The Specialist

In 1961, over the course of a little over half a year, an unremarkable looking little balding man with slightly stooped shoulders, baggy suit, and the deferential yet officious manner of a local petty bureaucrat was escorted daily by armed guards into a glass booth. The booth was situated within the District Court of Jerusalem, whose somber lawyers and judges had convened to try the little man, Adolph Eichmann, for perhaps the most heinous crimes ever perpetrated against mankind. Eichmann was the administrator (if not the architect) of the Reich's program of Jewish mass deportation to concentration camps, a task which he would staunchly and infamously contend that he simply carried out in response to direct orders from superiors. ("I was a soldier. I had to obey.") In The Specialist, filmmaker Eyal Sivan has accomplished a truly astounding feat: by restoring, re-editing, and reprocessing footage from the Eichmann trial (originally shot by documentarian Leo T. Hurwitz) he has created a kind of harrowing crash course for understanding Hannah Arendt's notion of "the banality of evil." There is something similar to Greek tragedy in these proceedings: the chorus of black-robed judges; the masks of grief worn by witnesses; only in this instance there were no gods present, just an ordinary-looking monster. Very little in feature filmmaking can touch the intensity and drama of the documentary images captured in this quiet, methodical courtroom chiller. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. Aud: H, C, P. [Note: DVD extras include an engaging hour-long interview with filmmakers Rony Brauman and Eyal Sivan, who discuss the challenges of paring down 350 hours of archival footage into a two-hour film, and text except from the filmmakers/authors book In Praise of Disobedience. Bottom line: an illuminating extras package for an excellent film.] (G. Handman)