Hannah Arendt (12A)

Directed by Margarethe von Trotta

3 Stars

Political theorist Hannah Arendt certainly led an active life.

Yet director Margarethe von Trotta's biopic solely concentrates on her controversial views on the nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann, perhaps because it's an issue that continues to resonate in the US and Israel.

It hasn't gone down too well with the New Yorker, since it was that magazine which invited her to cover Eichmann's trial in 1961 because of her writings on "the psychology of evil."

Instead of mere reportage, after watching Eichmann's reactions, Arendt decided that he believed in the ideology of fuhrerprinzip - the "leader principle."

Eichmann, in his glass bomb-proof box, was unable to defend himself. He simply answered questions while on TV worldwide survivors of the Holcaust recalled the horrors of the genocide.

Arendt maintained that he wasn't the architect of genocide, he was merely a flunky obeying Adolf Hitler, "a nobody" carrying out orders because nazism was considered "normal" and his survival instincts stopped him "thinking."

For such an abhorrent abnormality, she coined the term "banality of evil."

Nor did Arendt think Israel had the legal right to kidnap Eichmann from Argentina simply to allow Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion to organise a show trial to legitimise the zionist state's right to play judge, jury and executioner. It mentions too the role of the US and Vatican in facilitating his escape to Latin America but not the fact that in 1952 the CIA didn't respond to German probings because they didn't want it known they recruited nazis by the score.

Arendt (the exceptional Barbara Sukowa) was also forthright in her criticism of some Jewish leaders' complicity with the nazis, such as the Judenrat - the administrative bodies in German-occupied territories - and the rich who paid to save themselves

The reaction was predictable. Arendt was accused of being a "self-hating Jew," a descriptor applied to all those who disagreed with zionism in the decades to follow.

Most of the feature's action takes place at cocktail parties, academia and the home Arendt shared with her second husband Professor Heinrich Blucher (Axel Milberg). but there's no mention of the fact that he was a working-class poet and communist.

Apart from the footage of the Eichmann trial and her recounting her relationships, Arendt spends what seems ages indulging in "passionate thinking."

We learn of her support for Rosa Luxembourg, her student affair with Heidegger (Klaus Pohl) who later became a nazi and her role in the French resistance before being captured and escaping to the US.

We learn too of her spurned passion for the zionist advocate Hans Jonas (Ulrich Nosthen) and her friendship with literary giant Mary McCarthy (Janet McTeer), who appreciated her intellectual honesty and subsequently edited her work after her death.

In the end it's a film which is selective in what it portrays and in exploring the moral concept of evil doesn't take into account that we do have choices.

Many chose the soft option to survive but others like the communists stayed to lead the resistance. But Arendt, it seems, couldn't distinguish the difference between fascism and socialism.