Friday, October 4, 2013

Hannah Arendt

2012, Margarethe von Trotta, Barbara Sukowa, 113m
Yet another page in the annals of the holocaust. The film does a good job of bringing to life the famous philosopher. Interesting as her own life is as a Jew who escaped and made it good in the US (which she understandably describes as "paradise"), the real point of interest is the conclusions she arrived at as a political philosopher, and the workings of a razor sharp intellect. Her essence is not tumultuous events, which she undoubtedly faced, but the workings of a mind. Of this we get only a glimpse. However, this dramatic biopic is excellent as far as it goes. Given the subject matter, there was scope for a more powerful script. After all, her work must have gone much beyond coining "the banality of evil".

Quote:
“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from that ruin which except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.”
*
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

No comments: