I saw the talked-about film “Hannah Arendt.” After work on a weekday, a 15-minute walk from Palaceside Building to Jimbocho’s Iwanami Hall. The 7 p.m. final show — hearing crowds were expected, I bought tickets early (photo lower); five minutes before the 6:30 doors, the 10th-floor elevator line was already long. Following the queue down the stairs reached the 7th floor — nearly 100 people. As rumored, packed; eight or nine tenths full at start (showing until December 13).
As reviews explain, a historical drama about Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, born in Germany, who fled Nazi persecution to America. It depicts the uproar over her courtroom report when Adolf Eichmann — Nazi official who sent millions of Jews to camps — was captured in South America in the early 1960s. Arendt criticized Eichmann’s “banality of evil” — thoughtlessness behind “just following lawful orders” — rejecting the trial’s concept of judging an absolute monster. She faced fierce backlash; through her anguish and unwavering conviction, the film asks what absolute evil is and what thinking means for human beings. Friends including Zionist leader Kurt break with her, yet her strength impresses; fidelity to truth is harsh.
For someone who never seriously studied philosophy — difficult, in one word. Her teacher Heidegger, among the 20th century’s greatest philosophers, joined and praised the Nazis; without knowing how Arendt “digested” his thought, the film is hard going. As sour grapes, it reminded me that hard things exist — sometimes such films are worth it.
I have not read it, but Arendt wrote “The Human Condition.” Watching, I recalled a scene from Junpei Gomikawa’s novel of the same title (written “條件” in Japanese): at a mine where Chinese laborers were worked brutally, protest broke out; a Japanese supervisor sympathetic to Chinese workers shouted “Stop!” and executions halted partway — details may be wrong. The supervisor was beaten by military police, lost deferment, was conscripted — his anguish gripped me when I read it.
A key point in Arendt’s film: before the war, Jewish leaders reluctantly “cooperated” in sending Jews to camps — writing this in her Eichmann report drew major criticism. Gomikawa’s hero and those Jewish leaders both faced cruel “choices” in extremity — food for thought.