Review

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playing: that he or she has been libeled, Lipstadt must prove that she didn’t libel him — in other words, that the Holocaust happened, and that Irving deliberately falsified evidence to suggest that it didn’t.

That shouldn’t be that hard, right? The Holocaust is widely accepted as fact. Then again, the Nazis were careful to cover their tracks when it came to systematic genocide.

Although there are survivors who can testify to what they endured, Lipstadt’s British legal team, led by solicitor Anthony Julius (Andrew Scott, providing a dose of wit) and barrister Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson, providing the gravitas), don’t want to put them on the stand. They won’t even put Lipstadt on the stand. Irving, who decides to argue his own case, intends to make a scene, they reason. So they opt to limit his opportunities for grandstanding and emotion. Although the brash and outspoken Lipstadt is horrified to be silenced, she also wants to win.

The case was undoubtedly an important one for the cause of intellectual honesty. Yet the stakes, at least as depicted in the film, feel curiously low.

More often than not, “Denial” feels clinical and overly careful. Hare’s screenplay is efficient at delivering facts, but just the facts. The movie may be competent at telling its story, but it’s missing one key ingredient: feeling.