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kindkit1) I saw the movie Denial the other night. It's about the trial of Deborah Lipstadt, a history professor who was sued for libel by Holocaust denier David Irving after she called him a Holocaust denier. The script created a surprising amount of suspense and tension from a story to which most people know the ending (Lipstadt was acquitted on the grounds that everything she said about Irving was true), and the acting was great. Rachel Weisz may have overacted a little bit in some scenes, but it's hard to be sure because she was playing a brash American among a bunch of restrained middle-class English people. Andrew Scott was great as Lipstadt's solicitor, Tom Wilkinson marvellously nuanced as her barrister, and Mark Gatiss imbued a small role with a quiet, mysterious charisma. Anyone who thinks Scott and/or Gatiss can't act should see this film.
The script, by David Hare, is a delicate balancing act. The plot trajectory is almost that of a feel-good film, in which truth wins out and the bad guy is reproved and shamed. But the truth that wins out is one of the greatest atrocities in human history. The film, especially in the final sequence, sharply restrains our celebratory reactions. In the end, that's what I liked most about it.
2) After seeing the film, I read Lipstadt's book on the Eichmann trial (I haven't been able to get hold of her book on Holocaust denial yet, but I want to read it although it's well out of date by now.) The Eichmann book was disappointing. It's inevitably in the shadow of Hannah Arendt, even though it's trying to be a different kind of book, one more closely focused on the trial itself and on what's knowable of Eichmann's actions and character. Arendt was wrong about a lot of things, sometimes factually and sometimes morally (e.g. her condemnation of Jewish councils as collaborators, her essentially racist disdain for most Israeli Jews) but Eichmann in Jerusalem is an important, troubling, question-raising book, while Lipstadt's The Eichmann Trial is mostly just a narrative history, with a few forays into Israeli national identity. Lipstadt's chapter analyzing Arendt's book, while mostly balanced and informative, has some flaws, I think. Lipstadt asserts that Arendt saw Eichmann as almost childlike, or at least too stupid to understand his own culpability. My own sense is that Arendt argues that Eichmann was morally empty. He's a sort of sort of nightmare of modernity, who doesn't distinguish between being good at his murderous job and being a good person; Arendt sees this as a widespread but resistible human condition.
Arendt's point about the banality of evil, the way that genocide is enabled not just by megalomaniacs and ideologues but by ordinary people at their desks doing their jobs, is the lasting legacy of Eichmann in Jerusalem. The fact that Lipstadt and other historians have shown that Eichmann himself was much less of a banal functionary than he wanted to claim, and much more of a monster, is important for our understanding of Eichmann's own story, but I don't think it touches Arendt's argument at all.
3) In (somewhat) lighter reading, I've been thinking about re-reading Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad books so that I can finally read Secret Place and then the new one. I need to be reminded of the characters' backstories and interactions, but I'm not sure I can take that much concentrated bleakness in one big dose.
I'd like to know why so many contemporary mystery writers think the only story worth telling is one that makes you wish that whole human race would be wiped out in an asteroid strike.
4) Work post-mortem gathering tonight. I'm going, because I want to try to maintain relationships with people, but I can't say I'm eager. Hopefully the people I particularly want to see will be there, and not too many of the ones I don't.
The script, by David Hare, is a delicate balancing act. The plot trajectory is almost that of a feel-good film, in which truth wins out and the bad guy is reproved and shamed. But the truth that wins out is one of the greatest atrocities in human history. The film, especially in the final sequence, sharply restrains our celebratory reactions. In the end, that's what I liked most about it.
2) After seeing the film, I read Lipstadt's book on the Eichmann trial (I haven't been able to get hold of her book on Holocaust denial yet, but I want to read it although it's well out of date by now.) The Eichmann book was disappointing. It's inevitably in the shadow of Hannah Arendt, even though it's trying to be a different kind of book, one more closely focused on the trial itself and on what's knowable of Eichmann's actions and character. Arendt was wrong about a lot of things, sometimes factually and sometimes morally (e.g. her condemnation of Jewish councils as collaborators, her essentially racist disdain for most Israeli Jews) but Eichmann in Jerusalem is an important, troubling, question-raising book, while Lipstadt's The Eichmann Trial is mostly just a narrative history, with a few forays into Israeli national identity. Lipstadt's chapter analyzing Arendt's book, while mostly balanced and informative, has some flaws, I think. Lipstadt asserts that Arendt saw Eichmann as almost childlike, or at least too stupid to understand his own culpability. My own sense is that Arendt argues that Eichmann was morally empty. He's a sort of sort of nightmare of modernity, who doesn't distinguish between being good at his murderous job and being a good person; Arendt sees this as a widespread but resistible human condition.
Arendt's point about the banality of evil, the way that genocide is enabled not just by megalomaniacs and ideologues but by ordinary people at their desks doing their jobs, is the lasting legacy of Eichmann in Jerusalem. The fact that Lipstadt and other historians have shown that Eichmann himself was much less of a banal functionary than he wanted to claim, and much more of a monster, is important for our understanding of Eichmann's own story, but I don't think it touches Arendt's argument at all.
3) In (somewhat) lighter reading, I've been thinking about re-reading Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad books so that I can finally read Secret Place and then the new one. I need to be reminded of the characters' backstories and interactions, but I'm not sure I can take that much concentrated bleakness in one big dose.
I'd like to know why so many contemporary mystery writers think the only story worth telling is one that makes you wish that whole human race would be wiped out in an asteroid strike.
4) Work post-mortem gathering tonight. I'm going, because I want to try to maintain relationships with people, but I can't say I'm eager. Hopefully the people I particularly want to see will be there, and not too many of the ones I don't.
