It must be a requirement of every middle school in the United States to offer a trip to Washington for its eighth grade students. For three days in the fall of 2008, 60 plus students from two middle schools in Prior Lake, Minnesota, including myself, traveled from museums to monuments and down the National Mall. I still vividly recall stepping through the doors of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I have always been oddly fascinated with World War II, but slowly ambling past a small-scale model of the gas chambers in Auschwitz and mounds of abandoned shoes sent chills up my spine and tears spilling down my face. I felt extreme amounts of horror, grief and confusion. How could this have happened?

The film Denial, based on History of Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier, recounts the tale of Deborah E. Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) and her legal battle against a man named David Irving (Timothy Spall). Lipstadt acknowledges Irving as a Holocaust denier in her book “Denying the Holocaust.” He, in turn, sued Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, for libel in 1996. The film focuses on the court proceedings in the context of English law rather than American law, as well as the challenge of proving the Holocaust happened without allowing survivors to testify. Putting either Lipstadt or survivors on the stand would have allowed for Irving, who served as his own lawyer, to victimize the defense.

On Nov. 7, I made my way over to one of my absolute favorite places in Omaha, FilmStreams at the Ruth Sokolof Theater, for free movie Monday. My friends and I had decided to see “Denial,” and I was very excited. But, though I would say I enjoyed the film, it did not fully meet my expectations. As I mentioned earlier, I am strangely captivated by the Holocaust and World War II, and I have read many books and seen many films regarding the events that ensued in the early/mid-1900s. From “Night” by Elie Wiesel to “The Book Thief” by Markuz Zusak to “The Pianist” directed by Roman Polanski to “Schindler’s List” directed by Steven Spielberg, I’m quite versed in Holocaust texts, if I do say so myself. But I have never seen a film that attempts to recall the Holocaust and the terror produced by the Third Reich in the modern era. And, I’m not sure how to interpret this one.

All in all, I wanted to feel emotionally pulled by the film, and I didn’t feel this way. I didn’t hate Irving enough. I didn’t love Lipstadt enough. I attempted to conjure up emotions within myself by recalling my visit to the museum in eighth grade, but this was the only way I got anything out of the film, which to me, proves the movie did not do its job. I detest not having a solid opinion about a piece of art, but this movie deserves a 3.5/5 at best. Not bad, but not great. Just somewhere in the middle.