HANNAH ARENDT

Germany/Israel/Luxembourg, 2013, 113 minutes, Colour.
Barbara Sukowa, Janet Mc Teer, Axel Milbert.
Directed by Margarethe von Trotte.


Hannah Arendt was a significant thinker in her time. She had written on the Origins of Totalitarianism and was appreciated as a philosopher. Jewish, she had escaped with her mother from Germany in the late 1930s to the United States and became an American citizen. She lectured in New York and was esteemed as a woman of depth and intelligence.

This is a film which is of interest to those who know about Hannah Arendt, her life and career. It will also be of interest to those who know little about her but want to find out her contribution to 20th century thinking. If an audience is not interested in Hannah Arendt and her work, they will find this sometimes detailed look at her and her philosophy hard going, or too-hard going.

The director, Margarethe von Trotte, has had a long career in film and has concentrated so many times on significant women and women’s issues. Her leading lady for Hannah Arendt, Barbara Sukowa, has appeared in several of the director’s films playing, amongst others, Rosa Luxembourg and Hildegard of Bingen. Here she creates a very strong impression as Hannah Arendt.

The principal focus of the film is Hanna and on Adolf Eichmann, his being taken by Israeli agents in Argentina, his extradition to Jerusalem and his trial, where he was held in a glass cage, and ultimately found guilty of the charges and hanged.

Hannah Arendt asked the editor of the New Yorker to report on the trial. Her husband, Heinrich, was against her going. But, wanting to ground her philosophical reflections in facts and experience, she was determined to go. The film has some brief scenes of the trial, Hannah sitting in the benches, working in the press room watching the television screen, and some actual television footage of Eichmann himself, the prosecutor and the judge. There are several re-enactments, as well as footage, of some of the witnesses and their emotional response to the treatment of the Jews and the Holocaust. Looking at Eichmann, we see a small man, very ordinary-looking, a bureaucrat rather than any charismatic leader. This was to be the core of Hannah Arendt’s comments on the trial.

After the publication of the articles in the New Yorker, there was a groundswell against Hannah. Jewish authorities and many of the Jews, whether they had read her articles or not, felt that she had betrayed her people, especially with her comments about the complicity, witting or unwitting, of some Jewish leaders with the Nazi authorities and so being responsible for more deaths of Jews. For many this was incomprehensible, leading to hostile phone calls, letters and death threats.

But Hannah Arendt was a strong character, accused of arrogance (which is displayed in the film) and a lack of feeling. However, influenced by the philosopher, Martin Heidegger, with whom she had a relationship when she was a student, rejecting him when he affirm Nazism and later visiting him to ask him to make a public apology, she was a philosopher who was also passionate, invoking ‘passionate thinking’.

The dramatic finale to the film is a lecture she gave at the New York New School, in the presence of the University officials who wanted her resignation, and to a full room of students. It is here that she speaks the phrase which most people know, even if they do not know who originated it, ‘The Banality of Evil’. Eichmann was an ordinary man, a bureaucrat, not a man with a vision or leadership qualities, but someone who obeyed orders because he believed in the authority and that the authority should be obeyed, passing on his orders to others who fulfilled them while he was detached, not even knowing necessarily what the consequences were. This is a particularly important message at any time, but particularly now, where communications and social media give us immediate information and a multitude of opinions.

Perhaps this film is more of a visual lecture about Hannah Arendt than an inventive cinema experience. But, to the extent that it portrays Hannah, her ideas, and the controversies about the Eichmann trial and her reporting, it is worth seeing.

1. Audience interest in Hannah Arendt? Hannah Arendt herself, her career, her reputation, controversy? The Eichmann trial? The reactions? ‘The Banality of Evil’?

2. The work of the director, her career, films about significant women? Barbara Sukowa and her role in the director’s films?

3. Audience knowledge? Information? Character, the trial and the actual footage? The articles in the New Yorker? Hannah Arendt’s philosophy? The Origins of Totalitarianism?

4. New York, the 1960s, the University, apartments? The sequences in Israel, the landscapes, the city of Jerusalem? The trial? The use of English and German? The musical score?

5. Hannah Arendt and her story, the past and the flashbacks, her study, interest in philosophy, the relationship with Martin Heidegger? Loving him? Lectures? Her visits? His visits to her? His emphasis on Thinking? His affirmation of the Nazis? Hannah revisiting him, urging a public apology? His reasons?

6. The relationship between Hannah and Heinrich, the years, together, from Germany, to New York, their love? Communication? His reservations about her going to Jerusalem? His collapse and illness? Hannah’s love and support? His support for her?

7. Mary Mc Carthy, the introduction to the film, the chatting about relationships, the touch of scandal? Mary Mc Carthy and her social background, literary, her friendship and support? especially in the controversy? Playing pool – and her cheating?

8. Hans, his place in Hannah’s past, action in the past? Hannah in the camp? Her memories, leaving, bringing her mother to America? The meetings at her apartment, the discussions, Heinrich and his antagonism? Hans and his attending her lecture, turning against her?

9. Lotte, her secretarial work, friendship, looking after Heinrich, the vigil with Hannah, reading the letters?

10. Lore, the other women, friendship and support?

11. The University, the lecturers, her reputation, staff, meetings, rapport with the students?

12. The opening, the bus, the men walking along the road, capture? The taking of Eichmann by the Israelis? The articles in the New York Times? Hannah’s reaction? Her going to Israel, her presence of the trial of Eichmann, in the benches, in the press room? Her fears that it would merely be a show trial? The picture of the prosecutor, the judges, the witnesses, the public, watching on the television screen? The attitude of the judge, the words of the prosecutor, the collapse and emotions of the witnesses? Hannah’s reports, reactions?

13. Hannah and the Origins of Totalitarianism, philosophical treatment? Wanting to witness the trial to anchor her reflections in facts? And yet her developing a philosophy of evil?

14. The effect of the trial on her, seeing Eichmann is a criminal, deserving of hanging? But her reservations about him as a person, as mediocre, as a bureaucrat, his attitude towards obeying orders? Machinery of people obeying orders rather than the focus on the significant evil leaders?

15. The delay in writing, the editor of the New Yorker, his advisers and the reservations? His phone call to Hannah? Her finishing? His comment on her grammar? The discussions about the issues?

16. Hannah, her opinions, seeming as arrogant, non-feeling? Incisive but intransigent?

17. The issue of the Jewish leaders and their complicity in the fate of the Jews? The Jewish reaction, whether people had read her articles or not?

18. The issue of Eichmann as mediocre and the consequences of his obeying orders, passing on situations to the next bureau and his not see feeling responsible?

19. The attacks on Hannah, the readers, the Jews, letters, calls, vicious cards, death threats? The lecturers at the University, their meeting with her, wanting her to resign, their presence at her lecture, walking out?

20. Her own reaction, Heinrich and his support, her being away, going to visit Kurt in Israel, his turning his back on her after all that they had been through?

21. The dramatic climax with the banality speech, the packed room, the students, the question, her explanations, the applause? Hans and his turning against her? The authorities walking out?

22. The aftermath about her career and her continued pursuit of the philosophy of evil until her death in 1975.