Director Mick Jackson and screenwriter David Hare’s slow burning courtroom historical drama Denial revolves around both the dismantling of a blustering bully, and a conflict between our protagonists between a defense rooted in emotion and the other in hard logic. What it lacks in sensationalism, it tries to make up for with a sobering examination of history, musings on truth and what it takes to define it.
At its center is Timothy Spall as Holocaust denier and Nazi sympathizer David Irving, whom he plays with considerable vile fury and smug arrogance as he files a defamation lawsuit against Rachel Weisz’s Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of Jewish studies at Emory University, for remarks she made about him in a recent book. Almost resembling an angry owl as he stares furiously at Lipstadt from the shadows of her lecture hall, his enraged confrontation of her during one of her classes leads to the inevitable showdown two years later.
With her back to the wall and unwilling to give Irving the time of day by debating him, she heads to London for the trail, where she’s befriended by the smooth lawyer Anthony Julius (Sherlock’s Andrew Scott). It’s clear both him and Lipstadt seek justice, but through different means- tensions emerge when Julius is unwilling to allow actual Holocaust survivors to take the stand, fearing that Irving will degrade and humiliate them to his advantage.
In the court system of the United Kingdom, the burden of proof in libel suits falls on the accused. This perfectly plays into Irving’s strategy of both presenting himself as a martyr in the defense of “free speech “, and manipulating Lipstadt’s legal team into showcasing what he hopes will be a serious debate regarding his claims. What eventually unfolds is a realistic, strategic battle of wits that doesn’t really break a lot of ground when it comes to legal dramas, but still has more than enough emotional impact to resonate with viewers in regards to the subject matter and performances.
Lipstadt’s frustration is understandable from the jumping point, frequently in disbelief at how easily Irving is able to spread misinformation and somehow be taken seriously as a historian despite all of the conflicting evidence. It gets to a point where even she has to give the devil her due and acknowledges how effective a manipulator he is, but she never loses her sense of conviction. “All I have is my conscience and my voice”, she says to her court barrister Richard Rampton. In this role, Tom Wilkinson is both charming but determined, and unfortunately stuck as something of a middleman between Julius’s analytical approach and Lipstadt’s passion.
This is especially evident in a scene when Lipstadt and crew travel to Auschwitz in the hopes of gathering evidence to counter Irving. In what’s perhaps one of the most emotionally impactful scenes, Rampton is focused on collecting data at the expense of what Lipstadt sees as showing a lack of respect towards sacred ground. But it’s also shown his anger is growing as well, and he’s more than happy to unload both his and her arguments against Irving as the trial progresses.
If you’ve been watching the news lately it’s easy to see how timely and urgent Denial feels with its themes of obvious fact and what people are willing to define as subjective topics. But simply taken on its own, it’s a decent, if too slow moving at times, legal thriller with a good sense of morality and a appealing, compassionate performance from Weisz at its center.
In one courtroom scene, Lipstadt has a sudden vision in her head that’s all too brief, but leaves a considerable impact. Maybe the film wouldn’t have benefited from being too over the top, but more visceral moments such as that could have turned a solid drama into a truly memorable one. For what it is, I can still give it a fair recommendation.