It’s criminal that ‘Nuremberg’ isn’t better than it is
You must hand it to writer-director James Vanderbilt for using his handsomely mounted post-war drama, “Nuremberg,” as a timely reminder of how easy it is for fascists to charm even the most upright of men. But the message nearly gets lost amid all the busyness of a production attempting to do too much.
The heart of the story, culled from Jack El-Hai’s 2013 book, “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist,” is the budding relationship between imprisoned German war criminal Hermann Gӧring and the American shrink assigned to determine if Hitler’s second in command was mentally fit to go before the unprecedented Nuremberg Tribunal. And if Vanderbilt had limited his film to just that, we might be talking about multiple Oscar nominations.
But Vanderbilt insists on going bigger, folding in the politics and preparation surrounding the Allied command’s desire to use Gӧring’s day in court to prove he and his underlings were deserving of the death penalty. A cynic like Rami Malek’s American psychoanalyst, Douglas Kelley, would declare the exhibition as nothing more than an elaborate PR stunt. After all, they were going to hang the lot of them anyway. The trials were just a means of justifying their trip to the gallows.
It is through that mindset that Kelley does what he’s told in this dog-and-pony show. What he, and to a degree, we, don’t expect is to discover Gӧring’s warped humanity. As played by Russell Crowe, Gӧring is indeed oddly personable, a doting dad and loyal husband who emits an erudite air. And you almost want to believe him when he insists that he knew nothing about Hitler’s death camps. Kelley certainly wants to invest in what Gӧring is selling, going so far as to help the Reichsmarschall pass notes back and forth between him and his wife (Wrenn Schmidt) and daughter (Fleur Bremmer), housed not far from the makeshift Allied prison.
Crowe is excellent at selling Gӧring’s outward sincerity, but for how long will Kelley buy into it? It’s almost as fascinating as the opportunity to probe the mind of a cunning narcissist. Is Gӧring, as his prosecutors allege, a cold-blooded killer? Or, is he merely just misunderstood, as Kelley seems to believe? Does it even matter?
In the opinions of Chief U.S. prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon), British barrister Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (Richard E. Grant), and prison warden Col. Burton Andrus (John Slattery), Gӧring is a drug-addicted, pathological liar hoping to snow his way out of being hanged. Vanderbilt pretty much limits all three to shallow “types,” a Greek chorus, if you will, to remind us this is a ruthless animal every time Kelley and we are tempted to take Gӧring at his word.
As such, they are more of a deterrence than useful cogs in the execution of a movie that spends far too much time revisiting the nuts and bolts of the trials that Stanley Kramer so ably depicted in his 1961 classic, “Judgment at Nuremberg.” This film’s slick production values suggest Vanderbilt, best known for scripting the sensational “Zodiac” for David Fincher, spared no expense in replicating the venue, the clothes and vehicles of the era.
Where he errs is in missing the power and impact of the cat-and-mouse game being waged by Kelley and Gӧring. That’s what we want to see. But every time you find yourself captivated by their exchanges, Vanderbilt cuts away to reveal such frivolities as the construction of the courtroom and innocuous conversations between Jackson and his minions on how best to present their “show.”
What saves it are the first-rate performances by a compassionate, but naive, Malek, and Crowe’s charismatic devil incarnate. Yes, Crowe’s accent is iffy, falling somewhere between German and French, but this is the most intense acting he’s done in ages. How could Vanderbilt overlook such a valuable asset and not exploit it? He should have seen the power in the dynamics between his two Oscar-winning stars and let them have at it, leaving the incidentals for us to glean through Kramer’s masterpiece.
Vanderbilt does, however, display sound judgment by aping Kramer’s controversial decision to weave in actual footage of the death camps at trial. What you see moves you to tears, as you’re reminded of the levels of depravity humans are capable of when they’ve lost their moral compass. The idea, of course, is to remind us that the world today is frighteningly close to repeating the savagery of the Third Reich. Will people heed the film’s not-so-subtle call? One can only hope.
Movie review
Nuremberg
Rated: PG-13 for strong, disturbing images from the Holocaust, some language, violent content, smoking, brief drug content, suicide
Cast: Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon, John Slattery, Leo Woodall, Richard E. Grant, Colin Hanks, Wrenn Schmidt and Lydia Peckham
Director: James Vanderbilt
Writer: James Vanderbilt
Runtime: 148 minutes
Where: In theaters Nov. 7
Grade: B-
