“Our memory reaches back through recorded history. The book of memory still lies open. And you here now are the hand that holds the pen.

“If you succeed, for the first time in our history we will judge our executioner.”

With these words, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion sends the special Mossad unit off on its mission to Buenos Aires, to capture the Architect of the Final Solution and retrieve him to Israel to face justice, or at least as much justice as this world has to offer.  It is an arresting, energizing moment in Operation Finale, Oscar Isaac’s film treatment of one of the Mossad’s early high-profile successes, and a defining moment itself in Jewish history.

The quote is especially apt, as much of the criticism of the movie revolves, wittingly or not, around the distinction between history and memory, and blurring that distinction in the name of art and commerce.  Some of these compromises are valid.  Others are unfortunate because unnecessary; the real operation had plenty of tension in real life.

There are more recent accounts, but Isser Harel’s The House on Garibaldi Street still captures most of the key operational details, as well as its flavor and atmosphere.  In it, the then-head of the Mossad recounts the tip that led to the investigation, as well as the operational difficulties of working in a country far from home with a language barrier.  Harel, for instance, ran the operation from diners, on a rotation known to the operatives, where they would meet and pass messages.  The movie shows this briefly, but misses an amusing and potentially fatal error – the cafes that Harel had a “back room,” but by Argentinian custom, that room was almost exclusively used by women, making him stand out like a sore thumb and forcing a change in technique.

Also amusing was the difficulty that the team had in obtaining reliable transportation.  Car after car broke down or had tire problems, or some other mechanical issue.  They couldn’t rent or buy an expensive car for fear of attracting attention, so they were stuck with a series of lemons that might fail them at any moment, up to and including the decisive drive to the airport.  Instead, we just see a lot of greenbacks changing hands for a couple of local cars.

There were multiple safe houses, with compromises made in choosing each one.  There were questions about the safety of the route to the airport, and the possibility of using a shipping container was discussed, but during the operation as a backup, not in the initial planning as shown.  And there was considerable concern about the diplomatic fallout with Argentina, all of which was justified by later events.

Isaac chooses to forego all of this real-life drama for what amount to three major historical compromises.  First, El Al, which loaned the plane to Mossad, didn’t require a signed statement by Eichmann that he was going of his own free will.  Second, there was no last-minute frenzied escape at the airport, hotly pursued by Nazi-infested Argentine police.  Third, and related Graciela Sirota was not tortured in an effort to discover their location.  To varying degrees, these historical compromises serve memory.  They also, to varying degrees, do a disservice to the movie.

The conceit that El Al required Eichmann to sign a statement in order to permit the Mossad to transport him sets up an interrogation thread after Eichmann’s capture and removal to the safe house.  Strictly historically, the Israelis who were charged with babysitting Eichmann did suffer psychologically from having to deal with him, and did end up slowly bending the strict minimum-contact rules that were initially imposed.  Those were the result of 10 days in close contact, not a need to extract a statement.  But the narrative thread serves another purpose, essentially moving Eichmann’s eventual defense from the trial into the safe house.  To that extent, it’s perfectly good filmmaking.  The memory of what Eichmann claimed remains the same, the story line is just compressed.

The other two compromises – offshoots of one invention, actually – are less defensible.  The Israelis expected that Eichmann’s family would be loath to go to the police with a missing persons complaint, precisely because his presence in Argentina was under an assumed name.  Giving a plausible reason for his kidnapping would mean blowing his cover. But it also means that while there was a surreptitious low-level search, there were none of the resources available that a full police investigation would have had.  No close calls with people staring in windows, no mad dash to the airport after a hair-breadth escape, no police chasing down the airplane as it took off.  This is pure cinematic dramatic invention, when drama would have been better-served by honing in on the operational issues.

The last incident – the torture of Graciela Sirota – happened, but the movie places it in the context of the chase.  In fact, Miss Sirota was tortured and left with a swastika tattoo in June 1962, after Eichmann’s execution.  It was part of a larger antisemitic backlash against the local Jewish community, and both its occurrence and the police indifference to it prompted a broad reaction in Argentinian society, isolating the antisemitic elements, and forcing the government to take action against the groups responsible.  This is all chronicled in “The Eichmann Kidnapping: Its Effects on Argentine-Israeli Relations and the Local Jewish Community,” Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 7, No., 3, Spring-Summer 2001.  So in this case, even the memory is somewhat garbled.

If the reader has made it this far, he probably thinks I didn’t much like the film, but I did.  The character development is first-rate.  The head-butting between Eichmann and Oscar Issac’s Malkin fulfills Israel’s promise to let Eichmann have his say.  For those who don’t know better, one form of suspense about the outcome is as good as another.  So the movie is good, as a movie.  In its important parts, it’s even pretty good as memory.  But it could have been better at both those things, and still better as history.