Manny’s review of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil > Likes and Comments

I want to read this too.

Hi Mariel! I look forward to discussing it :) And check out the movie, it is amazing. I want to be like Hannah Arendt when I grow up.

It played here in our one art house theater. It left before I got a night off. It does look great.

We almost missed it too but caught it just in time...

With most movies, I would tell you to be sensible and forget it, but here it might be worth the drive. It is very rare to see a film that is so positive about the life of the mind, and even rarer for the main character to be a woman.

whoa - somehow missed hearing about this movie - gotta find it somehow

Yes, I also liked the film a great deal. I went with a friend who then gave me the Penguin Portable Arendt and that reminds me that I have to add it to my Library in GR.

I just finished Eichmann in Jerusalem, and will review it soon. I also saw the movie Hannah Arendt, and liked it, but less than you did. I thought it was slow, and nothing like the spirit of her writing. There was little or no mention of her other Books. Also, there were too many scenes of her smoking cigarettes alone. All was saved in the final 15 minutes, in a packed lecture hall, where she gave meaning to the “Banality of Evil,” mesmerized the students, and dressed down three accusing faculty members. That speech had the vitality of the epilogue in Eichmann in Jerusalem.

I must read the book. Though it's possible that I will then like the film less...

Manny wrote: "I must read the book. Though it's possible that I will then like the film less..."

Yes, but for a good reason. The book outshines the movie.

I just saw that film as well. It was extremely well done. von Trotta asks the question: "How best to show a thinker on film?" and she manages remarkably well.

I also thought it was a complete success... don't understand why quite a lot of reviewers apparently hated it. Though it could be because they've read the book and I haven't :)

The book--I got the archival New Yorker articles--is extraordinary. But I never would have gotten there without the movie.

An impressive film about a fascinating woman. The only thing that seemed a little neglected was her relation to Heidegger.
I wonder what she would have said about Heidegger's "black notebooks".

Pleased to hear that you also liked it! I thought there was quite a lot about Heidegger... given the focus of the film, could they really have put in more?

With the focus on the Eichmann trial and her articles in the New Yorker it's OK to let Heidegger stay in the background. But the film is only 90 minutes. Another half an hour wouldn't have hurt :)
If I understood right one of her arguments was that Eichmann was "only" an ordinary/banal person who followed orders and who didn't have any conversation with himself, i.e. who didn't think. Heidegger, on the other hand, obviously did think, and still became an anit-Semit. I wonder how much of Heidegger's thinking about the Jews did she knew or suspected. I think there ought to be a movie about Heidegger, and von Trotta should direct it.

I just watched another movie you might also like to check out: Im Labyrinth des Schweigens about a young prosecutor in Germany preparing the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial. Eichmann gets mentioned of course, and the Hessian attorney general Fritz Bauer who helped to capture Eichmann plays a not so small role.
BTW the first Auschwitz trial began on the day I was born.

Wow. Thank you Matt, that sounds very tempting!

Matt is right about “Im Labyrinth des Schweigens” (Labyrinth of Lies). It is good.

Really must check this out, thank you!

David wrote: "Matt is right about “Im Labyrinth des Schweigens” (Labyrinth of Lies). It is good."

"Labyrinth of Lies"? I hope they translated the dialogs better than the movie's title :)

Three or four years old...

I just finished it -- I don't want to die before you read and review this book. it still stirs passions! It's not even that long. Not to show my hand, but I think you will especially like the epilogue

Thank you for the reminder, Jim! You're right, I really should read it.

I think that you let the fossil fuel people off too lightly.

You should watch The Interrogation 'A young judge must interrogate Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss as he awaits trial. Based on the memoirs of Rudolf Höss himself.' An Israeli movie. Fits in well.

Oh, those fossil fuel execs are just doing their jobs. I mean, if they didn't try to maximize profits then they'd be failing in their duty to the shareholders, wouldn't they?

But then, this goes as usual the shareholders do: if you don't do it, exec, you're fired and there is someone who will do it. They know what they are doing then, just as Eichmann did, to a point they feel it as banal, seeing people as mere objects keeping them from accomplishing "higher orders". "Yes, sir". "Yes, sir".

Yes, why not make a good career dispatching Jewish people to their deaths rather than let someone else get this plum job? But strangely enough, in some countries no one could be found to do such jobs.

Thanx for this thoughtful, provocative and ultimately well....

I must read this...thank you

It is really worth reading. So few people think clearly about these things.

Manny wrote: "It is really worth reading. So few people think clearly about these things."

So few people take time to even think...

Alas.

Manny wrote: "Yes, why not make a good career dispatching Jewish people to their deaths rather than let someone else get this plum job? But strangely enough, in some countries no one could be found to do such jobs."

Thank goodness for that, that in some countries "no one could be found to do such jobs". Maybe because even if there might be antisemitic thought widespread in those countries, they still didn't ally totally with Nazi thought and racial laws. Unfortunately, my home country, Brazil, sent some Jews to Germany (the government tried to show a Janus face, pro-Axis Powers and pro-Allies).

Thank you for this excellent review, Manny.

I should have read this book earlier.