The Banality of Evil
Hannah Arendt is an interesting movie based on the true controversy caused by the report written by Arendt on the Eichmann trial
. The movie by Margarethe Von Trotta offers a different perspective on World War II. One that is rarely approached: the post-Holocaust trials. Hannah Arendt was a Jewish great thinker who covered the trial of the SS Eichmann for The New Yorker. After she published her report, she was accused of defending Eichmann when she stated that the Jewish leaders certainly played a role in the deportation of so many Jews and that the SS officer was simply a piece of a much more complex puzzle. I think you'd be better off checking background information on Arendt and her work and this specific trial to perfectly understand the film. The movie also lacks some clarification about the characters and their relationships. For those reasons, I find it a bit elitist and not easy to reach. But I definitely like how the plot focuses on Arendt's personal struggle to respect her philosophical impartiality and freedom of speech. She's stuck into the battle between her thoughts and people's judgment. I believe the screenplay could have dug a bit deeper into Arendt's self-struggle and loneliness as this topic of the banality of evil will remain her life-long philosophical and inexhaustible well. I especially appreciated how the archive footage and audio files are perfectly inserted on screen. The director used several languages switching from Hebrew to English or German with touches of French. It surely makes the story true to the immigrant universe. This movie has an undeniable quality to it but I expected much more from such a topic that could have been examined to its fullest. I was hoping for more insight on being a public figure and having to justify your every opinion as well as being treated as a renegade by your own people, friends, and family.
. The movie by Margarethe Von Trotta offers a different perspective on World War II. One that is rarely approached: the post-Holocaust trials. Hannah Arendt was a Jewish great thinker who covered the trial of the SS Eichmann for The New Yorker. After she published her report, she was accused of defending Eichmann when she stated that the Jewish leaders certainly played a role in the deportation of so many Jews and that the SS officer was simply a piece of a much more complex puzzle. I think you'd be better off checking background information on Arendt and her work and this specific trial to perfectly understand the film. The movie also lacks some clarification about the characters and their relationships. For those reasons, I find it a bit elitist and not easy to reach. But I definitely like how the plot focuses on Arendt's personal struggle to respect her philosophical impartiality and freedom of speech. She's stuck into the battle between her thoughts and people's judgment. I believe the screenplay could have dug a bit deeper into Arendt's self-struggle and loneliness as this topic of the banality of evil will remain her life-long philosophical and inexhaustible well. I especially appreciated how the archive footage and audio files are perfectly inserted on screen. The director used several languages switching from Hebrew to English or German with touches of French. It surely makes the story true to the immigrant universe. This movie has an undeniable quality to it but I expected much more from such a topic that could have been examined to its fullest. I was hoping for more insight on being a public figure and having to justify your every opinion as well as being treated as a renegade by your own people, friends, and family. 
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