The movie “Denial” (Mick Jackson, 2017)
Drama / U.S., UK / Starring Rachel Weisz / 110 minutes

How do we prove “Earth is round” and “Elvis Presley died?” The film “Denial” (Mick Jackson, 2016) is a record of fighting against those who deny the “facts” shown in such sentences. How can we prove a fact so obvious that we don’t believe we need some evidence? The film shows an ethical way to prove historical facts through libel suit brought by a Holocaust denier against a historian. In 1994, an American historian Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) was sued for libel by Hitler researcher David Irving (Timothy Spall). The reasons behind the accusation were that Lipstadt defamed his reputation by calling him a falsifier of history in her book “Denying the Holocaust” (Penguin Books, 1993) and destroyed his livelihood, causing several publishers to reject his books. Since Irving filed a lawsuit in England where the onus of proof lies on the defendant rather than the plaintiff, it was up to Lipstadt to prove that Earth is round.   

The talking of negationists 

The argument of the Holocaust revisionist in “Denial” is typical. He finds tiny errors in the survivors’ memories or historical records and then drives them to the point of saying, “I have found this wrong, so everything that person has testified is erroneous.” Through minor distortions, he even changes the whole picture. We have already encountered such deniers through the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” issue. They bring the term “Chongshindae” into question and make arguments such as “They received military currency or money, so it corresponds to prostitution. The state has no responsibility.” The documentary “Target” (Shinji Nishijima, 2021), screened at the Busan International Film Festival in 2001, records the trial against negationists, which was filed by a former Asahi Shimbun reporter Takashi Uemura, who first reported the survival of the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” to Japan. Journalist Yoshiko Sakurai, one of Japan’s representing “Comfort Women” deniers, claims Uemura’s article is commensurate with a “distortion of facts.” In relation to Kim Hak-sun’s testimony put in Uemura’s article, Sakurai tries to undermine the credibility of the testimony by saying that the term “Chongshindae” refers to the mobilized female labor force, not “Comfort Women,” but that she falsely calls it “Chongshindae.” He even says that if the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” actually existed, it would be such an enormous crime that Japan must apologize. This type of nitpicking leads to a demand to “bring evidence,” a request to present documents issuing instructions for the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” or the Holocaust. The first scene of “Denial” also starts like that.

Irving interrupts Lipstadt’s book talk held at the university and offers USD 1,000 to anyone in the audience who can prove Hitler ordered the Holocaust, waving a bunch of money. As the audience rattles and titters, the security guard orders him to leave. The way of problem-posing that if there is no clear evidence, then the matter does not correspond to truth makes it seem as if the Holocaust denial were a historical interpretation. In a similar fashion, Irving presents himself as a scholar who challenges official history. He claims that since official history reflects only the mainstream viewpoint and excludes new, radical explanations, the narratives of the nonmainstream who have been self-taught like him are ignored. This effectively manipulates the public distrust of elitism. The rhetoric that there are things that scholars do not know, or that ordinary people can be more professional, attains considerable success. Even now, postings made by historical revisionists continue on one-person media channels including YouTube. They claim them as “historical facts” by embellishing them like they are novel and objective.

“Post-truth,” selected as the word of the year by the Oxford Dictionary in 2016, refers to “a situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts.” In this case, “post” is used to indicate the truth has faded. Rather than giving up their beliefs due to an uncomfortable truth, they prefer to challenge the truth.^[1] Those who deny historical facts such as the Holocaust or the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” choose the “alternative facts” for their beliefs. In “Denial,” David Irving denies the Holocaust to justify his affection for Hitler. That’s because without the Holocaust, Hitler would not be to blame. The same is true of the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” issue. The “patriotic” thought of having to affirm Japan’s history leads to the denial of “Comfort Women” and war crimes.

