Denial (2016)

Directed by Mick Jackson. Starring Rachel Weisz, Timothy Spall, Tom Wilkinson, Andrew Scott, Alex Jennings, Jack Lowden, Caren Pistorius, Mark Gatiss, John Sessions, Harriet Walter. [PG-13]

Dramatization of American historian Deborah Lipstadt’s “History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier,” depicting her defense against anti-Semitic British author David Irving (Spall), who sues her for libel. Because the suit was filed in his home country, however, the burden of proof lies with the accused under English law, so she must prove that Irving knowingly lied about the Holocaust’s existence. Flawed but compelling courtroom drama finds a suitably contentious protagonist in Weisz’s determined portrayal, and an odiously despicable yet creditable opponent to drive her on, but the film is often on shakier ground the further it wanders from court testimony (taken verbatim from transcripts). Even though the arguments are often made on emotional terms rather than intellectual (or legal) ones, there’s a curious lack of fire burning beneath the film’s convictions, and it mistakes “polite” for “sophisticated” in its workmanlike approach. In fact, it’s easy to come away from the piece with greater infuriation toward the “backwards” English legal system than toward the efforts of virulent anti-Semites to rewrite history. The final shot would have been better earned had it been in service to a story about the mass extermination of human life instead of the attempt to destroy truth in history books…but darn it if that relevance doesn’t make the whole uneven affair worth watching anyway. The filmmakers were granted permission to film some scenes at the ruins of Auschwitz.

64/100