Last week, the United States booted a Nazi war crimes perpetrator from our shores. The timing is perfect, as Hollywood releases another opportunity for moviegoers to embark on another Nazi hunting mission in “Operation Finale.”
In the film, director Chris Weitz brings to life the true story of an Israeli Mossad team’s 1960 mission to extract German Nazi SS Officer Adolf Eichmann (played by Sir Ben Kingsley) from his home in Argentina, a known ratline for Nazi sympathizers after World War II. Oscar Isaac plays an embattled, impulsive Mossad agent named Peter Malkin, who joins a team tasked with capturing Eichmann. Other members of Malkin’s team include Rafi Eitan (Nick Kroll) and Hanna Elian (Melanie Laurent). The team lands in Argentina, establishes a series of safe houses with the charge of capturing Eichmann, sedating him, and escaping dressed as a flight crew to ensure that Eichmann stands trial for his crimes in Israel.
As a piece of cinema, what director Chris Weitz lacks in a coherent score and, at a few moments, a plodding first act, he makes up for with brilliant, tight shots that utilize light and color extraordinarily well and different from his other work to canonize a memorable piece of filmmaking. Oscar Isaac continues his ascension with an even, measured performance in “Operation Finale,” and Melanie Laurent suppresses her “Inglorious Bastards” thirst for killing Nazis to merely sedating one. Young actress Haley Lu Richardson turns in a notable performance as Sylvia Hermann.
Motifs throughout force viewers to face the transgressions of Nazism both from the perspective of the perpetrator as well as the victim. Eichmann, throughout the film, tirelessly tries to clean the inkblots off his sleeve from the pen that sent so many to their execution. Audiences witness tattoos emblazoned forever on the forearms of Jews that survived concentration camps. Weitz makes us see that the war ended, but the hurt was ongoing.
The real tension of the film comes from the negotiations between Eichmann and Malkin to secure Eichmann’s signature on a manifest, a prerequisite for the safe charter out of Argentina. These negotiations aim to highlight the humanity of one of Nazi Germany’s highest-ranking officers and the architect of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” the order for mass genocide of the Jews. Audiences may be familiar with the general Nazi excuse from the Nuremberg Trials: “Just following orders.” But this is more complex exploration, if only by a few degrees.
Kingsley’s performance delivers a deep dive on this exploration. During interviews about his role as Eichmann, Kingsley notes, “If we fictionalize the man as a monster baddie … then we relegate that horrendous portion of history to fiction.” Without grappling with the fact that Nazis were in fact humans and that humanity time and again has resolved to encapsulate those events as evil times while simultaneously repeating horrible anti-Semitic acts, we simply are “dismiss[ing] [Nazis] as an aberration of history” and thereby “letting history off the hook.” The film and Kingsley correctly comment on Nazism movies, which tend to cast Nazis as completely evil and those that kill Nazis as completely good, as if we have some obligation to do so. Eichmann, at one point, asks Malkin, “Did your hydrogen bomb ask the ages of its victims?”
For members of the team and the audience, “Operation Finale” weighs justice against vengeance. The film properly assesses the necessity of a trial in Israel over merely putting a bullet between Eichmann’s eyes. Malkin calls on Eichmann to tell his story, to expose his flawed humanity in front of the Jewish people to be judged and held accountable for his personal faults. While history knows how this story ends, the credits roll, and audience members are faced with the dilemma that we all experience when we get up close to another person and realize their flawed humanity.
As history bulldozes ahead, writing itself, “Operation Finale” reminds us of the old adage that if we don’t actively confront our history in all its faculties and apply its teachings, we are doomed to repeat our failings.
Tyler Grant (@The_Tyler_Grant) was a Fulbright Fellow to Taiwan. He studied international law at the University of Virginia’s School of Law and was a double major in Chinese and politics at Washington and Lee University.
