The script is nothing to write home about, largely adapted from the meeting transcripts.

The setting is fixed and fairly limited, painting a backdrop but only just, powerful men desiring comfort besieged by winter.

The acting is art beyond anything I’ve seen elsewhere, each character responds to the next, you see and are absorbed by the mundanity of the interactions, the basic dynamics of a corporate meeting, while the underlying impact screams in your brain.

They took the dry meeting notes (https://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/news/uploads/WanseeProtocols.pdf) and made a drama that shocks you with the ultimate banality of evil, exactly as imagined by Hannah Arendt.

This just came to me today, we all write our own narratives for what we do, and watching Heydrich, the ambitious patriot trying to clear the way for his country’s deserved greatness, the bureaucrats trying to slither amongst the politics, the soldiers merely looking for leadership, and the diplomats and lawyers merely trying to keep the blood off their cuffs.

Meanwhile, Eichmann takes his orders and follows them with the obedience and competence of a well-disciplined soldier…

  • Recreational Placebos
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    1 month ago

    This is one of the most chilling movies I’ve ever seen, and it’s basically just bureaucrats sitting around a table discussing policy. Is it still available on whatever streaming service HBO turned into, or did they axe it too?