Hannah Arendt (3½ Stars)

It was difficult for me to watch this film. I found so many of the things said by the title character offensive. It's a true story, so I'm attempting to keep an open mind and judge the film impartially.

Hannah Arendt was a German Jew who was born in 1906. She studied Philosophy at the University of Marburg, where she had an affair with one of her professors, the famous German philosopher Martin Heidegger. She attempted to become a university lecturer, but this was not allowed because she was a Jew, so she emigrated to France in 1933. After the German invasion of France she was held in a prison camp in Gurs in southern France, but she escaped before she could be transported to Poland. In 1941 she moved to America with a fake passport. She worked at several American universities lecturing Philosophy and Political Theory.

When she heard about the capture of Adolf Eichmann in 1960 and his upcoming trial in Israel, she wrote to the "New Yorker" and offered her services as trial reporter. When she returned to America after the trial she shocked the world by casting doubts on whether the guilty verdict was justified. She did not see Eichmann as an evil person in himself, he was just a petty bureaucrat sitting at a desk doing his job. Effectively, she accepted his defence that he was "just obeying orders", although she expanded on this to ask questions about the nature of good and evil.

I understand Hannah's arguments. She asked questions that I too have asked myself, although I have come to different conclusions. What makes a person good or evil? Disobeying orders makes a person a traitor, and being a traitor is bad, so it's good to obey orders. I agree that it is generally good to obey the laws of the land and the commands given by superiors. It is generally bad to break the law. However, any intelligent person has to think about what he is being asked to do. The human conscience should not be turned off whenever commands are given. It might be difficult to disobey, there might be extreme consequences, but in the case of Nazi Germany there were hundreds, maybe thousands of people who disobeyed orders. They are now considered heroes.

Hannah Arendt is entitled to her opinion about Adolf Eichmann. But her opinion is wrong.