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Israel, Canada · 2015
2h 5m
Director Ada Ushpiz
Starring Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Leon Botstein, Alison Darcy
Genre Documentary, Drama
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A documentary about the life and work of Hannah Arendt, the prolific thinker, political theorist, and moral philosopher who coined the phrase “the Banality of Evil.” An intimate look at her life and travels as she develops her political philosophy and contends with the impact of World War II, including the trials of Nazi officials.
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
Ms. Ushpiz is determined to rescue her subject from the banality of biography. The details of Arendt’s childhood, education, romantic life and professional activity are not ignored, but they nearly always illuminate her ideas.
Slant Magazine by Clayton Dillard
It reduces its historical moment to a series of vignettes and voiceovers, each evincing a curiously tone-deaf sentimentality.
New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme
The film works to rescue Arendt and her phrase “the banality of evil” from years of cliché, and largely succeeds.
The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck
Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt wrestles with its unwieldy subject with only sporadic success.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Kate Taylor
This solid intellectual biography painstakingly follows the development of Arendt’s thought as she was forced to flee her privileged surroundings in German academia, where she was Martin Heidegger’s student and lover, to France and then the United States.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
A thoughtful, nuanced examination of a complex thinker.
Village Voice by Michelle Orange
Insofar as Ushpiz succeeds in putting the most provocative, salient, and damning aspects of Arendt's work into a lucid context, she exposes the limits of her own approach.
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
A documentary about the alternately celebrated and reviled German-born philosopher who gave us the catchphrase “the banality of evil.”
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