Denial

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Denial (2016), which is based on a trial revolving around a claim that the Nazi Holocaust did not take place, speaks to us today because in a world with deep fake technology and the difficulty to determine fake information in social media from fact, it has become increasingly difficult to determine what is true and what is a lie.

The movie is based on the book, History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier by Deborah E. Lipstadt, who is played by Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz. Lipstadt is an American professor whose specialty is The Holocaust. The film opens with a grainy clip that implies authenticity showing a sarcastic and dismissive David Irving (Timothy Spall), who writes about Nazi Germany. He states that “more women died in the back seat of Senator Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz.” That there is laughter from the audience giving agreement to the man’s words is very chilling.

The story begins in 1994 at Emory University. The movie shows that although we know the Holocaust occurred through the existence of mass graves and testimonies, it is difficult to prove details of the horrors. For instance, Lipstadt tells her class that the Nazis made sure that there was no evidence of killings in gas chambers because they blew them up.

The camera shows Lipstadt running, gathering materials, basically in constant motion which establishes her as a person of action.

We get immediate evidence of the story’s conflict when Irving, lurking in the shadows exhibiting a demonic face, interrupts a speech by Lipstadt in Atlanta Georgia. She is stating that she will not “debate facts” with a Holocaust denier. It is ironic that is exactly what she must do because Irving sues her in 1996 for libel for calling him a Holocaust denier in her writing. The extent to which denial of The Holocaust is accepted is shown by the fact that Irving has done his own extensive biased research and has been published by prominent publishing institutions. Irving films his stunt so he can use the media to promote himself and his fake argument.

Lipstadt watches the news and her sad face shows her reaction to seeing Irving speaking to Neo-Nazis in Germany, saying they have nothing to feel ashamed about in their past. His audience responds by giving the Nazi salute. It is frightening to realize that some people find community in shared hatred of others. (It is notable that just recently there has been a resurgence of extreme right-wing political forces in Germany and other European nations).

The trial takes place in England where rules are a bit reversed compared to the United States. There a defendant is considered guilty until proven innocent. The same goes for a libel case. Irving deliberately chose England because it makes Lipstadt appear guilty from the start. It is another way of stacking the deck against truth. The film details the legal strategies that Lipstadt’s lawyers, Anthony Julius (Andrew Scott) and Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson) use. Julius points out that Irving wants to gain scholastic respect by defeating Lipstadt, and many scholars don’t see the fact that Irving is an anti-Semite to be a disqualifier. Julius is reading a book about how the renowned poet T. S. Eliot was anti-Semitic. Indeed, he was, yet he wrote great poetry. Sometimes the person deserves condemnation, but that individual’s work is laudable. Irving is no Eliot, but he aspires to gain scholarly recognition.

Lipstadt says her mother’s name means “warrior,” and she always felt that her daughter was meant to fight a great battle. She sees that the confrontation with Irving is the war she was destined to fight. Here we see that the battle against evil is a generational one. IMDb points out that while running Lipstadt stops to observe the statue of “Boadicea and her Daughters.” She was a warrior who led a failed uprising against the Romans. That image links to Lipstadt and her mother, but it implies a warning that a noble fight can still be lost.

The story jumps to 1998. Lipstadt’s legal team delivers discovery information to Irving, who tries to gain sympathy for his cause by depicting himself as a David against the Goliath-sized law firm representing his adversary. Irving is charming, smart, and mannerly. He plays with his granddaughter. What Hamlet says fits here: “that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” The legal team wants Irving’s personal diary for discovery evidence. They find that one must be careful what one wishes for. The diary consists of volumes which fill a whole room, making it an immense undertaking to plow through.

It is raining heavily and there is thunder outside the London law firm as Lipstadt arrives, symbolizing the storm to be weathered in the courtroom. What might seem an obvious defense is not necessarily what works in an actual courtroom. Lipstadt thinks it should be necessary to have holocaust victims testify to substantiate her remarks about Irving distorting the facts. But Julius points out that Irving will attack the victims if he gets the chance to question them because he will represent himself. Julius says the survivors do not “remember every detail. They forget something. They say the door was on the left when it was on the right.” Irving will say that they are liars and can’t be trusted. It’s like looking at the tiniest flaw in a work of art and condemning the whole painting.

