Eichmann

When a film's starting sentence is 'based on a true story' or if you know that the story behind the film actually took place, you expect at least the facts to be close to reality. I'll put aside the embarrassing mistakes in Hebrew (didn't you have Israeli actors on the set?), what troubles me more is the inaccuracies in historical facts, and the actual 'creation' of allegedly legal documentations that never existed. Furthermore, the addition of plot lines that portray Eichmann as a brutal murderer, and as a 'valentino', are not correct, add nothing to the plot (apart from the female nudity, which is entirely not required in this movie), and miss the horrible fact that Eichmann, like many many officers in the German Reich was a gray man, who just filed documents that sent millions to their death. This movie is a shame for the viewers' intelligence. Ignoring the historical errors and the made up plot lines, the movie itself is not interesting, the characters are superficial and empty, and if there's an intention to create a 'duel' between Eichmann and Less, it is artificial and is futile.

The film begins with some introductory lines as , ¨Holocaust (1933-1945)¨ : Extermination of European Jews and others by the Nazi regime in Germany. The Nazi persecution reached its peak in the Final solution , a programme of mass extermination adopted in 1942 and carried out with murderous efficiency by Adolf Eichmann ¨. In addition, ¨Adolf Eichmann¨: German administrator, he was responsible for carrying out Hitler's Final solution and for administrating the concentration camps in which 6 million Jewish perished. After the war he went into hiding in Argentina and eluded the Nuremberg trials. World Encyclopedia , Oxford University Press.

This is a historic drama with biographic elements dealing with Adolf Eichman and his interrogator officer Avner Less well performed by Thomas Kretschmann and Troy Garity, respectively. Furthermore, Stephen Fry as Jewish Minister and Franka Potente as affecting Avner's wife. The story is carried out by means of various flashbacks describing the cruel existence of Eichmannn. Atmospheric musical score by Richard Harvey and cold cinematography by Mike Connor. The motion picture is professionally by Robert Young.

Adding more remarks along with the widely narrated on the movie referred to Adolf Eichmann, his life is the following : Eichmann (1906-62) was born in Austria. After starting as a lowly file clerk , he learned that there was an opening in Heinrich Himmler's SD, the information center for the Gestapo . Himmler, who believed that Eichmann could speak Hebrew, made him head of the Scientific Museum Jewish Affairs. In 1937 Eichmann paid a short visit to Palestine to get in touch with Arab leaders , but the was ordered out of the country by the British. On his return to Germany he was rapidly promoted. After service in the Reich Central Office of Jewish Emigration he was made chief of Subsection IV-B-4 of the RSHA, the Reich Central Security Office, as an expert on Jewish affairs. He was present at the Wansee Conference on January 20 , 1942, when it was decided to deport Jews to the extermination camps. In August 1944 Eichmann reported to Himmler that, although the death camps kept no exact statistics , 4 million Jews had died in them and that 2 million more had been shot or killed by mobile units. Arrested at the end of WWII, Eichmann escaped unrecognized from an internment camp in the American zone in 1946 and disappeared. On May 11, 1969, the Israeli secret service found him in Argentina and smuggling him back to Israel . His trial , which took place in Jerusalem from April 11 to August 14, 1961, aroused worldwide attention. He was charged with crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Found guilty, he was hanged at Ramle on May 31,1962.

There are a lot of things about "Eichmann" which seem curiously wrong. For one thing, this Eichmann is a lot more interesting and colourful than the real man appears to have been. There's a bizarre scene in which he is challenged by his very weird Hungarian mistress to shoot a baby; I won't give away whether or not he does so, but it's not something I've ever heard of before. This Eichmann is a womaniser, a bit of a boozer, altogether a more louche and raffish figure than the rather dull bureaucrat that I've always read Eichmann described as.

Yes, the film suffers from some weird accents. Thomas Kretschmann, as Eichmann himself, speaks in a clipped German accent; Troy Garity, Franka Potente and Stephen Fry (in a bizarre but oddly convincing performance as, of all things, the Israeli Minister of Justice) all have indeterminately foreign accents, and none of it really makes sense.

Having said that, Kretschmann carries off the job he has been asked to do, and Garity is really very good as Avner Less, who was not Eichmann's prosecutor (as someone else stated) but his interrogator. Less was not a lawyer but a police officer. The subplot of his wife being chronically ill is presumably there because it was true; it would have been better if they'd left it out, because what drama there is in this film is the battle of wills between Less the dogged interrogator and Eichmann the stolidly evasive interrogatee.

I note in passing that Stephen Fry might almost be the rather more well-fed first cousin, or perhaps uncle, of Ciaran Hinds in "Munich". The accent is the same, and the tallness, slicked-down hair and intimidating bulk is very similar.

If they'd toned down the lurid stuff about Eichmann's sex life and focused on what he actually did for a living, this could have been as good as "Conspiracy". Pity.

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.

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.