Hannah Arendt (2012)

A look at the life of philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, who reported for 'The New Yorker' on the trial of the Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Director:

Margarethe von Trotta

Writers:

Pamela Katz (screenplay) (as Pam Katz), Margarethe von Trotta (screenplay)

Stars:

Barbara Sukowa, Axel Milberg, Janet McTeer

6 wins & 17 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Barbara Sukowa	...	Hannah Arendt
Janet McTeer	...	Mary McCarthy
Julia Jentsch	...	Lotte Köhler
Axel Milberg	...	Heinrich Blücher
Timothy Lone	...	News Speaker
Megan Gay	...	Francis Wells
Nicholas Woodeson	...	William Shawn
Tom Leick	...	Jonathan Schell
Ulrich Noethen	...	Hans Jonas
Nilton Martins	...	Student Enrico
Leila Lallali	...	Student Laureen (as Leila Schaus)
Harvey Friedman	...	Thomas Miller
Victoria Trauttmansdorff	...	Charlotte Beradt
Sascha Ley	...	Lore Jonas
Friederike Becht	...	Young Hannah Arendt

Storyline

In 1961, the noted German-American philosopher of Jewish origin, Hannah Arendt, gets to report on the trial of the notorious Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann. While observing the legal proceedings, Arendt concludes that Eichmann was not a monster, but an ordinary man who had thoughtlessly buried his conscience through his obedience to the Nazi regime and its ideology. Arendt's expansion of this idea, presented in her articles for 'The New Yorker', would create her concept of 'the banality of evil' that she thought even sucked in some Jewish leaders of the era into unwittingly participating in the Holocaust. The result is a bitter public controversy in which Arendt is accused of blaming the Holocaust's victims. Now that strong willed intellectual is forced to defend her ideas in a struggle that will exact a heavy personal cost.

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Plot Keywords:

triple f rated | writer | book | 1960s | trial | 

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Genres:

Biography | Drama

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Did You Know?

Trivia

For a deeper understanding of this story, one might care to watch Operation Finale (2018), which depicts the undercover mission to find and extract Adolf Eichmann from Argentina and bring him to trial in Israel. Showing the background of an operation sanctioned by PM David Ben-Gurion, the film gives a glimpse of the complexity of Eichman's character, his futile attempts to justify his actions and tell his side of the story.

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Goofs

When Arendt stands on the terrace of her hotel in Jerusalem at looks across the Valley of Hinnom at the Old City, there are Israel flags flying from the Tower of David complex. However, the Old City of Jerusalem was still under Jordanian control in 1961.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Mary McCarthy: But Hannah, how can you defend him?
Hannah Arendt: But I'm not defending him. You can hardly forget that your husband is only my friend because of you. And I don't throw away my friends so quickly.

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Connections

Featured in Democracy Now!: Episode dated 26 November 2013 (2013)

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Soundtracks

Sherry Lane
Composed and Produced by Frank Stumvoll
Courtesy of Freshart Musicproductions

User Reviews

Missing history from "Hannah Arendt"

The film "Hannah Arendt" depicts an intriguing and contradictory intellectual but avoids examining the political core of the famous controversy it recounts. Arendt stirred a furor with her 1963 writings on the Israeli government's trial in Jerusalem of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann. She characterized Eichmann, who had organized the transport of European Jews to the death camps, as a banal bureaucrat rather than a singular monster. She wrote that European Jewish leaders, too, were responsible, by administering submission to the Nazis when even futile resistance and chaos might have allowed more Jews to survive. The public attacks on Arendt are shown. She was pilloried, particularly by Jewish intellectuals, as an unfeeling Nazi sympathizer and self-hating Jew. The New School's move to fire her is also enacted.

But the film, which shows Arendt as shocked to learn that she has hurt the feelings of many Jews, including long-time friends, does not reveal that she had broken with the Zionist leaders in 1942 when they called for a Jewish state rather than the bi-national Palestine she supported. The Zionists opposed measures to rescue Jews from the Nazis other than those that herded them to Palestine. They claimed, however, that their takeover of Palestine was all about saving Jews from a unique evil -- a claim unchallenged by most liberals as well as the Stalinist left. Arendt's analysis hit the Zionists' guilty conscience and undermined the rationale for their nationalist project. The film ignores these crucial political elements, and presents Arendt's strong defender and friend only as novelist "Mary" without disclosing that Mary McCarthy was an anti-Stalinist and anti-Zionist who called Zionism the "Jewish final solution."

Director Margarethe von Trotta's failure to explore this relevant history leaves her film interesting but superficial when it could have been brave and timely. Arendt's famous topic, thoughtless compliance with evildoers in power, needs our attention today more than ever. Fifty years after the "Banality of Evil" controversy, U.S. liberals and progressives are blindly uncritical of a leader who spies on millions and remotely executes foreigners and citizens in the name of national security. A militarily mighty Zionist state is still free to massacre innocents, shielded by this unquestioned U.S. power and the old sacred cow that Israel is the only safe haven for Jews. Arendt might have had some juicy comments about the "banality of filmmaking."

Rita Freed

Details

Official Sites:

Official site [Japan]

Country:

Germany Luxembourg France Israel

Language:

German English French Hebrew Latin

Release Date:

10 January 2013 (Germany)

Also Known As:

Hannah Arendt

Filming Locations:

Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$31,270, 2 June 2013

Gross USA:

$717,205

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$8,880,936

Company Credits

Production Co:

Heimatfilm, Amour Fou Luxembourg, MACT Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

113 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1