Given its subject matter, you might expect writer/director James Vanderbilt's Nuremberg to be another awards bait snoozer, the sort of film schoolkids will be forced to sit through when their History teacher wants to catch up on correcting homework. But Vanderbilt is the screenwriter responsible for David Fincher's Zodiac, arguably the best movie based on real events to come out of Hollywood this century. By narrowing his focus on two men, Vanderbilt has crafted a riveting film that grounds a global spectacle in the brief relationship between these two figures.
The two men in question are Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) and Reichsmarshall Hermann Goring (Russell Crowe). An army psychiatrist, Kelley is tasked with determining if Goring and the other 21 captured high-ranking Nazis are mentally fit to stand trial. Kelley has other motives. He hopes to get a book out of the experience, and he has a professional curiosity as to whether he might find something that distinguishes these German men from the rest of us. Kelley's superiors want to know everything he learns about the Nazis, so they might use such information against them in the forthcoming trial. As a doctor, Kelley finds himself torn between his duty to his patients and his allegiance to humanity.
When cast as villains, good actors will always tell you they play the role as if they consider themselves the hero, or at least that they try to find some humanity in the character. That's certainly the case not just with Crowe's portrayal of one of the most evil men who ever lived, but with how Vanderbilt has written Goring. The truth of the matter is that you don't convince an entire nation to help you commit mass slaughter without possessing a degree of charisma, and as the bastard no doubt did in real life, Crowe's Goring has charm in spades.
At one point Kelley angrily mocks Goring as just "a fat man in a tiny cell," but this outburst comes only after the shrink has allowed the Nazi to get under his skin for weeks. As played by Crowe, Goring is charming and avuncular, and you can easily imagine infants climbing across his belly as he sleeps off a Sunday roast. His demeanour towards Kelley is that of a store Santa asking a ruddy-faced boy what he wants for Christmas. He has a wife who loves him, and a daughter for whom he is simply "Papa."
Kelley is so manipulated by Goring that he secretly tracks down his wife and daughter and exchanges communications between them. He teaches the Nazi magic tricks, and Goring seems to regress to childhood as he watches Kelley's sleight of hand. But it's Goring who is the real magician, and like all good illusionists he's a master in the art of distraction. Kelley becomes so won over by Goring that he almost seems to forget which side he's on. We begin to wonder if Kelley were German and had encountered Goring a decade earlier, would he have followed him into battle? Crowe is so dazzling that we might ask the same question of ourselves.
The film isn't solely focussed on Kelley and Goring. We also spend much time with Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon). As the instigator of the trials, Jackson is convinced that putting these men on trial rather than simply executing them upon capture is the right thing to do, a way to show the world that the allies were the good guys. But Jackson isn't sure of himself. He worries that if he gets it wrong Goring and his colleagues will use the trial to spread their philosophy. It's a debate we see continue today, when the hosts of podcasts and chat shows are regularly lambasted for platforming people with hateful views. One of the things that makes Nuremberg so interesting is its exploration of the idea that simply knowing you're in the right doesn't mean you can win an argument. Good people don't really think all that much about why they're good, but bad people think a lot about why they're considered bad, which makes them far more prepared for debates.
Jackson finds his work complicated by the fact that the allies aren't simply the good guys, but rather the lesser of two evils. He worries that the Nazis might be aware that Britain was preparing to invade Norway before Germany beat them to it, and that they will use this knowledge in their defence. When the Pope refuses to give his blessing to the trial, Jackson reminds him that the Vatican was the first world power to legitimise Hitler. At an opportune moment, Goring calls out the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is the rare WWII film that doesn't proffer a simplistic good vs evil narrative.
But for all their crimes, the allied forces ultimately pale when compared to the Nazis, and we're starkly reminded of this when the trial commences and footage of the death camps is unspooled. It's at this moment that Kelly realises he's been played by Goring. Or has he? Did Goring trick Kelly into becoming something close to a friend for that brief time, or was there a genuine affection between these two men? Nuremberg reminds us that the Nazis weren't the cartoon villains that they've so often been portrayed as in the media, and that they only became monsters when people allowed them.
Directed by: James Vanderbilt
Starring: Rami Malek, Russell Crowe, Michael Shannon, Richard E. Grant, Leo Woodall, John Slattery, Mark O'Brien, Colin Hanks
