Despite victims and witnesses, there is still a cadre of dangerous idiots and racists who claim the Holocaust never happened. This film focuses on one of them, and the author/historian who defended herself and the millions who died at the hand of the Nazis.
Denial (Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson) – Rachel Weisz has been one of my favorite actresses for years. Now 46 and the owner of an Oscar (for The Constant Gardener), she has demonstrated an astonishing range for nearly 25 years now. In Denial, she plays author and professor Deborah Lipstadt, one of the world’s leading experts on the Holocaust. Nothing ticks Lipstadt off more than Holocaust deniers, a small, neo-fascist band of miscreants dedicated to the proposition that the Holocaust never happened and that it was all a Jewish plot for sympathy. (See, it pisses me off, too!)
Denial tells the true story from 2000 of the liable lawsuit brought in London against Lipstadt by “denier” David Irving, who Lipstadt denounced in her 1993 book Denying The Holocaust. Irving picked England to file the suit because, unlike in the U.S., the burden of proof falls to the author/defendant, not the claimant/plaintiff.
Lipstadt is caught between her desire to win the suit and her loathing for Irving and his kind. Her British lawyers, led by barrister Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson), don’t want her or any Holocaust survivors to testify in the trial for fear that Irving will use his theatrics to advance his cause. In fact, they don’t want a jury trial because they think Irving could be too persuasive with a jury. They want a trial before a single judge, and they want the trial focused on Irving, not on the Holocaust or Lipstadt. To say she is skeptical is an understatement.
The movie then becomes a gripping courtroom drama set amidst the agony of the Holocaust survivors, the conflict between Lipstadt are her lawyers, and the smugness of Irving and his followers.
Weisz, a Brit, adopts a New York accent and ditches her signature jet-black hair in a riveting performance that could put her in the Oscar conversation for Best Actress. Wilkinson is typically and brilliantly reserved as the wine-swilling, highly capable trial lawyer.
For those of us concerned that the Holocaust will be forgotten (after all, we are 71 years removed from the end of WWII), this movie serves as a cautionary tale. With anti-Semitism raging in the Middle East and rearing its ugly head again across Europe and even in the U.S., this film reminds us that haters never quit.
Denial is an important movie. It helps that it is also entertaining and beautifully acted.