The Eichmann Show

Moviecut—The Eichmann Show

source: The Eichmann Show

The trial and story here it in itself incredibly compelling and tragic. The real film they used within the movie was so well done and brought an element that reenactment never could . The focus of the film was threefold. First - the atrocities of the holocaust, second the power of media and third weather or not man can inherently be evil. The first theme is well accomplished and presented in a respectful way . The idea that surviving Jews had been left marginalized and underrepresented for so long was a fantastic undercurrent. The power of media is also presented well but might be slightly more hidden . This was really the justification for this particular focus , if you know this going in and look for it , you find it and realize there is so much power in what was done to show and document this trial in the way it was . The third theme, although important is not presented as clearly or as well and I think gets in the way at times of the second theme . The dialogue when Leo is thinking of leaving helps point out the overarching goal of the film , but his obsession with "breaking " Eichmann on a personal level sometimes gets in the way. Important film, great premise and solid acting . Not done as well as it could have been but absolutely worth the time .

The Eichmann Show is one of the best drama movies I've watched in my life. The fact that throughout the whole trial, in the movie they actually show inserts from the real trial is something that nobody did before and it is amazing. Combining the real videos with parts from the documentary about the Jews in the period of the WW2 is astonishing and heartbraking at the same time. This is not a movie only anymore, this is something far more than that, it is a real story, you are a real attender of the Eichmann trial, you can feel the dark energy flowing around him, making not a single facial expression while watching everything he did to the Jews. Be ready for tears in your eyes because if this does not make you feel emotionally unstable, you are as cold as Eichmann and the Nazis.

I fail to see the reasoning behind making a film about the TV production aspect of the Eichmann trial. It simply is not interesting enough to warrant its own film, compared to the trial itself. The 'movie' aspect completely relies on the old footage to stay afloat. Without the footage it's a massive nothing burger. Why should we viewers care about learning the logistical issues of, and the low energy internal conflict of the production crew itself? It's just meaningless next to everything else. Nobody needs to care about Leo's infatuation with Eichmann's behavior. The only interesting stuff is the actual archival footage of the trial, upon which this movie relies heavily to maintain viewer interest. Problem is, most all of us have seen this footage 10,000 times over, in literally 100's of documentaries made on the subject. So, although extremely powerful, it's nothing ground-breaking. The modern Hollywood portions are just expensive filler around the footage. The acting was good, the cinematography was good. Score was okay, if unremarkable. A well produced film telling the wrong part of the story. It's like making a film chronicling the internal strife of the janitorial department at the Apollo moon program.

A timely reminder, with great accuracy, top notch performances. Martin Freeman & Anthony LaPaglia delivering best dramatic works here. In a year (2016) the world witnesses a resurgence of fascism this riveting epilogue from Adolf Eichmanns sentencing: "Each of us who has ever felt (they) were created better than any other human being, has stood on the threshold where Eichmann stood". Freeman, LaPaglia reincarnated positions of producer and director for first worldwide televised trial of Nazi War criminal Adolf Eichmann. Glimpsing recent history from production point of view, we see the fanaticism and death threats endured, alongside cathartic emotional steps to healing that this realtime broadcast of accused Nazi murderer Eichmann delivered to survivors, war veterans, witnesses, world at large. Trial of Eichmann afforded for millions the first safe societal space for WWII european survivors to begn to tell their truths.

Where was the story all it was about was camera angles and where the best place to film was not much about the man himself

