Two neo-Nazis confront one another in a conversation midway through the 2001 film "The Believer": one denies the Holocaust happened, the other berates him and says '...of course it did - why else would there be a reason to idolise Hitler if he wasn't responsible for the deaths of all those Jews?' Well, why indeed? We know the Nazis hated Jews and Jewry, first through the words of Mein Kampf and then through the post-1933 actions of their government when the race was socially marginalised; taxed unfairly; boycotted and then eventually had synagogues and any real-estate either vandalised or confiscated. We know concentration camps existed, but that they were different places in 1944 compared to 1934. We know that Eastern Europe was once swimming with Jews, but that now the population of Israel alone is something like a mere eight million. Where did they all go?
None of the above is, in essence, 'deniable' - we are aware it physically happened and in a very particular order, but what does any of it necessarily say about the fact there were/were not gas chambers at Auschwitz? 'At Auschwitz...' Raul Hilberg once said '...history was destroyed at the same time history was made'. Indeed, and the whole thing is still rumbling on - still creating its own kind of history - in the twenty-first century.
If the Second World War was fought on the grounds that Europe, even the world, was to be saved from Fascism, a constituent part of which is the removing of one's right to an opinion, should it not therefore be acceptable to allow one to one's opinion that certain elements of Holocaust are spurious? "Denial" is the taut drama, more a legal thriller, about the true-to-life case of British historian David Irving (Timothy Spall) taking the Jewish-American academic Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) to court in 1996 on grounds of libel, a case which lasted for four years. It is something which eventually seems to spill out into a wider discussion on the holocaust's authenticity, when the matter is actually as to whether Lipstadt is right that Irving 'misinterprets evidence' and whether a gas fuelled genocide occurred at Auschwitz at all.
The film certainly presents itself early on as a piece depicting a battle of wits between the aforementioned two - deliberately introducing them doing the same thing, public speaking, with Irving cracking jokes to affluent elderly men somewhere after a dinner and Lipstadt giving a passionate talk on the issue of Holocaust Studies in her day job as a teacher. A few scenes later, the two of them clash within the confines of this very kind of venue as Lipstadt is giving a lecture; Irving interrupts and crisply rebuts her 'facts', even embarrassing her, but then resorts to shouting and is eventually escorted out looking like a bit of a crank. Determined not to let that be the end of it, Lipstadt is informed of the aforementioned libel case against her and battle appears to commence.
Despite this early pretext, what comes to transpire is Weisz's character essentially being depicted battling her male dominated legal team more than anything else, which occurs when they persistently advise her not to take the stand so as to allow the men to do the work. There is one woman in the team, however, but she's very young and it's her first time... Best to just let the men take care of it. I was struck, thus, by how strangely passive Lipstadt becomes in what seemed to be her own story as people do the work around her.
Despite being part-produced by the 'impartial' BBC (the basis for many of the film's incidental scenes often seem to lie in a 2000 interview with Irving on the BBC's "Hardtalk" programme), the film goes to some length to depict Irving as merely a bit strange: the way he feeds jelly babies to his daughter; the way he gazes out of a rain soaked window; his raft of hand-written journals that line his shelves, somewhat of a iconographical trope in the thriller genre of the mentally disturbed. But is it really so wise, despite the subject-matter, to suggest that the audience take sides?
One has to stress that there have existed instances of holocaust fabrication: memoirs written by people who actually spent the war in Switzerland; massacres in Polish towns attributed to the Nazis when, in actual fact, the USSR were responsible. Perhaps frustratingly, very little of this seems to infiltrate the film's universe. One must appreciate it is bound to depicting actual events and real people, but it struck me as an opportunity lost to be a little more daring. Irrespective, "Denial" offers much to get one's teeth into; knowing about as much as I did about the case, which was very little, going into the film no doubt enhanced the experience, a viewing experience I recommend.
None of the above is, in essence, 'deniable' - we are aware it physically happened and in a very particular order, but what does any of it necessarily say about the fact there were/were not gas chambers at Auschwitz? 'At Auschwitz...' Raul Hilberg once said '...history was destroyed at the same time history was made'. Indeed, and the whole thing is still rumbling on - still creating its own kind of history - in the twenty-first century.
If the Second World War was fought on the grounds that Europe, even the world, was to be saved from Fascism, a constituent part of which is the removing of one's right to an opinion, should it not therefore be acceptable to allow one to one's opinion that certain elements of Holocaust are spurious? "Denial" is the taut drama, more a legal thriller, about the true-to-life case of British historian David Irving (Timothy Spall) taking the Jewish-American academic Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) to court in 1996 on grounds of libel, a case which lasted for four years. It is something which eventually seems to spill out into a wider discussion on the holocaust's authenticity, when the matter is actually as to whether Lipstadt is right that Irving 'misinterprets evidence' and whether a gas fuelled genocide occurred at Auschwitz at all.
The film certainly presents itself early on as a piece depicting a battle of wits between the aforementioned two - deliberately introducing them doing the same thing, public speaking, with Irving cracking jokes to affluent elderly men somewhere after a dinner and Lipstadt giving a passionate talk on the issue of Holocaust Studies in her day job as a teacher. A few scenes later, the two of them clash within the confines of this very kind of venue as Lipstadt is giving a lecture; Irving interrupts and crisply rebuts her 'facts', even embarrassing her, but then resorts to shouting and is eventually escorted out looking like a bit of a crank. Determined not to let that be the end of it, Lipstadt is informed of the aforementioned libel case against her and battle appears to commence.
Despite this early pretext, what comes to transpire is Weisz's character essentially being depicted battling her male dominated legal team more than anything else, which occurs when they persistently advise her not to take the stand so as to allow the men to do the work. There is one woman in the team, however, but she's very young and it's her first time... Best to just let the men take care of it. I was struck, thus, by how strangely passive Lipstadt becomes in what seemed to be her own story as people do the work around her.
Despite being part-produced by the 'impartial' BBC (the basis for many of the film's incidental scenes often seem to lie in a 2000 interview with Irving on the BBC's "Hardtalk" programme), the film goes to some length to depict Irving as merely a bit strange: the way he feeds jelly babies to his daughter; the way he gazes out of a rain soaked window; his raft of hand-written journals that line his shelves, somewhat of a iconographical trope in the thriller genre of the mentally disturbed. But is it really so wise, despite the subject-matter, to suggest that the audience take sides?
One has to stress that there have existed instances of holocaust fabrication: memoirs written by people who actually spent the war in Switzerland; massacres in Polish towns attributed to the Nazis when, in actual fact, the USSR were responsible. Perhaps frustratingly, very little of this seems to infiltrate the film's universe. One must appreciate it is bound to depicting actual events and real people, but it struck me as an opportunity lost to be a little more daring. Irrespective, "Denial" offers much to get one's teeth into; knowing about as much as I did about the case, which was very little, going into the film no doubt enhanced the experience, a viewing experience I recommend.