s life and work in Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday in New York at Film Forum.

Arendt wrote significant work studying the act of revolution, using the American and French Revolutions as case studies, but Ushpiz almost exclusively refracts Arendt through the prisms of the Holocaust and Israel. In fact, probably eighty percent of the film’s visuals are drawn from archival video of National Socialist Germany. At least, she does not bury her big “scoop,” starting the film with narration of Arendt’s correspondence with her mentor Karl Jaspers shortly after the end of the war, in which he used the term “banality of evil” well before she published Eichmann in Jerusalem.

We get some biography and an awkward attempt to chase contemporary relevancy with her writings on the plight of stateless refugees, before the film settles into extended sequences on her complicated relationship with Martin Heidegger and her celebrated and scorned account of the Adolf Eichmann trial. Unfortunately, aside from some newly discovered Heidegger lectures that were horrifyingly anti-Semitic, Ushpiz really does not bring much to the discussion of either topic that is new and fresh.

Frankly, Vita Activa will feel like a rehash to anyone who saw Margarethe von Trotta’s biopic, Hannah Arendt. Of course, it rather made sense for von Trotta to focus on Eichmann in Jerusalem, because it held such dramatic implications for her life. However, in a documentary like Vita Activa, shortchanging the breadth and extent of Arendt’s philosophy and scholarship is very nearly a crime against the intellect.

That is a real shame, because Arendt’s work deserves a documentary that is willing to fully engage with it. Instead, Ushpiz cherry-picks the hot button greatest hits. What a wasted opportunity. There are a few nice moments with her former assistant that help humanize the seemingly unapproachable public intellectual, but those are too few and far between. Read Origins (it also has a lot of good stuff on imperialism for leftists) and wait for a better Arendt doc. For those who are obsessed with the Banality of Evil concept, Vita Activa opens this Wednesday (4/6) at Film Forum.

Hannah Arendt: the Philosopher Reports

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.

Sukowa is admirably restrained as Arendt, to a degree approaching the tragic.  Yet, she has some deeply human moments, particularly with Klaus Pohl as her disgraced former mentor-lover, Martin Heidegger.  Cerebral and literate, yet rather forgiving of human foibles, Hannah Arendt is a compelling portrait of a difficult figure to do justice on-screen.  Respectfully recommended for those who appreciate intellectual history, Hannah Arendt is now available for home viewing from Zeitgeist Films.