Denial Review

Fellow movie-goers: Great film, hard to believe this actually happened.

Ratings are based on 1 to 10 Reels

10 Plot: Story wrote itself, true story even if it seems unreal.
8 Directing: Mick Jackson does a great job weaving court scenes with behind the scenes.
8 Acting: Spall and Weisz were awesome, they excelled in their roles.
7 Cinematography: Good shots, loved the courtroom scenes especially.
8 Pacing: Good pacing, although one or two scenes were a bit slow.
8.2

Here is the premise: Based on the acclaimed book “History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier,” DENIAL recounts Deborah E. Lipstadt’s (Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz) legal battle for historical truth against David Irving (Cannes Award winner Timothy Spall), who accused her of libel when she declared him a Holocaust denier. In the English legal system, the burden of proof is on the accused, therefore it was up to Lipstadt and her legal team to prove the essential truth that the Holocaust occurred.

It is hard to believe that there is anyone out there that says the holocaust never happened, but it is sobering and scary that there are a lot of people out there that actually believe this. DENIAL centers on one such denier, David Irving; and the film depicts the battle just how it happened all the way down to using the exact dialogue verbatim from the trial records. The story is like something out of Hollywood’s greatest minds, so you must remind yourself throughout the film that this actually happened. I felt the pain of Deborah Lipstadt who got thrown into the fight she never asked for, as well as the holocaust survivors who attended the trial and had to relive their entire horrible ordeal while this monster of a man tells them it did not happen.

This is a fantastic movie, I recommend as many people see it as possible, I think our middle schools and high schools should take students to see this; for it is really true, if we do not learn from our past then we are doomed to repeat it.

Michael Trichel

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