Michael Neuenschwander in A Forgotten Man

A FORGOTTEN MAN
Directed by Laurent Nègre
Certificate: 15
☆☆☆☆

JOURNALIST Hannah Arendt covered the trial of Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann in 1961. Her reportage holds its power today.

She sought to understand something that makes no sense: how could once seemingly civilised, enlightened people and institutes allow the Holocaust to happen?

She coined the phrase “the banality of evil” in reference to Eichmann’s horrific crimes and how they were carried out.

As sociologist Richard Sennett wrote: “Arendt’s generation could put numbers to the fear of self-destruction, numbers so large as to numb the mind. At least 70 million people perished in wars, concentration camps and gulags in the the first 50 years of the 20th century.

“In Arendt’s view, these numbers represent the compound scientific blindness and bureaucratic power – bureaucrats just minded to get the job done, embodied for her by the Nazi death-camp organiser Eichmann.”

This tragedy about a Swiss diplomat at the end of the Second World War considers a damning question about witnessing great evil and not acting. Director Laurent Negre puts an individual’s ethics on trial and as Arednt did with Eichmann, identifies the banality of evil.

We meet Heinrich Zwygart (Michael Neuenschwander) burning confidential papers in bombed out Berlin. He is alive and is heading back to his diplomat’s house in the Alps. He could have had a worse war.

A family reunion is warm, his wife Clara (Manuela Biedermann) has kept the home fires burning, while daughter Helene (Clea Eden) is keen for her father to give his blessings to her relationship with Nicolas (Yann Philipona). Back in peaceful Berne, Zwygart thinks he can wriggle himself a seat on Switzerland’s ruling Federal Council.

But the sheen disappears, first in the domestic sphere and then on a deeper level.

He is troubled by past decisions, Switzerland’s neutrality and close trading relationship with Nazi Germany means Zwygart cannot have clean hands, so he tries to create a sense of moral ambiguity. And then he discovers his daughters new beau has come under his roof with an agenda that isn’t romantic.

As Zwygart looks to protect his interests, he comes up against the same RealPolitik that saw him collaborate with mass murderers.

Shot in black and white with an Alpine clarity fundamentally missing from the protagonists, this is a captivating tragedy with a moral question at its heart.