Nuremberg

dir: James Vanderbilt

2025

When you openly say, or admit in public, that a flick is terrible and misguided, and it’s about one of the worst chapters in human history, and it includes archival footage of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, you can sound like a terrible person yourself. You could sound like you’re trying to minimise those atrocities, or imply they never happened or shouldn’t be emphasised or repeated, because of whatever dumb and dishonest reasons; or you could sound like one of those precious people who think making movies like this trivialises the true terribleness of what humans have done in the name of ideology, idiotic cruelty or callous indifference.

I am none of the above. I think film is the only medium that can capture certain ideas, certain magnitudes, certain scales. But I think some films made with the best of intentions, perhaps, can still severely miss the mark.

This film is about, I’m not making this up, an American associate justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Robert H Jackson (Michael Shannon) who wishes to have a legitimate trial in order to convict some of the most senior Nazi leaders captured after the end of the war before they’re executed. And he wants the trial to be conducted at Nuremberg with judges from the US, UK, France and the Soviet Union, because of the rallies that Hitler held, because of the Nuremberg laws that were passed to make the extermination of the Jews seem legal, and because it would be a warning to all other nations that if they do something like what the Nazis did, they will be held to account under international law.

That all sounds legit, doesn’t it? Well, what if I told you that no-one behind this production had any confidence that audiences would give a fuck about any of that, so they end up framing the plot as a so called psychological cat and mouse game between an American psychiatrist, Dr Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) and one of the worst humans to ever live until Trump came along, being Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (Sir Russell Ira Crowe)? Would you still make the mistake, like I did, of sitting down to watch this, this monstrosity?

You probably wouldn’t, you’re smarter than that. Rami Malek… Rami Malek – it’s hard to say when Rami Malek has been miscast in something, because he is such a very odd fellow. Sometimes his oddfellowness is appropriate for a role, like with the tv series Mr Robot, which he suited to a tee. I thought he did great as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody as well. But other times I watch what he does in a role, and I can’t hardly believe what I’m watching, and I’m not sure if it’s the actor’s fault, the director’s fault, the script’s fault or the casting agent’s fault.

Maybe it’s all of them. It’s certainly not Rusty’s fault. Crowe is, as you would expect, phenomenal as this hulking monster. He’s charming, engaging, effusive, highly perceptive, all that bullshit, but it’s the reptilian eyes beneath all of that bluster that chills you. As he rattles off convenient excuses and dodges for all that he is accused of and couldn’t possibly have known about, you almost find it convincing. He couldn’t possibly have known anything about the extermination of the Jews, communists, gays, Romani etc. He was too busy eating, drinking and fucking, enjoying life, rolling around in stolen art like a pig in filth, living the goodest of good lives with his beloved wife and child.

Surely someone this charming, this erudite, couldn’t have coldly and calculatedly seen about the construction of 1200 plus extermination camps, and the planned deaths of millions? What does a signature on a piece of paper mean anyway? Important people sign lots of documents, they don’t have time to read them all, do they?

This film pretends like the outcome, of whether these jerks will be found guilty by this tribunal is somehow up in the air, as in, that the actions taken by the psychiatrist and the judge could result in a verdict of guilty OR not guilty for Göring and his ilk. Dear reader: the outcome was never in question. Much of the manufactured tension comes across as completely unbelievable bullshit. Justice Jackson asks Kelley to give him whatever info from his sessions with Göring that he can in order to make the guilty verdict outcome more certain. Kelley behaves like someone has offered him $20 for a handjob; shocked, SHOCKED that someone has asked him to betray doctor / client privacy.

It’s so not credible. When the flick puts forward that, as a way of granting legitimacy to this uncertain course of action, to forestall the legal arguments that one could make regarding the accused, the services of psychiatrists are engaged in order to confirm whether Göring et al are all compos mentis, of sound mind, in full position of their senses etc. It has long been held in most civil societies that an accused person can only be held accountable for committing a crime if they are capable of mens rea, capable of forming the intention in their mind to commit a crime, in conjunction with actus reus, actually committing the crime.

How does this all apply to the worst of the worst crimes; genocide, the forced relocation / systemic extermination of people, cultural annihilation? You know, like in Gaza? Well, in theory, a crazy person who committed those crimes, crazy as defined by a mental health professional, wouldn’t be found guilty, necessarily.

But in this case, there was never any question of whether Göring was going to be found guilty, as one of the senior-most leaders both in the Nazi party and the military and the political apparatus of the Third Reich.

So this flick takes that fig leaf of legalistic arse-covering, and turns it into this: Kelley, who is ever so smart, matches wits with a monster of Göring’s calibre, with the outcome being will he be found guilty or not? Kelley initial purpose is to get enough material for a book, so it’s either money or prestige that he’s grubbing for. But, but, is he getting too close to his subject? Has he been seduced by the charisma of a man who would seduce the devil himself? Does spending time with Göring’s wife and daughter humanise the Nazis so much so that Kelley starts to side, if not identify with them?

