Heidegger is portrayed as the "fox" that Arendt thought he was in one of her journal entries. "Moral judgements" would perhaps be the single term that is utterly absent from Heidegger's works. This absence is all the more striking after listening to the Arendt character speak in the above clip. "Heidegger the Fox" is an eye-opener. And the film is extremely moving. It is amazing how the film portrays the intensity of Arendt's inner struggle in a visual way. Her English is beautiful, and her way of speaking German too.
Anna Karenina is a film which makes you want to talk about it so badly right after you've seen it.
Anna and Arendt form an interesting contrast. I sympathize immensely with Arendt. She is not jealous, yet she is not forgiving either. Forgiveness was the major mistake both Karenin and Vronsky made with respect to Anna. Anna did not destroy herself. Rather, she was destroyed because men forgave her. She was perhaps too perfect, and that perhaps explains why men were unable to demand anything of her. If somebody demanded her of something, if a Levin came along and told her to work with him in the fields, then Anna would have been transformed. Tolstoy's genius is to make a character like Karenin in order to bring out the extreme folly of forgiveness. I liked the ending of the film better than the novel; perhaps Tolstoy is a little too indulgent in his caricaturing of Karenin's character. His saintliness is disgusting, yes, but after his fall from society, perhaps he could have been given the chance of rebirth as well?
If Heinrich were actually cheating on Arendt, it still would not have mattered for her. This silent resolve is much superior to what de Beauvoir and Sartre had to perform in order to push the boundaries of the concept of love.
The side of Arendt as a Kantian also comes out very sharply in the film. The evil of Eichmann is not radical, because it is not based on the purity of Eichmann's will. The evil is rather based on particular interests, the "private use of reason," and so anybody would have replaced Eichmann and have done the same.
Nothing much in the way of drama or effects takes place in Hannah Arendt. Compared to this, Anna Karenina is restless. The train to Moscow is a toy train, then zoom! and Anna is sitting inside. The pace of the film is very fast and everything is so artificial, but then it is good because it brings out the artificiality of Tolstoy's characters. The film suggests strongly that the whole novel is anti-realist, at least on the surface. Which makes the novel even more interesting. It is no use trying to criticize Anna or Karenin or Vronsky or Oblonsky. In every human soul there is an Anna, a Vronsky, a Karenin, and so on. But the story does not suggest that therefore some kind of balance between them is possible. In the real world, or the world of Anna Karenina, a particular part of the soul does dominate and prevent the others from coming to the surface. Levin must win.
Another interesting contrast is that whereas Anna Karenina is a family story, Hanna Arendt is an anti-family film. If Arendt had a baby with Heidegger and another with Heinrich, things would have been totally different. Because she is a woman but not a mother, Arendt is able to sustain herself. In a way the film only evades the question of the family, but on the other hand, for those who are not Ekaterinas and Levins, perhaps this is the wiser path, rather than becoming an Oblonsky or a Karenin.