Lipstadt tries to raise money for the defense team from the Jewish community in London. She encounters another argument among those Jews she dines with. One says that instead of giving Irving a spotlight it would be better to settle. She uses the words “appeasement” which brings up bad memories among the British because that is what Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was accused of in giving into Nazi demands at the beginning of WWII.

Lipstadt is frustrated by others shutting her out of what she wants to accomplish, telling her what she can do and say, or not say. Legal finesse and roundabout ways of dealing with the situation are out of sync with her straightforward way of confronting the situation.

Lawyer Rampton, who will argue the case, travels with Lipstadt to Auschwitz. Rampton takes pictures and the audience gets shots of the misty, hushed place that looks haunted. The moisture that drips from an iron structure implies droppings of blood. There are huge piles of survivors’ belongings with names on them and dates which resemble grave markers. Lipstadt seems tentative as she walks on what remains of the killing factories.

Those who tried to discredit the existence of the Holocaust attributed the cyanide present at Auschwitz to killing of lice. The area where that was done had evidence of high concentrations of the poison. Lipstadt points out that residue was higher at that location because it takes twenty times more cyanide to kill the lice than it does to kill humans. But for Rampton that does not prove that cyanide was used on people. He is outraged that in-depth scientific studies were not made of the area after all this time. One possibility is that it would have seemed disrespectful to assault the shrine-like area with investigators.

When Lipstadt and Rampton share a drink afterwards he admits to feeling shame. He worries that if he were a soldier at the camp he might have carried out orders given to him. He says that the world is full of cowards. His statement suggests that people, out of fear, will not stand up against tyranny. He quotes the poet Goethe who said, “The coward only threatens when he feels secure.” The implication is that it’s easy to be courageous when there is no threat to oneself for opposing what is wrong.

Other decisions that seem logical to Lipstadt are not practical in the courtroom against a manipulator like Irving. The lawyers want the case to be tried by a judge, not a jury. They don’t want Lipstadt to testify. They later get Irving to agree to a judge hearing the case by appealing to his massive ego, saying the regular juror couldn’t comprehend his scholarship. Rampton wants to keep the focus on Irving and “starve” him of any attempt to shift the argument away from his misrepresentations. Lipstadt is afraid that she will look like a coward for not taking the stand. He says it’s the “price” she must pay for “winning.” What seems right may not be so in the long run. And, the question of when to be brave depends on the circumstances.

Lipstadt has support from celebrities, but she also receives threats from onlookers in the crowd on the way to the courtroom. Julius warns her to alter her jogging route, which implies enemies could be tracking her. She must have courage in her fight against the fanatics who see her as a threat to their warped way of thinking.

Irving in his opening statement tries to connect being labeled a Holocaust “denier” to someone who wears a “verbal yellow star.” He is saying that being singled out to society as a “pariah” is what the Nazis did to the Jews. The implication here is that he, an anti-Semite, is comparing his plight to the Nazi discrimination against Jews. Lipstadt, and, of course, we, find the comparison loathsome, as well as being ironic. The film stresses the remark by focusing on the court recorder typing Irving’s words, making them part of the official record.

Rampton shows how historical books do not always show what really happened. He points out that in an earlier text, Irving included The Holocaust and then in a later volume, those references disappeared. He calls Irving not a historian, but a falsifier of history, a “liar.” Rampton said Irving embraced a report that nullified the idea that Hitler ordered the extermination at the camps. Rampton said Irving embraced this invalid report because “he wanted it to be true.” That statement is an accurate insight into how false conspiracy theories become accepted, how bigotry spreads. It’s a defiance of evidence to reinforce twisted notions that somehow give comfort to the believer, absolving him of the responsibility of his own actions and ideas. These warped beliefs may have been propagated among family and friends. The emphasis here is that we must perform due diligence, especially today, in verifying what we decide to accept as facts.

A female holocaust survivor confronts Lipstadt outside the courtroom, shows her numerical tattoo, and tells her that survivors should be allowed in court. Lipstadt already wanted that to happen, so she is torn. She promises the survivor that the stories will be heard, which is in direct contradiction to the defense’s strategy. She tells Julius about her meeting. He says the trial is not therapy for the victims to process their trauma. Lipstadt says it is not for them but for the families of those that did not survive. He is adamant and tells her she must break her promise to the survivor since his main goal is to win the case, while Lipstadt’s motives extend beyond the success of a personal verdict.

