Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt

I've seen this complex and absorbing documentary only once and feel I'll need to see it more times before I can really know how to feel about it.

It was certainly involving and thought-provoking but also a bit frustrating in that many of the quotes from Arendt's works and correspondence seemed a bit too truncated (brief or lacking in context) to be understood well.

I couldn't help feeling a longer version of the film would have provided the opportunity for a fuller presentation of her ideas.

Still this was a very interesting film and at least gave me some sense for the life and work of Arendt.

I'm rather hoping the writer/director will use the opportunity of the eventual DVD release of the documentary to flesh out more fully some of Arendt's chief ideas by means of a good audio commentary or other extras.

Great watch. I am not so sure about the fiction movie about Arendt but I have ordered it and will have a chance to make up my mind. At the light of today's world, Arendt's work has something of prophetical, and even if not reassuring it hits bull's eye in so many assertions.

In this brilliant documentary you can learn more about the central pieces of Arendt's work and the reception of the coining of phrases such as the banality of evil. It's also your chance, as our philology master Nietzsche would advise us, to get close and personal with the source and the context where these words were written and voiced out into collective intelligence. It will help you to gain the strength to really understand that Arendt's evil category is everything but banal and that it's banality is solely rooted upon the unawareness of other's pain. An involuntary, silent and unnoticed sadism lost in the webs of political corruption, totalitarianism and bureaucracy.

Besides a beautiful elipse work between footage from the past which adds true drama to the story, edited together with bits and pieces of Arendt's famous radio and TV interviews (where are these prime time intellectual TV shows now?); the documentary excels at a synthetic but emotional sum up of the Arendt's life more important episodes and people (Heidegger, Jaspers).

The main character, thought, is Arendt's contributions and philosophical activity. Her legacy is immense and contemporary. Her view of the human condition and events, even seen at the light of our reality today, are spot on and for many she overcame her masters, making way to a new way of reflection, unworn by time and progress.

For sure it sheds a great light often to her work here, namely the categories of evil, the infamous banality of evil; thinking as a dangerous act/non-thinking as the most dangerous, inhuman act; the refugees status and their loss of human rights supported only while under the guarantee of a nation which refugees just lost; plurality; a handful of deep, actual and serious matter of study.

In the meanwhile if you know her work, you must watch this film. If you don't, that necessity is even more pressing considering you are into contemporary Philosophy. Our dear Hannah Arendt is one of the most, if not the most brilliant voices of the twentieth century.

A word for Ada Ushpiz (director/writer, Israel) and her crew for the good taste, deep approach and beautiful mounted film with great interviews with both the supporters and the detractors of Arendt's body of work.

The German-Jewish philosopher, Johanna "Hannah" Arendt is famous for the phrase "the banality of evil," which she coined after observing the trial of Nazi Holocaust organizer Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. She devoted her life to writing and speaking about human rights, the importance of thought as (as well as in addition to) action, and the nature of power. She rarely misstepped, though her early affair with teacher Martin Heidegger, who later worked within the Nazi regime, and her continued support and defense of him after the war, certainly raises questions.

Arendt is clearly a worthy subject for a biographical documentary, and the filmmakers have done an interesting job of it. They've found extremely rare archival footage (from private videos of the Heidegger family to Nazi concentration camp guards clowning behind closed doors) and combined it with stock footage that may or may not relate to the narration or prose from books and letters read by actors over the soundtrack. There's quite a bit of video footage of the Eichmann trial -- certainly a pivotal event in Arendt's life and writings -- though perhaps not that illuminating in itself.

The excerpts from her political and philosophical writings are largely served in small doses -- slowly, with air time and comments by current experts to help the viewer to absorb them -- but it remains an exhausting exercise in concentration. I found myself flagging -- in energy, not so much as interest -- about 80 percent of the way into this admittedly long 132-minute film. Excerpts from personal letters by Arendt and several of the men in her life, both teachers and lovers (again read in English by actors), may have been chosen to give us a breather, but they aren't that instructive otherwise.

What is vital about this film is what Arendt can teach us about political fairness and balance, how not to yield to the temptations offered by totalitarian figures and governments. One cannot help think or more recent figures and events in history. Some of her aged students and contemporary academics that appear on camera are very helpful here, as well as archival video interviews with the philosopher herself.

She deserves the attention, and though this isn't an easy film to digest, it's hard to imagine how one could make the job much easier without possibly doing a disservice to its subject.