There's a scene in Denial where Jewish community leaders try to dissuade Deborah Lipstadt, powerfully played by Rachel Weisz, from fighting a libel suit brought by the Holocaust denier David Irving (Timothy Spall). The professor is an American, they have to live with Irving in Britain, and it will only give the has-been a new lease of life, they argue.
Lipstadt, rightly, refuses to settle.
Even so, the concerns about giving him a platform came to my mind several times during the past couple of weeks, as an interview with Irving appeared in a national newspaper, radio and TV shows discussed him, and the news reported his views on Trump and Corbyn. Meanwhile, on social media, his supporters declared Denial a Zionist smear.
In fact, Denial is a movie that sticks soberly and meticulously to the facts. Indeed, director Mick Jackson and screenwriter David Hare take the theme of objective truth vs lies extremely seriously, and seemingly make adherence to them a point of principle. Every word uttered in the film’s compelling trial scenes, for example, was lifted verbatim from court transcripts, without any attempt to Hollywood-ise events by giving Lipstadt a grandstanding speech she never made.
The forthright academic found herself in court after Irving sued her and Penguin Books over her claim that he was a Holocaust denier, in her 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.
As the film illustrates, she also found herself in an alien legal system where, unlike in America, the defendant in a libel case is guilty until proven innocent. This, solicitor Anthony Julius, (a memorable Andrew Scott) clearly relishing the fight ahead, explains to Lipstadt is why Irving chose to file in the High Court in London.
Julius’s strategy is to go on the attack. They will not defend what Lipstadt wrote but instead show justification by exposing Irving’s lies and distortions of the historical record.
To Lipstadt’s dismay, no survivor will be called as a witness. The reason, says Julius, is that he doesn’t want to let Irving, who will be representing himself, get his hands on them. Later, to her shock, barrister Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson) informs Lipstadt that she will also not be called to testify. That he says this in Poland, after a visit to Auschwitz, where Jews had their voices silenced for ever, makes his timing feel coldly insensitive.
The film cuts between the courtroom and Lipstadt’s gradually warming relationship with Rampton in particular, and her ultimate acceptance that victory will require an act of self-denial on her part.
Weisz is nuanced as Lipstadt while the always-reliable Wilkinson does some of his best work. As Irving, Spall is by turns ingratiating, crass and pompous, insecurity lurking just behind the bluster as he’s exposed as a racist, sexist, antisemitic figure, whose falsifications and distortions are in the service of an agenda to rehabilitate Hitler.
If there is a hint of Trump, this is not coincidental; he was one of the reasons why Hare took on the project. The film has only gained in urgency, and represents a clarion call for people to fight for the truth in a world where reality is being distorted by liars and charlatans, and opinions given the same weight as facts.
Objective truth matters, and Denial shows why.
Denial is available on DVD from the 5th June
