German Philosopher Hannah Arendt and her husband the Marxist poet/philosopher Heinrich Blücher, both Jews, managed to escape the French Detention Camp where they had been imprisoned and lived out the rest of World War 2 in New York. They quickly established themselves, and Arendt scored many prestigious teaching positions …. she was the first ever woman lecturer at Princeton … and her students at The New School in Manhattan adored her. A chain-smoking fearless outspoken woman with two hefty tomes of philosophy including ‘The Human Condition’, she had established her reputation as one of the leading thinkers of the day.
Despite protests from her husband and their friends Arendt aggressively lobbied ‘The New Yorker’ to commission her to cover the Trial on their behalf. William Shawn the Editor jumped at this coup and against his colleagues pleas, sent Arendt off to Israel and then sat back and waited. She kept him waiting a very very long time. Back home in NY she was distracted by her husband’s sudden illness, but more so because of desire to theorise about the inequities of evil …. and Eichmann… rather than a mere verbatim report of the court proceedings. When months later Eichmann was given the Death Penalty, Arendt was still avoiding committing her thoughts to paper.
What she did finally produce evolved into the book ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil‘ that ‘The New Yorker’ published in 5 installments. She raised the question of whether evil is radical or simply a function of thoughtlessness, a tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without a critical evaluation of the consequences of their actions and inaction.
This however was not the reason that the articles caused such major controversy and the clamour of virulent backlash against her, it was because Arendt was sharply critical of the way the trial was conducted in Israel. She also was critical of the way that some Jewish leaders, notably M. C. Rumkowski, acted during the Holocaust.
Her final paragraph was totally overlooked by her critics who condemned her outright: ‘Just as you [Eichmann] supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations—as though you and your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world—we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang’
In this new biopic writer/director Margarethe von Trotta unambiguously tells the story in such away to ensure that we completely sympathise with Arendt’s stance and her stubborn determination to stand by every word that she wrote despite the offence it caused so many in the Jewish community at the time. It also personally cost her several of her oldest and closest friendships.
It was a great looking film that seemed to totally capture the period feeling of the elite academic and literary circles of the time. Veteran German actress Barbara Sukowa gave an impressive performance as the strident and courageous Arendt … and also worth noting in this ensemble piece was Janet McTeer playing the novelist Mary McCarthy, a close friend of Arendt.
It’s rather ironic too that the author of the acclaimed ‘The Origins of Totalitarism’ with its detailed study anti-semitism should have ended up then being labelled as one herself after this furor. And I am wondering how reliving this part of history that I’m sure many would prefer to forget, will play out now especially with Jewish audiences.
★★★★★★★★
Labels: 2012, biopic, dramatized reallife, German, Jewish
