Nuremberg Review
Nuremberg will be released in theaters on Nov. 7.
We’re apparently going to be making films about World War II for a very long time. Not just because it’s one of the most pivotal events of the 20th century, one which affected the trajectory of virtually every nation on the planet, and not just because creatives are still finding new angles from which to dramatize the conflict to this day. No, we’re going to keep making films about World War II in part because the fear remains not that we may slip back into another recreation of its horror, but that we never truly reckoned with it. That is the main thrust of Nuremberg, a competent if not quite exemplary historical drama that posits the reason we can’t let go of our fascination with the war is because we never let go of the kinds of prejudices and attitudes that brought it about in the first place.
Directed and written by James Vanderbilt, Nuremberg opens a few days after Hitler’s death in 1945. Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), President of the Reichstag for the Nazi regime and Hitler’s second-in-command, surrenders to the U.S. Army in the opening scene. From there, he and 21 other Nazi officials are taken to Nuremberg, Germany, where American Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) intends to try them for war crimes. We are then introduced to Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), a psychiatrist assigned to maintaining the mental health of the prisoners before the trial, but who is mostly there to write a hopefully lucrative book about the experience and maybe charm a beautiful woman or two with some slick talk and card tricks.
So begins Nuremberg, less a movie about the trial itself (although the trial is featured in the back half) so much as it is about the push and pull between Kelley and Göring, who develop a strange bond as Kelley tries to understand what makes Göring tick. The film places the burden of its moral dilemmas on Kelley, who has to weigh his own ambitions and growing fascination with Göring against the altruism espoused by Leo Woodall’s Sergeant Howie Triest, the translator assigned to help Kelley, and also pressure from Jackson to break doctor-patient confidentiality by providing information on Göring’s legal defense strategy to the Allied prosecutors. At the same time, Kelley’s attempts to get deeper in with Göring lead him to becoming the man’s main connection with the outside world, including his wife and daughter, whose treatment by U.S. forces later in the film reminds Kelley that his country is not above the tactics used by their enemies.
When approaching these story threads with the gravity they deserve, Nuremberg is mostly successful as a drama. But the movie doesn’t make the best first impression, with the opening act littered with ill-conceived jokes and dialogue that veers a bit too close to contemporary irony. Not that movies about heavy subject matter can’t have the occasional dose of humor in them (there is one particular location switch in Nuremberg that is both an excellent bit of editing and the best gag in the film), but the film’s early reliance on levity comes off like the filmmakers are worried modern audiences won’t pay attention to a historical epic if they aren’t coaxed into it with treats. It’s a creative choice that betrays the film’s dramatic intentions and hurts its narrative credibility, but it’s a tendency the film thankfully moves away from as it heads into its later acts.
What helps keep the movie above water is a deep bench of solid actors. Crowe strikes exactly the right tone for Göring, played as something between Hannibal Lecter and Crowe’s own take on Dr. Jekyll from the 2017 Mummy movie. That sounds cartoonish, and it sometimes is, but Crowe keeps Göring compelling even when teetering on the edge of caricature, never letting us forget that beneath the smiles and occasional antics lies a sharp analytical mind who oversaw numerous crimes against humanity. Vanderbilt fills his supporting roles with a strong collection of names, including Shannon, John Slattery, and Richard E. Grant, all of whom prove to be as dependable as ever. Special mention has to go to Woodall, who gets one of the film’s best scenes at a train station late in the film that serves to cement Nuremberg’s emotional core.
The question mark is Malek, who is not bad in the film so much as slightly outclassed by the group surrounding him. His facial expressions and line deliveries don’t always match the tone of a given scene, with many of the aforementioned moments of “contemporary irony” falling on his shoulders. He sometimes can’t help but feel like a man from a 21st century movie airdropped into the 1940s. It’s not a dealbreaker by any means, but his performance and the writing of his character (the fact that he’s also a magician is seemingly only there to provide a Chekhov’s skill for Göring to learn in time for the finale) doesn’t always work in tandem with the film’s dramatic aims. But he does serve as Vanderbilt’s mouthpiece at the end, where the filmmaker plainly states that the Nazis were not a unique type of evil, but instead proponents of the exact kind of ideologies that can and have suited imperial interests in nations all over the world.
It’s not a new concept, and I would argue that Stanley Kramer’s excellent 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg was a better take on both that idea and the trials at large, but Vanderbilt’s film is a worthwhile watch all the same.
