Denial, 2016.
Directed by Mick Jackson.
Starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Spall, Andrew Scott, Jack Lowden, Caren Pistorius and Alex Jennings.
SYNOPSIS:
Based on the acclaimed book Denial: Holocaust History on Trial, Denial recounts Deborah E. Lipstadt’s legal battle for historical truth against David Irving, who accused her of libel when she declared him a Holocaust denier. In the English legal system, in cases of libel, the burden of proof is on the defendant, therefore it was up to Lipstadt and her legal team led by Richard Rampton, to prove the essential truth that the Holocaust occurred.
“The Holocaust never happened,” so says Timothy Spall’s David Irving in Denial, a strangely partisan, wholly misjudged attempt at re-telling a court case long deserved to be forgotten. A renowned Holocaust denier, Neo-Nazi and all round bad egg, Irving-although losing the court case-now finds himself again with a profile, like a cancer spreading once more through the public’s conscious. The court case in itself still baffles and infuriates yet for the sake of forced drama, director Mick Jackson spins a yarn without bias, placating villainy in place of a 50/50, all’s fair in love and war debate.
Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) is a leading professor in the study of the Holocaust. Whilst giving a talk, she is accosted by David Irving (Spall) who offers $1000 to anyone with genuine photographic evidence that the Holocaust happened. Naturally, she speaks out against this, which, years later, results in a libel case built against her filed in the UK. It’s on Lipstadt and her legal team: Anthony Julius (Andrew Scott) and Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson) to prove Irving was aware of his lies in claiming the Holocaust never happened.
And it’s the need to “prove” that cripples. There is no need of proof, nor is there any need to argue against it actually happened, yet with its release, it in part helps the awareness of the denial of the Holocaust. Those inherently idiotic and shockingly insensitive ideas are presented as arguments as if there can be two sides (there can’t, at all). Irving, defending himself, is given the opportunity to wax lyrical about the fabrication of Auschwitz as a death camp where Lipstadt’s defence occupies little space, a brief after thought.
Few valiant, if limp attempts at making a statement on the media’s involvement in creating and helping Irvine’s cause are fast undermined by the film’s manic infatuation. This in part, is down to Spall’s performance; lively and and played with bags of charm, where maybe to present him as vulgar, less human more monster, would be a far stronger path.
This infatuation results in Rachel Weisz-in the midst of a welcome comeback-vying for attention. She plays Lipstadt with a steely eyed conviction and an underlying intelligence, but she is never the epicentre. That intelligence is presented as a form of obnoxious superiority; her legal team never allow her to talk whilst in court. It’s a shame, Weisz-as ever-is a welcome, warming screen presence, but she drowns in the bitterness of those around her.
There’s no disrespecting the victims of the Holocaust, nor those Jewish-a dinner with key members of the Jewish community is impeccably researched-but nor is it a vital piece of Jewish cinema. Where moments should educate, they tire and dip, sitting awkwardly in a swamp of hate. It’s strange, a film about the ludicrous notion of the disputability of the Holocaust, released at a time where anti-Semitism runs rife ends up treating it almost more as an after thought.
It was only through being part of a Jewish community that the full heft of the Holocaust was taught. At school, it was treated as a passing moment, an incidental event as part of something far larger. Denial feels much the same.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Thomas Harris
Originally published December 16, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
