M.A. Thesis for Liberal Studies, The New School for Social Research in New York. Advisor: Andreas Kalyvas, Assistant Professor of Political Science, The New School for Social Research in New York. Reader: Juliane Rebentisch, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. A special thanks to Eyal Sivan.
Contents: 1. Disruptive Narratives — 2. The Trial of Adolf Eichmann — 3. The Making and Archiving of the Material — 4. Responsibilities towards the Archive and Representations of Documentary Images — 5. To Show Instead of Telling — 6. Consequences of Representation — 7. Bibliography — 8. Filmography — 9. Appendix: Interview with Eyal Sivan.
1. Disruptive Narratives
"Butcher, butcher!" The words are heard before we see the man shouting. The film cuts to the audience; two guards drag their struggling charge out of the courtroom by his arms. A buzz spreads through the audience, all are turned towards him, one of the judges calls for order, and cut – the moment is over and a new scene begins. These few seconds in the very beginning of the film The Specialist: Portrait of a Modern Criminal, directed by Eyal Sivan and released in 1999, exemplify the controversy that has followed the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem 1961. The trial itself has become emblematic for various reasons: it was the only time Israel convicted a somewhat high-ranking Nazi; it was the first time survivors publicly testified; the entire trial was videotaped and broadcast on both television and radio around the world. The aftermath, too, has been marked by much contentiousness. Two years after the trial, Hannah Arendt published an account of it in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil, and in so doing forever damaged her relationship to the international community of Jews in exile and posed her as the controversial thinker she would be known as.
The historical backdrop of Arendt's book is necessary for understanding the issues at the core of the discussions of The Specialist. The film's main critic, Hillel Tryster, the former director of the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive – the archive responsible for the filmed trial material – refers to the historian and scholar of Shoah, Yehuda Bauer, and claims that Bauer suggested that a film based upon Arendt's book "cannot be worthy of analysis." Such harsh judgment upon both the film and the book suggests just how complicated these discussions are. Hillel Tryster believes, however, that the film merits attention for two reasons: first, since it has gained such public recognition and second, since it provides a rare type of case study since most of the material comes from the same archival source. However, as we will see, there seems to be more than this at stake in his criticism.
Over a quarter of a century later, an Israeli filmmaker would consider Arendt's work and contribute his own perspective to the Eichmann trial. Filmmaker Eyal Sivan came to the subject in a roundabout way. In 1990, Sivan was doing research for a film at the Spielberg Archive in Jerusalem, when he discovered a shelf filled with tapes marked, in English, "The Eichmann Trial." After some research he found out that the reels held actual footage from the trial. He contacted Rony Brauman, at that time the director of Doctors Without Borders, and told him about his discovery. Brauman gave Sivan Hannah Arendt's book and thereafter they decided to make a film of the material, based upon the book. They wrote the script together and Sivan directed it.
Sivan and Brauman worked with the material from a clearly defined perspective: they wanted to tell the story of the perpetrator, in accordance with the account given by Arendt. They chose to structure the film into 13 chapters, divided by black frames, which creates visual ruptures. Each chapter, or sequence, has a particular focus, signaled in its title, and the different nature of the titles is apparent in the first two; "The trial opens," which is rather neutral, and the second, "A Specialist in compulsory emigration who enjoys his work."
One of the film's most striking features involves its point-of-view – a great number of shots are focused on Eichmann: listening to translations, scribbling down notes, organizing his papers, or trying to answer questions posed to him. Besides Eichmann, the prosecutor, attorney general Gideon Hausner plays a leading role and the image often returns to him, reacting to Eichmann's statements. The judges are frequently shown reprimanding witnesses and spectators; they provide a notion of proper conduct and they appear to be the reason that the trial does not decline to total chaos. For the most part, the film moves rapidly, cutting quickly between perspectives and incidents, but unbroken shots lasting several minutes serve to give a few episodes special emphasis: filmed material from the camps flicker in the darkened courtroom during one long, uncomfortable sequence, and a few survivors give testimony in a series of short shots; the viewer is shown witness after witness.
Sivan did not edit the material with the sole aim of constructing a narrative; instead, he broke up the chronology. Besides making a new storyline, he manipulated the material heavily, both by traditional means of editing and by reinforcing shadows, adding reflections and sometimes by impairing the quality of the original images. His reworking doesn't stop there – since the sound of the video was inferior, the filmmakers chose to work with the audio recorded for radio instead, and then synchronized it with the filmed material. The audio is not only synchronized with the images, but the voices are repeated at times, sometimes blurred, and sounds are added at times other than when they originally appeared.
This editing of the archival material is crucial to the controversy that The Specialist caused. The film received generally positive reviews when it was released and screened in cinemas around the world, but since then has continued to cause heated discussions. The film's topic is in itself a minefield; representations of Shoah, or its aftermath, are still sensitive matters. What is at stake is the collective memory of an event that still affects global politics. Still, many consider Shoah unrepresentable.
The politics of representation in the film cannot be separated from the historical background of the political agenda of the trial in Israel. The trial did not aim to simply convict Eichmann – it provided a means for the Israeli state to claim agency over the aftermath of Shoah. The Israeli Prime minister at the time, David Ben Gurion, even stated after the trial that he wanted it to achieve three things: to inform the world's opinion about Shoah, to educate the unknowing Israeli youth, and to gain support for the Israeli nation state. Whether or not all this was achieved remains to be investigated, but the trial created a foundation for Shoah commemoration through survivors' testimonies that has been a conventional narrative since. The film The Specialist offers another stance in the discussions of Shoah commemoration, as it follows in Hannah Arendt's footsteps.
The Specialist poses a wide range of questions, and I would like to advocate for the film's representational politics in the face of its many critics. I will do this through several means, first on the level of representation in the film's understanding of the archive and the documentary. I will argue that the film exposes its construction and use of the material that makes explicit the question of responsibility towards the archive and relating a documentary truth claim. Secondly, I will examine the film in relation to Hannah Arendt's book on the Eichmann trial, with respect to the media difference film-literature and how the film does not only double what has been said in the book. Thirdly, I will analyze the political implications of the film and examine how the film intervenes in an existing field of different narratives of that trial and constructs something like a political counter-narrative of the trial.
[Ceci est un extrait du chapitre introductif du mémoire complet (73 pages), qui se poursuit avec : « 2. The Trial of Adolf Eichmann », « 3. The Making and Archiving of the Material », « 4. Responsibilities towards the Archive and Representations of Documentary Images », « 5. To Show Instead of Telling », « 6. Consequences of Representation », bibliographie, filmographie et un entretien inédit avec Eyal Sivan en annexe.]
Source : Rebecka Thor — The New School for Social Research, 2009