Eichmann

Renowned war criminal Adolf Eichmann has been found at large in Argentina by Israeli agents, where he is promptly kidnapped and brought to Israel for trial. Avner Less is appointed as his interrogator before the trial. The Israeli nation is baying for his blood outside, which makes Less's task of being impartial all the harder. The film revolves around their interviews, Eichmann's replies to certain questions about his past atrocities bringing us back through flashback to the war. Eichmann naturally denies the offences and puts most down to obeying orders. The cat and mouse of the interviewing process and its gradual progression is very interesting and well crafted. Thomas Kretschmann's performance in particular as Eichmann is excellent and the film belongs to him.

This acceptable biopic deals basically with the pretrial interrogation of Adolf Eichmann after he was captured in Argentina and brought to Israel. In the interrogation, he insists his role in the Holocaust was minor, just a sort of transport commissioner who has to make sure the different prisoners arrive on time at each concentration camp. This is contrasted with flashbacks from Eichmann during World War II, showing him directly in charge of the extermination of Jews. His main interrogator is a police captain, and the movie shows some of his background, how his role affects his family life, etc. German actor Thomas Kretschmann, who has made a career of playing Nazi officers (in Downfall, Stalingrad and Valkyrie, for instance) is very good as the Nazi criminal. So is Troy Garity playing the Israeli detective. Maybe the movie would have benefited from a larger scope – it includes nothing of Eichmann during the trial itself, very few about his life in Argentina, his capture is dealt in just one quick scene. And there were a few scenes that sounded false to me. For example, Eichmann is seen making love to a Hungarian mistress during the war and to get her hot he tells her the amounts of people he ordered killed. Or in another scene the same lady dares Eichmann to kill a baby. Maybe it really happened but the way it is portrayed in the movie sounded downright false and tasteless to me. These few objections aside, this is not a bad film.

I do not typically submit such reviews, but this film cries out for comments. "Using" the inherently dramatic and compelling nature of the Nazi period to create a largely inaccurate film seems to be another kind of crime. Such a period of evil deserves the most sober treatment possible and should not be used to create a kind of historic horror film.

All of that is leading up to my strong suggestion that you skip the film and read Hannah Arendt's amazing book about the actual Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Here you will find a non-dramatic, non-titillating version of the story that neither exaggerates nor diminishes Eichmann's evil, but rather reveals him in a matter-of-fact way as an opportunist, a careerist who merely wanted to advance, climb the ladder, attain the next "title," etc. He apparently did not have any particular hatred toward Jews. None of this in my estimation makes him less evil; the book actually reveals the "banality" of his evil by taking away the specter of a crazed monster. His evil lies in its being sane and in a sense "ordinary." Therefore, given its serious subject matter, I feel the film only partially reflects the facts Arendt reveals so clearly, obscuring them with with sex and useless side stories. The performances are good, the film is well made, etc. That's not my point. If you want to make a formulaic film, a horror film, a sexy film, or any other kind of film, have at it. But don't use Eichmann as your subject matter. The subject matter is too serious to be misused in any way. Read the book, please.

First, the good stuff:

Thomas Kretschmann's work here is superb, truly superb, particularly in light of the fact that the film interrupts this superb acting with cutaways to various scenes while the voice of Kretschmann as Eichmann is heard writing letters to his children. I don't CARE. Give me more of Kretschmann being interrogated. He is riveting.

Now, the bad stuff:

The 'artistic license' this film takes is shameful in that it is an insult to every single jew who was murdered by the Nazi regime. There is no good reason for the filmmakers to have given Eichmann a Viennese Jew for a mistress. The notes of Eichmann's interrogator, Avner Less, do not mention anything about this, nor did it come up in Eichmann's Nuremberg trial-in-absentia or the Israeli trial. Nor was there a need to make Eichmann the lover of a Hungarian mistress who was so insatiable for the deaths of jews that she would reprimand him for not killing enough while they engaged in foreplay. This is obscene and it obscures the larger truth that seemingly inconsequential, everyday men can do terrible damage.

To take these liberties is an attempt to obscure the monster that Eichmann really was. To remove the inexplicable terror that is the result of banal men doing unspeakable things in the name of ideology and / or the protection of a larger group of criminals, is misguided at best and an insult to every Jewish man, woman and child who walked into those building thinking they were going to get a shower.

They should have stuck to the text of "The Eichmann Interrogation" and let the actors use their skills to produce the tension. That's what they are paid for, after all, and I would have liked to have seen more of the interaction between the two main characters.

I give it a '4' on the strength of Thomas Kretschmann's acting alone. Otherwise this movie is a terrible waste of time.

EICHMANN is not an easy film to view: revisiting the atrocities of the Nazi Third Reich through the greasy, smooth, denying words of Adolf Eichmann is a nightmare, but a nightmare we must revisit periodically to remind us of just how heinous was that period of history. The film is set in 160 - 1962 and is based on transcripts obtained by the Israeli forces from the files of the concentration camps and Nazi regime, transcripts that document the words of Adolf Eichmann that lead to his final confession of his participation in the Third Reich atrocities as unveiled under the slow and insidious interview by Police Captain Avner Less.

The film opens after the 1960 capture of Eichmann from his home in Argentina, the country where he and his wife and four sons had been in hiding since the end of WW II. Adolf Eichmann (brilliantly portrayed by Thomas Kretschmann) had been the World's Most Wanted Man and his transport to Israel was met by jeering crowds. The Israeli Minister Tormer (Stephen Fry) elects police captain Avner Less (Troy Garity) to conduct the interview in what is supposed to be a top-secret assignment. But the news escapes and Avner's wife Vera (Franka Potente), suffering from polio of the spine, and the Avner children are marked as targets by the Israeli's who do not appreciate the duty of Avner Less's obligation to interrogate and gain a complete confession from Eichmann before he can be tried. The months that the interrogations take prove that the Israeli's believed in justice: the facts must be proved completely before the prisoner is tried for atrocities.

During the interrogation months Eichmann is shown in flashbacks to have been not only following the orders of Hitler, but being committed to the purification of the 'Aryan race'. What screenwriter Snoo Wilson and director Robert Young allow is for us to see the human weakness of Eichmann as portrayed By Kretschmann: he had mistresses, including one Austrian Jewess and a Hungarian Countess who urged him to complete the Final Solution, he coldly signed extermination orders 'because he had to follow Hitler's orders', yet he also was an apparently devoted father to his own sons. Equal time is given to allow the audience to see the interaction between the conflicted parties of the interrogation: Avner was convinced he must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the prisoner was indeed guilty of all of the crimes fro which he was accused. The interrogations become a battle of wills between the smarmy, oily, manipulative Eichmann and the personally distraught Avner. At the close of the film the real Avner E. Less provides voice over regarding the hanging of Eichmann along with statistics of the Nazi atrocities that no matter how often they are quoted continue to astonish our ability to comprehend.

The only artistic aspect of the film that is ultimately distracting is the director's choice to have cinematographer Michael Conner use near black and white/sepia toning for the film. Certain scenes break into real color but the tone of the film footage seems dirty - and perhaps that is the reason for the choice. Richard Harvey adds the musical score, and there are some very fine cameo roles by Delaine Yates, Tereza Srbova, and Judit Viktor. But in the end it is the performance by Thomas Kretschmann that is terrifyingly real: he deserves awards for his courage to accept this role and for his unforgettable impersonation of a man so evil that under other actor's skills would be simply unbelievable. It is Kretschmann's extraordinary performance that brings home the terror of his film.

Grady Harp