The Specialist - Portrait of a Modern Criminal
by Eyal Sivan
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Adolf EichmannDirector: Eyal Sivan
Cinematographer: Leo Hurwitz
Producer: Eyal Sivan
Writer: Eyal Sivan
Editor: Audrey Maurion
Producer: Amit Breuer
Producer: Armelle Laborie
Producer: Elke Peters
Producer: Erich Lackner
Producer: Martine Barb?
Writer: Rony Brauman
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Hebrew (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Dubbed); French (Dubbed); German (Dubbed)
Format: Black & White, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 128 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-10-22
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Kino International
Movie Reviews of The Specialist - Portrait of a Modern Criminal
Movie Review: As Sinister As The Solitary Pluck of a Violin String
Summary: 5 Stars
The Specialist takes archived footage of the Eichmann trial and rearranges and morphs it to a candid look into the mind of an efficient bureaucrat. This man was considered by all as a specialist in his field. His field was the transporting of human beings to death camps. What kind of man could do such a ghastly thing?
This film shows a man no better than a beast in the jungle. Eichmann epitomizes the moral and spiritual devolution of German leadership in that era. Where he and his colleagues created a clockwork of death, and they took pride in it's efficiency.
This film is not lighthearted. Just with archived videotape footage, the director created a horrifying document of the loss of God in a culture.
The music score created for this document is incredibly chilling. It depicts the sinister mind of the accused. Never before has a solitary pluck on a violin string sounded more horrifying.
Leave it to the French conscious to reveal to us history that most people ignore today, or pretend that never happened. This film is a little known masterpiece in factual cinema.
Summary of The Specialist - Portrait of a Modern Criminal
When Adolph Eichmann was brought to trial in Israel in 1961, the event was broadcast live under the direction of documentarian Leo Hurwitz. That footage, over 500 hours of it, has been locked away in the decades since. Eyal Sivan, inspired by Hannah Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, received permission to dig through the footage for a concentrated portrait of the trial and the man. The balding, middle-aged Eichmann looks as scary as an accountant as he snaps to attention for every question, answering with a "Yawohl" before reading from records or repeating his mantra: "I had to obey... I was a soldier." Painting himself as nothing but a bureaucrat with a ruthless efficiency ("I does not mean Eichmann," he claims, trying to distance himself from the odious orders he signed), the only emotion he exhibits is a terrifying pride in his meticulous service: "I was never reprimanded," he offers by way of explanation. Though Sivan compiled this film from documentary recordings, he finds some haunting images: the reflection of newel footage on the glass cage that protects Eichmann as he blankly watches the record of atrocities, the concentration camp tattoo on the arm that reaches into frame to play evidence from a tape recorder, the bland, emotionless face of Eichmann that dominates the film. Far from an "objective" record of the event, The Specialist indeed captures the "banality of evil" in Eichmann, and that's genuinely frightening. --Sean AxmakerArt House & International DVD Video
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