Several Hollywood movies have been released in recent months that seem to serve as neon-arrow warnings to the American public. Superman warned of a tech genius using his influence and wealth to grab power. One Battle After Another highlighted the fight against the government grabbing, detaining, and deporting immigrants. And now Nuremberg reminds us of a time when an authoritarian regime used it’s power to eliminate millions of undesirables, and was put to trial for their crimes against humanity. They all seem to serve as a warning, but are audiences listening?
When World War II ended in Europe in 1945, the Allies naturally wanted to punish Hitler’s Reich for its wartime atrocities, especially the slaughter of the millions of Jews and others who were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. But Hitler was dead, as were several of his top henchmen, including Joseph Goebbels. Astonishingly, however, Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command, surrendered to the Americans. Along with Rudolf Hess and a handful of other senior Nazi officials, the Allies decided to stage an unprecedented international trial: putting the men’s atrocities on full display and giving them due process before convicting and executing them.
The problem with this tactic, as shown in Nuremberg, Göring was a very smart, charismatic man.
Much of the film focuses on Göring (played with girth and unnerving charm by Russell Crowe) and the American psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), who is tasked with understanding what turns a man into a genocidal monster. Kelley spends hours, days, and weeks talking with Göring, gaining his trust and, in a way, his friendship. Kelley seems almost dazzled in the Nazi’s presence. Göring’s charisma and cunning make him disarmingly engaging. Showing a Nazi magic tricks to amuse his daughter was probably never on Kelley’s to-do list, but he becomes so comfortable with Göring that he discreetly passes letters between the prisoner and his family in hiding.
Meanwhile, Michael Shannon plays Robert Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court justice with the conviction that not only can he run a joint tribunal with the cooperation of the Brits, the French, and the Russians, but that it can be deemed fair despite the lack of precedent and established international law. There is some background to the wrangling as Jackson and others figure out how to do this, but once the trial begins, it’s clear that Göring has no intention of going down easily.
Because the movie emphasizes the lead-up and Kelley’s sessions with Göring, by the time the trial starts it feels as if the entire courtroom spectacle lasts about a week. Göring gets space to showboat, the prosecution screens shocking footage of the camps, Jackson fumbles through supposedly damning documents, and the British prosecutor Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe (a woefully underused Richard E. Grant) swoops in to bring it home. If it were only so easy!
In reality, the Nuremberg trials lasted more than 200 days. Somehow, this telling feels both bloated (at two and a half hours) and wildly truncated compared to the real events. Granted, tackling such a massive topic in any real depth would likely require a multi-episode series, but Nuremberg plays like a Cliff Notes version of history—a procedural centered on an earnest, somewhat naïve psychiatrist, a determined and stalwart lawyer, and a charming, Hannibal Lecter–like villain smart enough to manipulate them all.
With its A-list cast, Nuremberg is certainly an entertaining (if that’s the right word) and watchable take on this pivotal moment in modern history. It’s important, if only for shedding light on Douglas Kelley’s overlooked role in the proceedings, but anyone seeking real depth or detail about the tribunal will need to piece together that information elsewhere.