Is this a crossing of the line akin to when Truman Capote got way too close to at least one of his subjects, in the pursuit of the killer material (on those dastardly killers) for his bestselling book In Cold Blood?? Did he get close to Göring’s family, not just because he wanted to get closer to the man, but because he craved what he had – a loving wife, a lovely daughter?

What is this fuckery? I didn’t even have to look it up to see that none of this ever happened. You don’t have to tell me anything about dramatic or creative licence – I don’t want a story to be accurate and boring over dramatic and engaging, I’m very much for all of that. But taking something as complex and vast as trying to bring some semblance of justice to a set of proceedings like this, with the intention of sending a message to the world that such war atrocities like what the Nazis (and the Japanese military) perpetrated would no longer be tolerated or even enjoyed by the international community, is too important to be reduced to scenes where there is dialogue as facile as “Did you just blackmail the Pope?”, with the response being “I don’t want to talk about” is some pretty piss-weak stuff.

Either the worst dialogue or the worst delivery of the dialogue is brought to us by the Kelley character. Very little of what he does, good or bad, really makes a lot of sense or feels psychologically credible, and a lot of it feels like the actor felt like he wasn’t getting enough dramatic stuff with which to overact and maybe score another Oscar nomination and so petulantly demanded re-writes.

No, bad Rami. Not with this flick. His hysterical character enters and exits Göring’s cell with a freedom and frequency that seems insane, all because he can’t seem to believe that he’s who they know he is.

There is no matching of wits, this is no Holmes versus Moriarty, no conflict of equals bullshit. Crowe has his measure and dominates every scene. And when I say dominates, he doesn’t even have to raise his voice. He delivers every line of dialogue, no matter how anachronistic or banal, with both casualness and conviction, casually tossed off, and he’s never less than believable.

Kelley pings off of every other character like a pinball, acting like someone’s whose hair is on fire on the deck of the Titanic, with his character doing so many things to make it seem like he’s a rebel who’s playing by his own rules, which gets him into trouble with the authorities blah blah and then he has a crisis of conscience (after getting drunk and spilling military secrets to a journalist) and decides whether he’s going to betray Göring’s confidence and give Jackson the insight he needs to break him on the stand, or not.

Decisions, decisions. I looked it up to make sure none of that happened, which none of it did, up to and including him being kicked out of the army or even being at the trial, and then I found out this chap Kelley, after doing an initial interview / assessment, never spent any further time with Göring whatsoever, and I thought “this nonsense is broken.”

The artificiality of it all – they make it look like the trial took a couple of days (it took 11 months), with much of it involving the playing of movies made to document the aftermath of the atrocities committed at the many and various camps, the mountains of bodies, the emaciation of the living and the dead when the camps were liberated. That is impossible to criticise, or make light of. We get, or at least we’re meant to get that for many of them in the court this is the first time they’ve seen these images, and they’re undeniable, awful, despairing, terrifying, gutting, sickening etc etc.

They’re meant to inspire, not a desire for revenge, but for justice. A resolve to stop this happening again (unless it’s by allies or in countries without precious mineral resources, in which cases fill yer boots, dictators!). It’s also a reminder that a documentary about it would have been far more meaningful than this (although this got seen by far more eyeballs, so, there’s that in its favour).

But that’s the only part that feels real (because it is). Almost everything else, especially this vital trial, feels like the screenwriter assumes people are too stupid to grasp why what Germany did was uniquely terrible, and why it was important to do everything possible to stop it from happening again. And there are the lines and moments that are clearly trying to warn Americans not to let this happen in their fair United States, because of their terrible orange emperor. But c’mon, his supporters aren’t reading books or watching movies – they’re watching Youtube videos and listening to podcasts by chaps with prosthetic chins and beef jerky complexions: they ain’t got time for art!

And yet we know so many of them fall prey to the same impulses that the average German fell prey to when they voted for a fascist who promised to punish an enemy who never did a single thing to any of them, except now they’re applauding when unarmed citizens are shot in the face or disappeared, because they’re the ‘wrong’ kind of American.

A flick like this might make you despair for humanity (because of how shoddily it is put together), but it is at least a horrifying reminder that too many people want to bring back this kind of nightmare, would actively vote for someone who would take away their right to vote, all to appease the dark whispers in their heart of hearts.

5 times I was sure Russell Crowe was going to eat Rami Malek before the film ended out of 10

“Do you know why it happened here? Because people let it happen.” – wow, what tremendous insight, tell me more - Nuremberg.

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3816146969/