Ostensibly, this film is a recounting of the television broadcast of the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann - the Nazi who was one of the major figures of the Holocaust and who was kidnapped by the Mossad in Argentina 15 years after the end of World War II and returned to Israel to face trial. And while we do learn a lot about the trial and about the Holocaust through actual footage of the trial, which included films of what went on at the concentration camps (and be forewarned - the footage is more than sobering; it is a horrific depiction of the depths to which humanity can plunge) I really found this to be more about the internal struggles of the director of the television broadcast - Leo Hurwitz. Hurwitz was a well regarded Jewish director who had been blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee - and so, frankly, he was familiar with the tactics of fascism. Given the opportunity for redemption in a sense by producer William Fruchtman's (also Jewish) offer to produce the coverage of the trial, we find Hurwitz often more interested in satisfying his own obsession with needing to understand Eichmann - not just what he did but why he did it, as he explained. Fruchtman is not unsympathetic to Hurwitz, and he understands the importance of the coverage of the trial, but as a producer he's also distracted by the need to maintain ratings, and by threats being made against he and his family for even being involved with the project. The two often butt heads as their competing roles and personal agendas collide over and over again. I don't want to say that I enjoyed this movie. This is not a movie to be "enjoyed." It's a very dark film at times and includes footage that is - as I said above - quite horrific in nature, and it deals with what is certainly the prime example of how inhumane humanity can actually be. With Hurwitz's background (having been blacklisted) it also makes the point that in some ways fascism lies not very deep beneath the soil - a point very relevant to this day and age, when the tactics of fascism are being used increasingly openly by many politicians in the Western world. So there's a powerful (if somewhat understated) lesson here; a plea to be vigilant, to protect the rights of those who are often cast as the enemy and therefore treated as less than human. But if it isn't a movie to be "enjoyed" I would say that it's an admirable movie in many ways. Some of the backroom scenes, as Hurwitz has his camera operators change shots, etc. are somewhat dry - but add, I suppose, to the inherent tension in the movie played out between Hurwitz and Fruchtman - is this just a television show, or is it a search for understanding? I thought the performances from Martin Freeman as Fruchtman and Anthony LaPaglia as Hurwitz were very good. No more than that - and I mean that not as a criticism. It's just that, like Hurwitz, I became as interested in the archival footage of Eichmann's unemotional demeanour and expression as he was confronted with the ugly truths of the Holocaust as I was with the stories of Hurwitz and Fruchtman. One non-footage scene that really stood out for me was a conversation between Hurwitz and Mrs. Landau (Rebecca Front) - who owned the small hotel in Jerusalem where Hurwitz stayed during the trial. Mrs. Landau was a Holocaust survivor, and one night at dinner she and Hurwitz spoke. She recounted that once the war was over no one - even in Israel - wanted to hear the stories of the Holocaust. But then she told him that now she heard people speaking about it - because they had been watching the trial. "They listened ... because of you." Hurwitz had thought he had failed because he hadn't "explained" Eichmann. That conversation (near the end of the movie) seemed to change his perspective and make him realize the importance of what he was doing. This may not be an "enjoyable" movie. But it is a fine and admirable film. (8/10)

This movie is not about performances, direction or cinematography... this is not a story based on facts... these are pure facts... a fiction that encapsulates the actual court drama, the actual clips from 1960s when the number one SS officer Adolf Eichmann was captured and indicted and eventually sentenced to death... During this most ghastly trial of the mankind history, when a clip showing the skeleton looking 100s of human bodies were dumped by a big bulldozer into a massive grave hole made by the people whose turn was going to be next!!!!was played in courtroom, the architect who designed this massacre stayed apethetic...

Apart from the flagrantly bad acting of Martin Freeman, whom I have never seen before and hope never to see again, this is an enormously impressive film which tackles a difficult subject well. Excellently done was the blending of the real 1961 trial footage with modern reconstruction, something that frequently goes awry. Here the back-&-forth switching seems odd at first but grows on the viewer, involving us even more closely in the events on screen. Also very clever was the use of English voice-over to all the trial footage, an authentic-sounding simultaneous interpreter, flubs and all, echoing over earphones. Good idea! One did wish, however, that the original languages were occasionally allowed to leak through in voice-over pauses, to give more authenticity to the speakers: atrocity witnesses, prosecutors, judges and also the defendant himself. (In this film it is hard to tell that the trial was conducted almost entirely in German, which is a fact worth knowing; with some witnesses speaking in French, a language utterly unsuited to such descriptions and all the more harrowing for that reason.) Most eyes should be turned away from the camp archive footage, but thankfully there is not too much of it and one is always forewarned. The same cannot be said about watching the defendant himself, which is upsetting. But the Eichmann footage used here was also a choice by the film-makers, to render him less than the "human" Hurwitz starts out by assuming he is. The twisted, vicious face we see continually on display was not, however, the only face available. I had the privilege many years ago of seeing a documentary of the trial, at an art cinema in Tokyo, with English subs. It was very long and composed entirely of trial footage deftly edited: no narration, no music, no inter-titles. (I have tried in vain to locate it on this site; does anyone know the film I mean? I saw it in 97? 98? but it may have been made earlier,in Canada? US? UK?) What I remember about Eichmann was his many faces in the dock. Often a very nervous, ratty man with huge stacks of paper and notepads, which he shuffled through constantly, taking notes and looking for all the world like a perfectly sane accountant on trial for fiddling the books. This aspect was not shown to us in "The Eichmann Show", which is a pity. Not for any kind of sympathy, God knows, but to scare the living daylights out of us by what Arendt called the "banality of evil." In many ways this banal accountant type was more horrible than the leering, sneering, unchanging Satanic face we constantly see in this film... because it did not seem to occur to the accountant that he had done anything seriously wrong. But the film-makers here were wedded to a certain view, and did not want to complicate it. One understands that such an overwhelming event needs simplifying for the movie-going masses, and this film has done a fine job overall. But as I watched it myself, I had the longer documentary in mind to help me come to grips with it. If "help" is the right word.