Lipstadt’s powerful courtroom drama
Not long after American history professor Deborah Lipstadt published her 1993 book 'Denying the Holocaust', she was sued by noted Holocaust denier David Irving for libel.
NOT long after American history professor Deborah Lipstadt published her 1993 book ‘Denying the Holocaust’, she was sued by noted Holocaust denier David Irving for libel.’ The story of this court case is relived in Denial, which opens in Australian cinemas today (Thursday).
British libel laws operate differently than other countries: the defendant is presumed guilty unless they can be proven innocent and the burden of proof is much higher.
Not only was Lipstadt’s credibility on trial, but also that of Holocaust scholarship, with Irving using the opportunity to promote his denial ideology by focusing on small “unproven” items that could cast doubts on the Nazi genocide.
This docu-drama illustrates real events over the period 1994 to 2000, based on Lipstadt’s memoir, Denial: Holocaust History on Trial.
The film opens with a confrontation where Irving disrupted a lecture of Lipstadt, and then recounts the court case itself, almost solely through Lipstadt’s eyes.
We see her meetings with her legal team, with British Jewish community leaders and with an unnamed survivor. Lipstadt is forced to watch the trial unfold without speaking out because her legal advisers focused on making the case about Irving (who conducted his own defence) rather than about her.
Denial gathers a great cast of British actors, with Rachel Weisz – originally tipped for an Oscar nomination for the role – neatly capturing Lipstadt’s nasal New York (Queens) accent.
Tom Wilkinson, one of the best character actors working in film today, plays Lipstadt’s barrister Richard Rampton, and Timothy Spall (the artist Turner in Mr Turner) inhabits the persona of David Irving in a form likely to burn itself in public consciousness as the definitive Irving.
Andrew Scott (Moriarty in Sherlock) plays lead solicitor Anthony Julius, who in real life is one of Britain’s leading campaigners against anti-Semitism. Many important historians appear, including Cambridge academic Richard J Evans (played by John Sessions) and Dutch scholar Robert Jan van Pelt (Mark Gatiss).
The characters are delightfully drawn, the settings create a strong sense of place, particularly London and Auschwitz, which the defence team visits on an eerie, snow-covered and foggy day.
Courtroom dramas are a staple of modern feature films such as Witness for the Prosecution, Judgment at Nuremberg, To Kill a Mockingbird, Evil Angels and A Few Good Men.
The courtroom is ready-made for what the screen does well: illustrate conflict between adversaries, albeit without physical violence.
Along with its wider themes of historical truth and the Holocaust, Denial sits within this genre, but the film never hits the “aha” moments that the best legal dramas require.
This may be because of the known ending or the film’s requirement to stick closely to a trial that revolved around arcane historical research.
Because Irving and Lipstadt have only one actual verbal encounter early in the film, the dramatic challenges of the film revolve around keeping Lipstadt from speaking out, which does not lead to the most compelling drama.
Denial is an important film about history, the nature of historical research and the law.
Denial is currently screening.
DON PERLGUT
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