The furor over Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil has largely diminished, though it is still mentioned occasionally in Commentary and other publications. The book first appeared in The New Yorker in early 1963 when I was in my first year at Exeter and everyone there was discussing it; it was my initial encounter with The New Yorker and with passionate intellectual arguments after leaving my anti-intellectual town of Hudson, N.Y. and the arid atmosphere of Hudson High. If philosophical arguments interest you at all I would strongly recommend reading Hannah Arendt's book before seeing von Trotta's film.
Barbara Sukowa as Hannah captures all the complex and intricate details of Arendt's life and personality, from her infatuation and affair with her teacher Martin Heidegger -- who became a Nazi sympathizer -- to her escape from Nazi-occupied France and her teaching and writing career in New York. When her articles about the Eichmann trial first appeared Arendt was accused of attacking "her own people" and her rejection of this accusation (because she pointed out the complicity of some Jewish leaders) emphasized that she didn't love some abstract idea of "people," she loved her friends. Editor William Shawn (Nicholas Woodeson) courageously defends Arendt from attacks by Norman Podhoretz and Lionel Trilling, among others.
Von Trotta's film (cinematography by Caroline Champetier) effectively captures the turmoil of the New York intelligentsia in the 60's, where Arendt and her friend Mary McCarthy fought to establish their intellectual independence.
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