The speech of the survivors 

The deniers’ way of misleading the fact by magnifying the part is getting acute revolving around the testimony of survivors. What is the fastest and most obvious way to prove the existence of the Holocaust and the Japanese Military “Comfort Women?” The films “I Can Speak” (Kim Hyun-seok, 2017) and “Herstory” (Min Kyu-dong, 2018) set the testimony of the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” as the climax of the films. OK-bun (Na Mun-hui) of “I Can Speak” testifies in English at the U.S. Congress and sternly scolds Japanese officials, while Seo Gwi-sun (Moon Sook) of “Herstory” brings out her secret in court that she has been hiding all her life. The scene of testimony in which they reveal their victimization to the public sphere determines the outcome of the trial and represents the overwhelming manifestation of the survivors. However, in “Denial,” the defense decides that neither Lipstadt nor the Holocaust survivors should take the stand, even though the survivors clamored to testify and Lipstadt asked her legal team for their testimony several times. Why not listen to the survivors’ testimony? 

Lipstadt’s lawyer Julius (Andrew Scott) predicts that the survivors’ memories are not accurate, thereby causing them to be attacked by Irving in court. Even a small mistake would create historical deniers’ preferred scenes. Julius, who thinks he should prevent attacks in the form of interrogation in court such as “How much money have you made from testimony since 1945?”, demonstrates that the presence of ready listeners is a prerequisite for testimony. The victim’s testimony, taken for granted, can be excluded in order to keep the courtesy of the survivors: this is the ethics of the listener.

Ichiro Tomiyama, who studies the history of thought centered on East Asia, talks about the attitude of “us” listening to testimony. Stories placed in the context of “foreclosure” are not naturally told. Only with listeners ready to hear can the stories be uttered. 

That’s because we are already placed in a violent situation. “Our” language domain in itself, including the terminology of the academic world, continues to expose some people’s lives to danger, confirming “foreclosure” and furtively tolerating risks to their own lives.^[2]

The decision of the defense counsel not to bring the survivors to trial is an expression of their will not to expose the lives of the witnesses to listeners who “will not listen.” The moment they take the witness stand, it is the survivors, not Irving, who face the trial. It is the same situation as the Japanese historical negationists are attacking the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” witnesses. Until now, “our grandmothers” standing side by side with the Statue of Peace at the forefront of the movement represented the existence of the Japanese Military “Comfort Women.” However, how far have the survivors’ stories reached? We can put up the Statue of Peace and enumerate names including Kim Hak-sun and Kim Bok-dong, but how many people “have given ear” to the testimonies of the survivors?

“One Left” (Contemporary Literature, 2016) written by Kim Soom is a novel assuming that there is only one survivor of the Japanese Military “Comfort Women.” It contains the voices of those who are concerned that if the survivors who can testify disappear, their memories will also vanish. After the disappearance of survivors who can testify to the damage, it is expected that the negationism of the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” will intensify. Yet, wouldn’t the testimony have already been enough? Rather, aren’t too many testimonies keep rekindling the memories of suffering? What we need to ask from now on is whether we have been listening to the story properly and attentively. 

Who and How to Fight

In an early scene in “Denial,” Lipstadt stubbornly insists that she will never debate with Holocaust deniers. For Lipstadt, the Holocaust is a matter of fact, not opinion. But after the trial, Lipstadt shifts her ground, saying she needs to fight historical negation more aggressively. In her own TED Talk, she points out that Holocaust negationists are writing books, creating academic journals, and publishing them to turn lies into “opinions.” She convinces her audience that we must fight at this point in time against a situation in which they deliberately lie and blend facts with falsification to mislead the public.^[3] This is linked to the reaction of those who find the Holocaust story tiresome. In the movie, the girlfriend of a rookie lawyer asks how long we should grieve. What she meant by it is that we have heard enough stories about the Holocaust and death. Our society also has similar voices: the stories of the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” have been told profusely. But what have we heard? Only by starting to listen properly can we save ourselves from the errors that we think we already know. It’s time to reconsider whether we have been listening to survivors.