Eichmann - Behind the Scenes
After his capture Adolf Eichmann (Vaidotas Martinaitis) is brought to trial with the whole thing to be televised. In charge of this production are television producer Milton Fruchtman (Martin Freeman) and his director Leo Hurwitz (Anthony LaPaglia) who has spent a decade in exile due to the Un-American Activities Committee blacklist. Whilst Fruchtman finds himself dealing with threatening phone calls he finds working with Hurwitz an issue due to him constantly having the cameras focus on Eichmann's face rather than anyone else in the courtroom and refusing to change his style to bring life to the production.
I am going to question why "The Eichmann Show" was made. That comes from someone who has watched two movies which covered the capture and then interrogation of Eichmann with both covering what the man did. But what I am questioning is what interest is there in the behind the scene issues which came with the televising of the court case? Is there interest in learning about how the walls were opened up in the courtroom to place cameras or that Fruchtman and Hurwitz locked horns on his focussing on Eichmann being emotionless to the drama in the courtroom and accounts of what he did. I guess what I am saying is that whilst the accounts of what happened are hard hitting the use of the court case and behind the scenes issues is not a good vessel for telling them.
Despite not warming to this concept of being behind the scenes as a production "The Eichmann Show" is good, it manages to do a decent job of recreating the courtroom and the interweaving of actual footage is effective. In fact acting wise through out is of a high standard with Martin Freeman doing a good job of bringing the conflict and fear of Fruchtman as he worries for his family's safety after he is threatened.
What this all boils down to is that "The Eichmann Show" didn't work for me as well as it has others and maybe that is down to having watched two previous movies about Eichmann. But for me the whole behind the scenes element with various conflicts didn't work well as a vessel for telling the Eichmann story even if it still achieved getting across the atrocities which happened and which he was involved with.
