Hannah Arendt (PG). Director: Margarethe von Trotta. Starring: Barbara Sukowa. 114 minutes
Gloria (MA). Director: Sebastián Lelio. Starring: Paulina García, Sergio Hernández. 109 minutes
Accepting her well-deserved Oscar this month for her role in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, Cate Blanchett decried the Hollywood myth that 'female films with women at the center are niche experiences'. Two non-English-language films currently on release may not achieve the box office bounty or mainstream recognition of Blue Jasmine but they do contain robust and deeply empathetic portrayals of strong female characters who are as intriguing and authentic as Blanchett's Jasmine.
Watching Hannah Arendt is largely a cerebral experience. The film is based on the experiences of German-American Jew and political theorist Arendt, who in 1961 developed the theory of the banality of evil, in response to the trial of Nazi 'desk-murderer' Adolf Eichmann. It portrays the act and aftermath of her controversial reporting on the trial for The New Yorker magazine, in a series of articles that would later evolve into her seminal tome Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
The film explores both Hannah's ideas and her thought process. She develops her arguments through heated conversations with friends and colleagues during casual gatherings. In this regard it is a dialogue-heavy film, in which some characters seem to serve no function other than to provide the counter-arguments that help Hannah fine-tune her larger theories. But at other times it lapses into near silence, finding Hannah in moments of deep rumination, her cigarette burning low as behind her eyes her formidable mind blazes.
Sukowa is excellent as Hannah, whose staunch intellectualisation of the trial and the events to which it pertains puts her in opposition to much of the western world, and particularly to members of the Jewish diaspora, who take her rationality as heartlessness, and viciously condemn her for it. But Arendt's desire to understand these events intellectually is not merely abstract. It is motivated by passion — the Holocaust touched her life directly and had a profound personal impact. Sukowa captures also these sad, wounded depths of the character.
This film is intriguing but imperfect. It is replete with phony American accents and bad vocal overdubs that often thwart its attempts at humour (a magazine editor's strict interventions with Hannah are stymied by his awe for her) and conflict (such as her verbal spats with an appalled Jewish colleague). A scene where she is refused forgiveness by an old, dear