Manuel here with yet another sign of the Rachel Weisz renaissance we all so spiritedly discussed a few weeks back. When the trailer for The Light Between Oceans surfaced I was probably not alone in earmarking her supporting role in that Vikander/Fassbender weepie as a chance for the actress to nab her second Oscar nomination (which most of us had vainly hoped she’d net with her beautiful work in The Deep Blue Sea). Well, there may be a clearer path for the actress with Denial which is, after all, squarely focused on that most Oscar-ey of topics: the Holocaust.
Rather than focus on the event itself, the film centers instead on a very public libel suit in the UK in the 1990s between a writer, David Irving (Timothy Spall), and a historian, Deborah E. Lipstadt (Weisz) after she accuses him of denying the Holocaust. Let’s break down the trailer YNMS-style after the jump...
What if we lose? Suddenly it becomes acceptable to say the Holocaust didn't happen?
YES
- I’d say Weisz is unrecognizable given her frumpy hair and New Yahk accent but those eyes are hard to mistake. It nevertheless marks a type of role that Weisz hasn’t played (or perhaps hasn’t been offered) before, requiring as it does this type of de-glamming. (Side question for TFE readers: has Weisz ever looked not-ravishing in a film? Am I forgetting some key performance here?)
- The entire supporting cast looks fantastic with Tom Wilkinson and Andrew Scott (!) suggesting we’ve got a solid (albeit male-skewing) ensemble on our hands. But it is Spall who looks to be having the most to work with playing Irving with a blustering loquaciousness that nicely contrasts with Weisz’s more composed if ruffled Lipstadt.
- For what seems to be a courtroom drama I was taken aback by the beauty of some of the outdoor shots—those Auschwitz wintery sequences look quite striking, no?
NO
We know what it is, it's how we prove what it is.
- Will the film work even when we know what the outcome will be? It is, as the trailer reminds us, “Based on a True Story” and given the way the central debate is framed you can perhaps already guess what the verdict was. That it also leans hard into the free speech aspect of the narrative suggests it might also end up feeling like a Big Theme movie, can it do so without sounding hollow?
- Can the director of Temple Grandin, The Memory Keeper's Daughter and Tuesdays With Morrie deliver the type of nuanced, character-driven, zeitgesty film this subject matter is all but asking for? I have my doubts but that's one thing trailers can't ever really help you answer.
MAYBE SO
Not all opinions are equal.
- It’s perhaps too much to ask that every new Holocaust-themed film offer us something new but given this novel framework Denial will have to infuse its narrative with a sense of urgency lest it become a mere academic (or worse yet, judicial) exercise.
- David Hare. The first film that came to mind as I watched this trailer was The Reader and lo and behold, it turns out Hare also adapted this Holocaust/courtroom drama (from Lipstadt’s book). As divisive as that film (and its eventual Best Actress triumph) has become, there’s no denying that Hare has a knack for structure and potency which a story like this one will require.
I’m a Yes on the prospect of Weisz alone though if I’m honest it’s probably more of a Maybe So given the reservations the subject matter brings up. How about you?
Can we hope the film, which opens in August in the US, gives us a knockout Weisz performance as well as a riveting courtroom drama about the perils of forgetting (or artfully misremembering) a history of prejudice without it turning out like a didactic piece of work?