June Zero: The Eichmann Trial and Execution in Three Takes
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B-
The philosopher Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase “the banality of evil” was coined during her reporting on the 1961 trial in Jerusalem of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, one of architects of Hitler’s Final Solution. Eichman, she wrote, was not a sociopath but a “terribly and terrifyingly normal” functionary in a totalitarian state.
In the historical drama June Zero, Jake Paltrow — son of writer-director Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner and brother of Gwyneth — connects the banal lives of three ordinary Israelis during that epochal event. The trial, which lasted from April to December, put accounts of the Nazi atrocities on television sets and front pages of the world for the first time.
Co-written with Israeli writer-director Tom Shoval, mostly in Hebrew, and shot on 16mm in muted vintage tones and rich period detail, June Zero offers a picture of the fledgling Israel made up of mostly recent immigrants, united by a fascination with the trial, but divided by ethnicity, class, and different histories.
The first, and framing story, focuses on rascally 13-year-old David (Koby Aderet), a Libyan-Jewish adolescent and petty thief whose Arab-speaking father pulls him out of school to work in an oven factory, where he’s small enough to crawl into the ovens to clean them.
His boss is a virulently anti-Arabic former paramilitary soldier, though after initial friction, he bonds with the dark-skinned David. One day, David overhears his boss talking to another man about a special commission. They are to use the single-use oven to cremate Eichmann’s corpse after his hanging. The ashes would then be tossed into the sea to avoid any memorial grave marker. Late in the film, we see a tabloid headline reporting his hanging, dated “June 0” to avoid commemorating the event.
A second storyline concerns an anxious Moroccan-Jewish prison guard Haim (Yoav Levi), assigned to Eichmann’s jail to protect him from any European Jew who might want to exact personal vengeance. Haim, the victim of a recent accident, hallucinates a concentration camp tattoo on the arm of a barber, sent to trim the prisoner’s hair. Eichmann, known as “the client” is seen only partially, in blurry closeups or from an angle, while Haim hovers around him like a mother hen.
While each of these two scenarios offer some opportunities for black humour, the third story, set in Poland, is both didactic and emotionally naked. Holocaust survivor Micha (Tom Hagi) — based on the real-life investigator for the prosecution, Michael Goldman-Gilad — leads tour groups around a Polish ghetto.
As a teen, he was whipped to unconsciousness by a Nazi soldier before being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the tour, Micha is challenged by Ada (Joy Rieger), an American working for the Jewish Agency for Israel, who questions turning pain into a business and a psychological trap. Micha responds that the memory is as much a part of him as the numbers inked on his arm, leaving her in tearful agreement.
Paltrow’s characters are based on real people and circumstances which adds weight to the story but the emphasis on the rascally boy and the grisly business of the custom-made oven feels misguided, an attempt to sell a forbidding subject for a wide audience.
Ultimately, June Zero becomes another half-successful attempt in a long line of films about the Holocaust without staring directly into the blinding darkness.
June Zero. Directed by Jake Paltrow. Screenplay by Jake Paltrow and Tom Shoval. Starring Noam Ovadia, Tzahi Grad, Yoav Levi, Tom Hagi, and Joy Rieger. In theatres July 5 in Toronto (Varsity), July 12 in Vancouver and in other cities throughout the summer.