I Cross The River

Conditions: So, So Cold...

Film Review: Denial

This film tells the tale of a prominent self-styled historian named David Irving, who brought a lawsuit in the 90's against an American who published a book calling him essentially a liar for trying to claim in his book that the holocaust of WW2 didn't really happen. Irving decides to bring this lawsuit in Britain, since under British law amazingly it's the accused who has to prove their innocence.  So we have a fish-out-of-water story here where Rachel Weisz, playing the brassy American-Jewish historian, agrees with her publisher to fight this case, and has to travel to stuffy olde England and deal with her top notch legal team. Naturally she finds them delightfully stuffy and eccentric, and we get ourselves stuck in a decidedly old fashioned courtroom thriller.

In amongst the pure absurdity of having to defend something that obviously happened, the film has to delve into the sheer horrificness of the holocaust itself, including a long and very moody scene set at the actual Aushwitz.  We see what's left of the installation, the empty fields, the steps leading down into the chamber.  It's pretty sobering.  And as a sequence it stands in contrast to the rest of the film.  I'm not sure how it happened, but the film comes across as oddly low-rent.  Most scenes are shot in a way that seem to minimise the drama and impact of what's happening.  And there's an odd over-emphasis on things, as if we the audience are not trusted to be able to pay attention to details, so they get repeated or over-illuminated.  For example, Rachel likes to jog, so in London she goes jogging and fetches up in front of this statue of a female goddess who is labelled as the saviour of Rome.  As on the nose as this is, it actually happens twice, maybe because the filmmaker himself forgot he already put it in.

The only thing that makes this clunky endeavor work is the actors.  When you have a bunch of scenes where Rachel Weisz and Tom Wilkinson basically sit and talk to each other, movie magic happens, regardless of what the films about, and this film is smart enough to do that a lot.  Despite being familiar, the court case scenes have some drama to them, and Timothy Spall does a great job as the detestable Irving.  It's an interesting story, but sadly not that great of a film.  Two dreary British rainstorms out of Five.

- Peace out