I remember Holocaust denier David Irving being barred entry to Australia when I was in primary school and I was visiting Auschwitz last year when I learned denying the Holocaust is illegal in Poland (and many other countries, apparently), so I was interested to catch this dramatisation of the 1996 courtcase that Irving brought against writer Deborah Esther Lipstadt, whom Irving claimed defamed him, to think more about matters of historical truth, historical revisionism, historical denial and freedom of speech and to see how these issues are handled legally, but the movie presents such stuff in only a very minor, not very gripping small-screen way and like Wilkinson's defence lawyer, resists giving Timothy Spall's Irving time or even a look in the face, instead focusing on the go-nowhere character foibles and dull personal details of the defence team as a means of padding out the story, when in fact far more fascinating would have been finally letting Irving in, finally letting him speak, and finally allowing viewers like me to stare hard at him to understand how he came to be such a vexatious denier and why Wilkinson's defence lawyer, the Australian Government, and the world censors his patently obvious lies.
★★☆☆☆
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