Film
Based on the book “History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier”, Denial follows the story of the book’s author Deborah E. Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz – The Light Between Oceans, Oz The Great And Powerful), acclaimed writer and historian and her legal battle against David Irving (Timothy Spall – Alice Through the Looking Glass), a renowned holocaust denier, who sues her for libel. Deborah must prove, in a court of law, that the holocaust did indeed occur. A fact we all know, but is not so easy to prove at it would seem.
Denial is a story that evokes plenty of thought. Not only to the ghastly events that took place during the dark years of the second world war, but what took place in the years and decades after. How an entire race had to find themselves, and how a large group still seek to take away from that and deny that one of the worst evils in human history did not take place.
As the court case proceeds, and Deborah’s legal team put forward their defence, one is forced to take a moment, and wonder how one would approach such a situation, if in her very tenuous position. The team seek out evidence, but so much was destroyed by the Nazis; records, buildings, lives, and yet no forensic investigation was ever conducted.
The ensemble cast deliver stellar performances, with the story keeping pace with the revelations and legal duelling, both in and out of the court room. The viewer is invited to confront the good and bad in mankind, and how our actions ripple through communities and the lives of others.
Denial is a completely engrossing film, dealing masterfully with a very sensitive subject. It is certainly one to add the one list of films to see.
Disc
Overall, the disc is of a decent quality, with a really good main feature. There is no additional material on the disc, apart from the film though.
Denial is available now, to purchase on disc, in South Africa.
Video
Video for the main feature is encoded at a high average bitrate, with no visible artefacts on screen. There is no colour bleed, and a decent amount of detail is maintained in darker scenes.
There are some compression artefacts visible during the autoplay trailers at the beginning of the disc, but this shouldn’t be of too much concern to any viewer.
Audio
Audio is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 with a 2.0 downmix, and encoded at a high average bitrate. Sound is clear via the centre channel, with the weight of the sound carried via the front channels. There is little use of the surround channels, but this is likely due to the nature and genre of the story.
Navigation
Navigation is simple, with a static main menu, and options for chapter selection and audio.
The chapter selection sub-menus each contain four motion, colour thumbnails. These are numbered, but not labelled, leaving some guesswork when wanting to navigation to a specific section of the main feature.
The audio sub-menu contains options to select between 5.1 and 2.0 soundtracks.
Bonus Features
There are no bonus features on the disc, apart from trailers for Jackie, Beyond the River, and Die Rebellie van Lafras Verwy. These can be skipped or fast-forwarded, but can not be accessed again via the main menu.
