Banality

For 40 years Margarethe von Trotta has been making films about recent German history and contemporary Germany. Although not as well known as fellow New German Cinema directors Rainer Maria Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, films such as The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum and The German Sisters (aka Marianne & Juliane, Die bleierne Zeit) tracked the troubled story of Germany in the 1970s and its wider attempts to come to terms with its past.

Her latest film is Hannah Arendt, a biopic of the philosopher who left Germany in the 1930s, eventually settling in the USA and becoming a successful academic known for her analyses of fascism. The film takes a similar format to Bennett Miller's Capote, structured around a famous writer undertaking a particular reporting assignment, but in this case Arendt is investigating not the murderers Hickock and Smith but German wartime bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann, who played a key logistical role in the concentration camp system and Holocaust. The film begins in sinister fashion with Eichmann's kidnapping by Israeli agents, and the film explores the moral complexities and wider political function of his trial. Is it really possible to put one man on trial for murders perpetrated by a state, or is it primarily a show trial designed to lecture young Israeli Jews about their past?

In particular, two issues raised by Arendt cause controversy. The first is Arendt's claim that Eichmann's evil lay in a mindless bureaucratic obedience, a desire above all to do his duty and get the trains running on time even if they were running to the concentration camp, rather than any innate hatred of the Jews. This criticism is based on two questions that are simple to pose if not answer, one philosophical and the other historical: whether quiet bureaucratic wrongdoing is worse than more overt evil; and whether Eichmann himself was motivated by bureaucratic ideals or actual anti-semitism and other hatreds. Arendt seems to associate evil with what French existentialism would call mauvaise foi, action without considering the consequences of your deeds.

The second controversy is more complex, because it does not relate to questions of fact or interpretation. is the question of Jewish leaders' complicity with the Nazis at the time of the Holocaust, which Arendt alleges made it easier for the Germans to exterminate Europe's Jews. This is seen as victim blaming (as much a controversial issue today as in Israel in the 1960s). Arendt suggests they leaders may have found a form of resistance somewhere between passive obedience and active rebellion. However, this is not clearly fleshed out in the film: a little testimony is shown from the trial, and Arendt speaks about it only in general terms.

She suggested the Holocaust could have been better, slightly less damaging to the Jews. This of course also implies that the Holocaust could be worst. It removes the Holocaust from its status of unique event and places it in a continuum of possible holocausts of different qualities. Clearly it is true that certain Jews could have done more to save themselves or other people from Nazism, though often they had legitimate reasons for not helping (uncertainty about how bad things would get; the dangers of breaking the law and risking one's own life to help another; worries about unforeseen consequences), but it is not clear that this has any relevance to Eichmann and his trial.

Although Arendt's actions are questioned in von Trotta's movie, she is the clear heroine of the day. Other characters exist in relation to her, including her loving husband, to her friend the writer Mary McCarthy. The film has been criticised by Michelle Dean for presenting McCarthy as a dim-witted figure interested only in stereotypically female trivia (New Yorker). Arendt is criticised by others for her cynicism and lack of humanity, but this is celebrated in the film as a desire to get to the truth.

Hovering behind all this is Arendt's relationship with her mentor the German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, a figure of hatred to some Jews for his vague endorsement of Nazism, but a major influence on Arendt's thought and possibly her lover, certainly a great love of hers. Drawing on Heidegger, Arendt emphasises the importance of thinking, of mindful engagement with the world. But this is a very vague concept to base any philosophical system upon (did Hitler not spent quite a bit of time thinking, particularly in his prison cell? How is his thinking different from that Arendt? Or from that of Heidegger, who even if he didn't embrace Nazism was certainly prepared to superficially embrace its systems and institutions? Was he practicing some form of subtle resistance? Is there any evidence for that?) The main impression given is of the enormous distance from pre-war Germany with its strange mustaches and shy young Hannah and the cynical,
hyper-intelligent older Arendt. Perhaps she has greater sympathy for Eichmann because of her relationship with Heidegger? But are the cases remotely similar, especially as almost everyone, even the most liberal Jews, seem to believe that despite the imperfections of his kidnap and trial Eichmann deserves to die?

Centrally, there is Arendt's claim that Eichmann's evil is the greater or worse because it is unthinking, unmotivated, bureaucratic. Ironically, by the show trial format, Israel seemed to be promoting Eichmann as uniquely or archetypally evil. But his form of passive evil cannot exist without active evil. Again, ironically from a filmmaking point of view, the active evil of for example Amon Goeth in Schindler's List is much more cinematic than Eichmann's passive evil - which is only really demonstrated in an emotional way when the possibility of Eichmann arranging Arendt's death during the war is mentioned (Goeth is intrinsically wicked, but Eichmann's evil is only manifest in its consequences).

As a piece of filmmaking, some critics have found it a little boring or even banal. Mark Lilla notes that while the film features Arendt's claims about the importance of thinking, a film cannot easily show her actually thinking (NY Review). The film unsurprisingly has a lot of expository and didactic elements, as it explains Arendt's personal history and ideas, but it arranges them well within her daily life, from debates within her social circle to an impromptu Q&A with her students about her wartime experience.

It does however offer a strong portrayal of Arendt's contemporary intellectual life in the USA and in Israel, the passionate debates within her social circle, and her ability to generally separate intellectual disagreement from personal affection. Also, there is an affectionate portrayal of her husband Kurt, the two of them still very much in love despite their foibles.

Where possible, von Trotta inserts moments of drama: a scene where Arendt is approached by sinister Israeli intelligence figures could be out of Homeland, though it's alleviated by a touch of humanity. Everybody's point of view is given respect; even the anonymous figures who send Arendt vicious obscene hate mail are acknowledged for the hurt they have suffered. This is only fitting for a film whose main theme is the virtue of continually questioning received narratives.