Denial: Defending the Truth About the Holocaust Movie Review by Jonathan Strum
Denial, a new film by award-winning director Mick Jackson, recounts the true story of American academic Deborah Lipstadt's legal battle against British Hitler apologist and historian David Irving, who accused her of libel when she declared him a Holocaust denier. Under 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 to defend the truth – to prove that the Holocaust occurred. And while that may sound like an incredibly easy task, it's not.
The stakes in the film are unmistakably high. If Irving wins his case, then the entire conversation about the Holocaust will forever be marginalized, reduced to a matter of opinion – those who think it took place vs those who don't. If Lipstadt prevails, it will represent the first legal precedent confirming that the Holocaust, in fact, happened.
Denial is an important film about an important subject. And because of that, it is sure to attract audiences that will (SPOILER ALERT) celebrate its outcome. However, subject matter aside, the film itself suffers from structural problems. The audience becomes aware of the conflict between Irving and Lipstadt within the first five minutes of the film. From that moment on, the plot moves along to its conclusion in a very straight line. There are no twists, no turns, no surprises, no reversals, and no heightening of tension between any of the characters. And the audience never sees Lipstadt experience any real growth. Through much of the film, we see Lipstadt portrayed passively, going out for any number of late-night runs to channel her frequent inner frustrations, yet never acting upon those frustrations. She is, at the end of the film, the exact same person she was at its beginning.
The film is based upon Lipstadt's book, Denial: Holocaust History on Trial. And Jackson is so intent on keeping the story rooted in its actual events that all of the courtroom dialogue is taken verbatim from the transcripts of the trial. That diligence in reporting a true story, as opposed to framing the story within a dramatic structure, may be the film's greatest weakness. When a screenwriter adapts a story, their first job is to “find the movie” within that story. In choosing to simply report the real-life events as they occurred, it's not clear that screenwriter David Hare ever found the movie in the story. Nor is it clear that Mick Jackson gave much consideration to the fact that real life rarely provides the dramatic requirements of a compelling film. Yet, in spite of these shortcomings, Denial manages to remain compelling based solely upon the audacious notion of an educated and apparently respectable historian proclaiming to the world that the Holocaust never happened.
While the case depicted in Denial took place in 1996, it seems that having to defend the truth has a very clear relevance to our present-day world, where issues ranging from global warming to evolution to the actual citizenship of the U.S. President all seem to have become matters of opinion, despite the unimpeachable facts behind each. As Deborah Lipstadt discovered, there have always been times when those with an agenda built upon the high-volume repetition of crude and often repugnant ideas fool themselves into believing that they can successfully out-shout and, therefore, overwrite the truth. History continues to demonstrate that while these hucksters may fool a very few in the short-term, they ultimately succeed in only deluding themselves.