Rachel Weisz, Timothy Spall, Andrew Scott
Starring Rachel Weisz and Timothy Spall, Denial tells the compelling story of the legal battle between Jewish American historian Deborah Lipstadt (Weisz) and notorious Holocaust denier David Irving (Spall). It’s adapted by David Hare from Lipstadt’s own book about the 1996 libel case brought by Irving against her in London, forcing her to prove the essential truth that the Holocaust occurred and creating a landmark legal precedent.
Denial is powered by performance, with Spall’s Irving a poisonous mix of insecurity and bravado, a man blinded by his own prejudice and amplified by bluster; while Weisz gives a nuanced turn as the impassioned Lipstadt, who finds herself representing an entire people in her quest to prove the truth, supported by her legal team (Andrew Scott and Tom Wilkinson).
It’s an essential tale for our ‘post-fact’ times – with obvious contemporary parallels to Brexit politics and Donald Trump’s mendacious presidential campaign – documenting a pleasing and necessary triumph of truth, reason and forensic fact over ignorance and prejudice.
