Rather than a crade-to-the-grave account of German-Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt (played by Barbara Sukowa), this zeroes in on her controversial reporting of the 1961 Adolf Eichmann trial (where she coined the seminal phrase “the banality of evil”).
Moving awkwardly between New York, Israel and Germany, where flashbacks depict Hannah’s love affair with Martin Heidegger (Klaus Pohl), this is a disappointingly stilted historical drama; the chilling, black-and-white archival footage of Eichmann in court compels far more than the dreary period recreations.
