Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Hannah Arendt" is a German film from 4 years ago that got writer and director Margarethe von Trotta and lead actress Barbara Sukowa international acclaim (again) and awards attention as well. I personally cannot see why though. This film here that runs for not much under 2 hours is a perfect example of how a historically relevant film should not look like. The main reason is Sukowa. She gives a performance that screams awards attention is packed with over-the-top acting in the worst possible way one can imagine and full of mannerisms that make her turn entirely style over substance. I do not think I have ever seen a worse performance that garnered so much awards attention. I could mention a dozen scenes, but honestly you will know what I am talking about when you watch the film. The script is not as bad as Sukowa's performance, but it is still fairly weak I must say. Also a great example of style over substance and it totally does not do any justice to the interesting story of the Eichmann trial.In theory, Arendt's approach to the matter emphasizing Eichmann's mediocrity instead of depicting him as a true evil is an interesting background and certainly a worthy foundation for a feature film. But beyond that interesting background and a solid beginning that is luckily not about Sukowa's character for once. In terms of the rest of the film, it is almost not bearable because of how hammy the lead actress is from start to finish. So it should not come as a surprise at all that the only good thing are the original recordings from the Eichmann trial. And these can hardly be attributed to von Trotta's work here. Given her recognition in the decades before this film, I certainly have to ask the question if she has lost her skill entirely. I cannot imagine for any reason why anybody would greenlight a film with such an unbearable lead performance. Highly not recommended.

evanston_dad Every once in a while you'll see a really good performance that's prevented from being great by the film around it. That's the case with Barbara Sukowa as the title character in "Hannah Arendt," a dramatization of a controversial episode in the writer and philosopher's life when she was ostracized for writing a piece in "The New Yorker" about the trials of Eichmann that Jews felt sympathized too much with the Nazi cause.The tone of the film is overly righteous and leaves its audience no room to come to a conclusion on its own. In the world of the film, Hannah is a hero of free speech and free thinking, while those who are offended by her are portrayed as narrow-minded, rat-faced villains. The entire film has a feeling of artifice that it can't overcome -- the actors move around the set like actors in a play, reciting obviously scripted lines in strange, haughty tones, their noses literally in the air. Even Janet McTeer, an actress who I love, seems ill at ease with the material she's given.Only the performance of Sukowa makes this film worth watching, even if the primary feeling watching her is how much better her performance could have been if the movie itself was better. One moment and one moment only, a rousing monologue she delivers during the film's finale, in which she defends her point of view to a room full of students and faculty members, provides a glimpse of the powerful movie "Hannah Arendt" could have been.Grade: B-

jm10701 Like Vision (the previous movie by Margarethe von Trotta starring Barbara Sukowa) this is a fantastic movie with a serious flaw. But in both cases, the flaws have nothing to do with Sukowa, whom I had never heard of before Vision but who I now see is one of the world's greatest actors. She is perfect in both roles, in both movies. Since she dominates both movies, she is so good that she earns the movies eight stars from me despite the serious flaws.The flaw in this movie is that many of the supporting roles are filled by terrible actors, and they're so bad that they can't be ignored - when they're on screen they completely derail the movie, and it doesn't recover until Sukowa returns and they leave. The very worst of those incompetent performances are by actors (Megan Gay, Harvey Friedman and Janet McTeer) who have been thoroughly competent in other movies, so the problem must be with von Trotta's direction of them.The fact that all three characters are Americans (only one of the actors - Friedman - is) probably isn't a coincidence. Von Trotta evidently doesn't have much sense of how Americans tick, or even talk, so she doesn't quite know how to create credible American characters in a movie. Germans - of any era - she does great; Americans: no.A secondary but related flaw is that she should have hired an American production designer. I understand why she filmed all the New York interior scenes (which means practically the whole movie) in Germany, but, unfortunately, they all LOOK like German interiors, not at all like real New York interiors, even in the early 1960s.Although I'm very glad she made this movie, if she plans to continue filming American stories she really needs to get help from people who know how to create a believable America and believable Americans on film. She's a great director, but she needs help if she intends to keep making movies about America.

JPfanatic93 Biopic about the noted 20th century Jewish-German philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), played impeccably by Barbara Sukowa. Directed by Margarethe von Trotta, the movie mainly examines Arendt's reports on the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Israel for the American magazine The New Yorker, as well as the overwhelming critique, following their publication, on her controversial findings regarding the mentality of the architects of the Holocaust. Arendt's conclusion is that they were not evil inhuman monsters, nor even purely driven by antisemitist motivations, but instead that they were everyday bureaucratic nobodies who viewed their atrocities simply as a job that needed to be carried out as effectively as possible. This new concept of the 'banality of evil' caused widespread criticism of Arendt's philosophical thinking, and caused her to be much maligned by fellow Jews, including people close to her. The movie covers all of this turbulence in Arendt's life, but does so in an overly stiff manner, rendering both Hannah and her intellectual antagonists rather emotionless thus sadly underscoring the popular opinion that philosophy is dull. It also makes it uneasy for the audience to really care about Hannah's tribulations as she undergoes them with minimal visible emoting. Nevertheless, from a historical perspective the topics covered remain intriguing, aided by good performances throughout as well as the terrific use of actual footage of the real Eichmann at his trial, indeed showing him to be a single-minded man devoid of critical thinking or even remotely interested in the moral issues while carrying out his former onslaught. The movie does do a botched job of portraying the romantic relationship between Arendt and her mentor – and eventual Nazi philosopher – Heidegger, which is touched upon in a series of short flashbacks which hint at its importance, but eventually fails in being fleshed out in a satisfactory manner that helps us better understand Arendt. It's a missed opportunity, but ultimately not completely harmful to the overall plot. Warning! Due to heavy smoking by Arendt throughout the whole of this picture, this movie may cause irreversible damage to your lungs.