Telling a story set in the past can be a great way to talk about the present. “Nuremberg” does this. Director screenwriter James Vanderbilt‘s historical drama should be impossible to watch without thinking about the genocides, wars, and state repressions happening all over the world, and whether those responsible will ever be held accountable.
If you’re reading this review on the day it was published, you’re likely aware of the latest atrocities, including the kidnapping and detainment without trial of US citizens as well as immigrants by agents of the state. You’ll think about these crimes again while watching “Nuremberg,” because that sort of thing is discussed at length—along with human rights violations, war crimes, and the process by which the state’s dehumanization of certain classes of citizen leads to mass death.
The title refers to the city where representatives of four Allied nations that teamed up to defeat Nazi Germany gathered to try Nazi leaders. Concepts of international law and rules of war had been evolving for thousands of years by then. But the concept of “crimes against humanity” hadn’t been codified. Nor had the idea that a nation did not have to have signed a treaty to be bound by international practices. That framing of Nuremberg was controversial. There was consensus that the Nazi leadership (and perhaps Nazis further down the ranks as well) should be put against a wall and shot, because that’s what usually happened to leaders of country defeated in a war, and it was faster and cheaper. It would also prevent architects of the first mechanized genocide from trying to use media coverage of the event (including radio broadcasts) to spread their ideas more widely.
“Nuremberg” is based on The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, a nonfiction book by Jack El-Hai about the relationship between Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), the highest-ranking surviving Nazi at Nuremberg, and American psychiatrist Jack Kelley (Rami Malek), who was brought to Nuremberg to evaluate imprisoned Nazi leaders and determine if they were fit to stand trial. As Smithsonian Magazine put it, Kelley wanted to “dissect evil” by determining “whether members of the Nazi high command shared a psychiatric condition that led them to commit unspeakable atrocities, the Holocaust chief among them.” He also got involved because there was an idealistic postwar push to make sure the people who had overseen the murder of millions were held responsible for their actions. Kelley also hoped he’d get a bestselling book out of the experience, so his motives weren’t entirely pure.
The movie begins with Göring’s arrest and gets us into the story by following the efforts of Supreme Court associate justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) to convince President Harry Truman’s administration to try the Nazis and devise a process for doing it. The strange relationship between Kelley and Göring forms the spine of the story. The film rarely strays far from Kelley and Göring, who are locked in a duel of intellects and egos.
Both lead performances are exceptional, with Malek communicating Kelley’s internal struggles largely though his reactions while talking to other characters; and Crowe showing us why he’s one of the last great movie stars as well as a brilliant actor, settling into the high-powered character actor phase of his career as if it were a ratty old Barcalounger with a drink holder in each armrest. Like Gene Hackman in his very best ’80s and ’90s performances, Crowe has such a regular-guy energy that on those rare occasions when Göring is thwarted or disappointed and we get a glimpse of his capacity for overwhelming violence, it somehow comes as an unsetting surprise within the context of a scene, even though we know the man’s a killer.
Malek got flack for his Oscar-winning performance as Freddy Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” not without justification. But he’d already proved he had the stuff to be an offbeat leading man in the satirical thriller “Mr. Robot,” which succeeded mainly because of his ability connect with viewers’ emotions. His work as Kelley is the best he’s done in a feature film. He plays Kelley as a smart, charismatic, charming guy who’s a bit of a heel, but doesn’t quite realize how much of a heel he is.
Malek’s excellence as a screen listener is foregrounded in all the scenes where he tries to bond with Göring by providing a rapt audience for his monologues and anecdotes and bringing letters to and from Göring’s family, which is in hiding. But he gets in over his head rather quickly and doesn’t realize it because of his own self-regard. Ethically, he’s shaky. His stance that doctor-patient confidentiality should apply even in a military prison was never that strong, and it crumbles when he’s asked to personally provide accounts of each session so that Jackson can have an advantage when Göring is on the stand. (They already have access to his written reports, they say—so what’s the big deal?)
Göring corrupts Kelley further by flattering him into thinking his empathetic brilliance is what caused Göring to divulge personal secrets, when it’s really just another instance of a charming sociopath playing a medical professional as deftly as Richard Strauss conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra during the war (and as deftly as the Nazis played Strauss). Vanderbilt, whose breakthrough assignment was the adapted script for David Fincher’s “Zodiac,” once again shows his ability to use humor to lighten grim subject matter without seeming disrespectful. Steven Spielberg does this in all of his historical dramas, including “Schindler’s List,” as did Stanley Kubrick. Sometimes the sheer absurdity of an awful situation demands a bit of humor so as not to seem dishonest or tediously preachy. There are many chilling early scenes where Göring regards the psychiatrist with an expression that really does seem disarmed and trusting but is more akin to a skilled butcher looking at a cow and imagining dotted lines on a cut chart.
Göring and Kelley’s interactions stand in for different ways of thinking about war, genocide, international law, and the ethics of psychiatry, as well the more generalized responsibility to make correct moral decisions even under threat of death. The scenes also show the allure of eloquent but savage men, who rise to positions of influence by knowing how to manipulate people and can apply the skill to any situation, including a session with a prison psychiatrist. Göring also has aspects of Satan as con artist, breaching his target’s moral defenses by going off on funny tangents and indulging in whataboutism. When Kelley confronts Göring in his cell about claiming not to know that prisoners in detainment or relocation camps were being systematically executed, he changes the subject with, “You think American bullies and bombs might kill [civilian] people? You vaporize 150,000 Japanese at the touch of a button, and you presume to stand in judgment of me for war crimes?”
Putting sense in the mouth of the devil is a risky move for a storyteller. But Göring is right about a lot here, and a cursory glance at today’s news shows how easy it is to pull new generations into fascism, the very thing that the Nuremberg architects wanted to prevent. But the many callouts to non-German war crimes—including the Allied carpet bombing of German cities—are defensible here because the film is a rhetorical Trojan Horse of sorts, smuggling barbed observations about contemporary evil and the possibility of holding it to account into a story set so long ago that only a handful of witnesses remain.
There are a lot of secondary characters and events, and the film is written, directed and acted with wit and craft, though not always the level of thoroughness one might want. At two hours and twenty minutes, the movie can’t deal with every issue it raises (such as the fragility of the psychiatrist’s confidentiality oath). Some important characters get sketches instead of full portraits, such as the British counsel David Maxwell Fife (Richard E. Grant), who both complicates and helps Jackson’s cause; Nuremberg commandant Burton C. Andrus (John Slattery), who is reduced to the sort of character John Slattery often plays (unsentimental, cynical, funny); and the 21 other Nazi defendants, including Rudolph Hess (Andreas Pietschmann), the deputy führer who flew a stolen plane to Scotland in 1941, spent the next four years locked in the Tower of London, tried to wriggle out of punishment by faking amnesia, and sat next to Göring during the trial.
This is a foursquare, earnest, unpretentious Oscar Movie that wants to be seen by everyone, including those who have no idea what happened at Nuremberg, and that consequently doesn’t try to be too complex or arty. It wants to educate and inspire as well as entertain, and isn’t shy about those ambitions. But it’s very effective at making a case for specific contemporary outcomes while seeming as if it’s just showing you a dramatization of history. At one point, a character tells us that it “happened here” because “the people made it happen, because they didn’t stand up until it was too late.” He’s talking about Germany, among other places.
