Cinema: Hannah Arendt

K and I watched Hannah Arendt as a birthday treat to him. It was a good story provoking its audiences to think beyond themselves.

I am quite charmed by the portrayal of Arendt's powerful character as a philosopher and her independent spirit as a woman.

Intriguingly enough, however, she also seems to be totally confident in her relationship to her husband, who apparently, to every one's knowledge, is having an affair with one of their common acquaintances. She is able to greet the mistress and to invite her to a house party. She appears to be immune to the disturbing (to the standard of the general public) reality of the affair as if her relationship to her husband has already assumed a Platonic form. They are each other's intellectual counterpart and therefore insusceptible to any worldly distractions. They can still love and respect each other even if the relationship might be tinted with a scandal of unfaithfulness.

Is it the power of intellect that has empowered her to stand against all these flaws in her emotional life? Does she also practise the belief that to love does not mean to possess? Does she feel powerful even if she is not possessive in love?