If you liked Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story, then you will like Hannah Arendt. I don’t think that my words can express how wonderful it felt to watch Hannah Arendt. Hannah Arendt depicts the titular character’s life as she crafts and publishes her best-known theory on the banality of evil, and how she handled the ensuing controversy. Hannah Arendt is a film about the life of ideas, which is not an easy thing for a filmmaker to represent, but Margarethe von Trotta does.
Hannah Arendt is an incredibly enjoyable film to watch because the film made me feel like I was an unseen visitor exclusively seeing every aspect of her life: her naps, her (open?) marriage, her friendships, her work, her solitude, her intellectual gatherings, her travels, etc. I also felt that way about the supporting characters: from the editorial staff at The New Yorker to her husband. There is one scene when Arendt admonishes her husband to stay away from meat, and he agrees completely then in the next scene, he is having dinner and eating beef. Hannah Arendt naturally has its characters speak in German and English. The language switching does not feel structured, but organic.
Hannah Arendt deftly addresses the idea that when a woman dispassionately and objectively presents her work, the woman is critiqued for not being emotional or allowing her identity or other personal factors affects the work. (Alternatively if a woman did permit personal factors to affect the work, then she would be too emotional and unfit to present the work, but that issue is not germane to Hannah Arendt.) This dynamic was always my problem with the first nine seasons of The X-Files. Somehow Mulder’s emotional and fantastic outlook was rewarded and superior to Scully’s dispassionate, scientific approach. Hannah Arendt fully explores this frustrating dynamic without explicitly spelling out the double standard for the audience.
The chemistry between all of the actors is seamless. I love Barbara Sukowa, who plays Hannah Arendt. Janet McTeer plays her unconditional friend and champion. I’m a Janet McTeer fan. I love women with a big presence that dominates the screen and have intense eyes.
If I had to criticize Hannah Arendt, I’m not sure that the flashbacks worked. There should have been more or none to show the connection between the mature and the younger Hannah Arendt.
I unreservedly and highly recommend that you watch Hannah Arendt. Do not let the subtitles dissuade you.