Irving interrogates a historian about Auschwitz’s gas chambers. He does what falsifiers do, he focuses on one aspect that doesn’t jive with the rest of the evidence to falsify an opposing argument entirely. There were supposedly columns that protruded through the roof of the gas chamber into which cyanide was deposited. Irving says there have been no observations of holes in the now dilapidated roof. Irving then escalates the rhetoric by calling those who claimed the openings were there are “liars!”

Irving orchestrated the latter testimony to occur at the end of the day so there would be no instant rebuttal. Despite photographs taken from airplanes that indicated openings on the roof, Irving will say that they do not verify holes. They could be shadows, or worse, forgeries. Lipstadt says Irving got his “viral” idea across, which definitely connects with how the internet works today. She says that Irving is suggesting that alternative views of history can be accepted. She wants to testify and wants the testimony of survivors to be part of the trial. Julius points to prior trials when those who were in Auschwitz were humiliated under interrogation, with Irving mockingly stating how a Jewish survivor made money over the years profiting from her tattoo. Julius is suggesting how character assassination undermines broader arguments.

Rampton confronts Irving in the courtroom with evidence of the grating over the gas chambers that contained cyanide residue. Irving says the only gassing was fumigation of cadavers to kill “typhus-bearing lice.” Rampton counters by saying then what was the need to have a secure door with a viewing portal. Corpses don’t have to be viewed or secured in a mortuary. There is a shot of the people inside the gas chamber looking terrified, which is what Lipstadt sees in her mind, the truth compared to what Irving describes. Rampton notes the ridiculousness of gassing corpses and then incinerating them, undermining Irving’s testimony. Why must these obvious contradictions be pointed out? Same answer as before, because truth can be a threat to closed minded beliefs.

Rampton has a private meeting in Lipstadt’s flat. She sees that what appeared from her perspective as coldness at Auschwitz was, as he puts it, checking out “the crime scene.” Her emotionalism must give way to a logical way of handling the problem in a legal manner. It has been difficult for her to give up autonomy. She says, “I have never trusted anyone to do anything on my behalf since I was a child. All I have is my voice and my conscience.” She has had to compromise. As Rampton says, “What feels best isn’t necessarily what works best.” She must engage in “self-denial” and hand over her conscience to another to “win.”

The defense presents a historian who shows that an order came from the German High Command that ordered to not have an individual train carrying Jews be liquidated. Irving altered the translation to say that Hitler himself ordered that no Jews at all were to be killed. The testimony shows how just the alteration of a few words can distort fact.

Rampton in court shows speeches that Irving gave that are bigoted and misogynistic. Irving argues sarcastically that there should be important news on the TV, and that nobody cares about The Holocaust which took place so long ago. Yet, he says, the Jews keep dwelling on it. He says that important news should be read by a man, less important new by a woman, and that a referenced Black newscaster should read about the muggings and other inner-city crimes. He is announcing the hierarchy of his prejudicial ranking. What is frightening is how many in the audience laugh at his ridiculing.

Irving brought the legal action because he believes he was labeled a racist incorrectly. But Rampton reads from the man’s diaries that show he told his own child a bigoted ditty that labels anyone who is not Aryan as being subhuman. Indoctrination into hate and derogatory attitudes towards others starts early on.

The point about leeway in historical texts is raised in court. Rampton argues that there is a difference between “negligence, which is random in its effect, and a deliberateness, which is far more one-sided.” He is saying that Irving intentionally falsified what actually happened in history in a textbook that is supposed to be taken as factual. However, the judge questions that if Irving believes in his antisemitism, then the implication is that he is being honest by saying what he believes. The defense maintains that belief in something should not condone altering the facts of what actually happened.

We get more bad weather. Well, it is England, and it is not ominous at this point. The judge announces that the defense wins the case. Those who refuse to change their slanted beliefs say Lipstadt is guilty anyway and shout out “Filthy Jew” as she walks through the streets with her lawyers. Bystanders also harass Irving, pelting him with an egg, but he receives cheers as well, which is very disturbing.

In a news conference Lipstadt says free speech means you can give your opinions, but you can’t lie and then expect not to be held accountable for those falsifications. Later Lipstadt watches Irving on TV, and the man acts like the judge was incapable of understanding his argument. To the bigot, all contrasting beliefs are invalid from the start. Everything must fit into the warped world view. Lipstadt says of Irving, “he used to be a Holocaust denier, and now he is a verdict denier.”

The movie warns us to be on guard against those who appeal to our unfounded fears and the hatred they spawn.