find a distributor . More time was inevitably taken up by the casting process , location identification , set construction and all the other business generated by a major commercial movie . Filming began in 2015 , and in 2016 Denial was completed and presented to the public . As it turned out , it wasn ’ t a reworking of Rashomon at all , but a relatively straightforward chronological account . The movie received respectful reviews ; box office receipts narrowly failed to cover the costs of making it . For someone who was involved in the action almost from the start , and who attended the great majority of the 35 days that the case was heard before the High Court in London , the interesting question was how accurate the movie was in its portrayal of the character , the action and the issues at stake .
Filmmakers inevitably have to make compromises with the truth when turning an historical event into a drama : that is why the phrase ‘ based on a true story ’ occurs so often in the credits of movies that follow historical reality . Actual history is messy , complicated , full of confusing twists and turns , and often not very interesting : a movie has to smooth it all out , reduce the plethora of characters to a manageable number , and make sure the audience understands them from the outset issues and grasps the nature of the issues at stake . Equally , however , it is important , particularly when dealing with such a sensitive subject as Holocaust denial , that the filmmakers do not depart too radically from what actually happened in the effort to inject an element of drama into the proceedings and keep the audience interested .
The first of these compromises happens in the movie when Irving turns up at a lecture delivered by Lipstadt in her home university in Atlanta , Georgia , and stands up in the audience to deny the Holocaust and offer a large sum of money to anyone who can prove to his satisfaction that it actually happened . Irving actually did make this offer , but not to Lipstadt , not in Atlanta and not in the 1990s but some time before . Still , the offer , which was of course merely rhetorical because there was no way he was ever going to admit its conditions had been met , plays a useful , perhaps essential role in
the movie by introducing Irving as a character and showing the audience what he was like and what he believed .
Irving is played by Timothy Spall , who is about as physically unlike Irving as you can get : he is short , whereas Irving is tall ; he played Irving as weaselly and insinuating , whereas the real Irving is loud , bulky and overbearing . The casting directors indeed did not make much of an attempt to have the actors resemble the real-life people they were playing , though they did give Rachel Weisz a red wig to match the colour of Deborah Lipstadt ’ s hair , and she also painstakingly learned to speak with Lipstadt ’ s accent , which originated in the Queen ’ s borough of New York . Spall made up for in thespian energy what he lacked in physical stature .
2 2 . Cover of the first edition , 1977 | Wikimedia Commons
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