Margarethe von Trotta’s film about philosopher Hannah Arendt centers on “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” her series of articles in The New Yorker that brought the phrase “the banality of evil” into common parlance. The film traces Arendt (Barbara Sukowa) at the time of Israel’s kidnapping and trial of the Nazi.
The uneasy looks and sharp words at dinner and cocktail parties, as Arendt prepares and publishes her articles, bring back the time in New York literary life when some disagreements were worth ending friendships over. It’s vivid stuff, if not always persuasive; surely New Yorker editor William Shawn (Nicholas Woodeson) wasn’t that smooth.
Von Trotta weaves in trial footage of Adolf Eichmann that reinforces Arendt’s view of the monster as mediocrity, struggling to recall the papers he pushed and memos he followed.
But the flashbacks to Arendt’s youthful affair with Martin Heidegger (Klaus Pohl) are unrelievedly banal. Heidegger joined the Nazi party in 1933 and never expressed remorse, but as filmed by von Trotta, his affair with the Jewish Arendt could be any professor’s affair with any student.
Arendt is an assured figure, with little, if any, self-doubt. The film shares that assurance; those who disagree are pinched figures who stand little chance against Arendt or her friend Mary McCarthy, played by Janet McTeer as an intellectually jousting Auntie Mame. It’s involving, as biopics go, but the shattering debates that still swirl around Arendt’s view of the Holocaust are relegated to walk-ons.