The Adolph Eichmann trial represents different things to different people. A final survivalist triumph of the Jewish people? A win for the burgeoning state of Israel? A necessity human dignity? Or was it an excercise in scapegoatism? Or just an opportunity to present horrific facts and figures on a world stage? (the last one is my guess.) Hannah Arendt subtitled her “Eichmann in Jerusalem” account “A Report on the Banality of Evil.” And that’s what’s most striking in this film. The monster. . .literally in a cage. . .is a wormy, bald pencil pusher who looks like a cross between Alan Arkin and Adlai Stevenson. When he pipes up that all he knew of the trains were that they were headed to Poland and he had no idea everyone on board was going to be gassed — you actually believe him. He may just have been boring enough to consider his job, that of central hamster in the wheel of the Final Solution, as a punch-the-clock gig. A former low-level SS who’d been successfully “Denazified” testifies in the film, and he seems far more scary in the traditional sense. The filmmakers here (leave it to the French!) wisely skip all talking head narration. There isn’t even an introduction into Eichmann’s background or how he was captured. It isn’t just found footage, though. High modernist atonal music (this is 1961, after all), overlapping soundtracks and a well-placed digital effect here and there repackages the video footage as a ruminative tone poem. This is the Eichmann trial and all of its signifiers today. This should be playing nonstop in a loop in a room in the back of a museum somewhere. An art film in the strict sense. To watch this in the comfort of your own home kinda doesn’t make sense. There are also lengthy scenes that are boring as hell, which works wonders on a meta level.