I really liked this movie. I wouldn’t call it ‘enjoyable’ because it deals with such grave and terrible events, but it’s powerful and moving, and Russell Crowe does a terrific job of acting the part of Hermann Goering, one of 22 members of the German High Command who were brought to trial by the Allied powers in the aftermath of World War II, charged with crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and other wartime atrocities.
The movie tells the story of American army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley whose role was to assess the Germans’ mental state and fitness for trial. Kelley interviewed all 22 of the officers and wrote a book about it called 22 Cells in Nuremberg in which he put forth his pet theories about the nature of evil, but it was a flop. Kelley was a strange and difficult man. See below, and mind the spoiler alert, if you want to find out why.
In 2013 another book* came out specifically about Kelley’s interactions with Goering, the highest-ranking of the German officers on trial.** Goering had been Hitler’s Reichsmarshall and his 2nd in command. He was the smartest and coolest of them, a narcissist with a forceful personality and the ability to turn on the charm when it suited him.
This movie is based on that book. It compresses the timeline of the Nuremberg trials, which actually lasted from November 1945 to October 1946,***in order to focus on the ‘human interest’ story – the relationship between Kelley and Goering.
Rami Malek, who did such a wonderful job as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, is unconvincing in this. You’d have to read Kelley’s book to find out whether the character is as hyperactive and pushy as Malek makes him out to be, but I found him an annoying presence.
The critics I’ve read all agree that Russell Crowe’s performance as Goering is terrific – Oscar-worthy even. But some, including Stephen Romei of The Australian, say it doesn’t save the movie from coming across as too much like a high-school history lesson.
Rubbish! I found the history side very interesting, especially the business about how the Allies went about setting up the trials in the first place.
Such a thing had never been done before in human history. Previously the victors lorded it over the defeated side, collecting the spoils and wreaking whatever vengeance they wanted. Law didn’t come into it; there was no international law under which wartime atrocities such as occurred in the Nazi death camps could be prosecuted. Until Nuremberg.
Michael Shannon (last seen by me as Garfield in Netflix’s excellent Death By Lightning, about the 1881 assassination of US President James Garfield) plays Robert H Jackson, chief US prosecutor and the one who negotiated the Nuremberg charter, the legal document that set up the tribunal.
There were political as well as legal challenges: The Allies – the USA, Britain, France, and Russia – all had different legal systems. How to bring them all into the tent? Would the Russians even go along with it? (They did. A messenger enters Jackson’s office to say they’ve had a personal message from Stalin.)
There’s an interesting subplot about how he was angling for a permanent spot on the Supreme Court bench.****See below for spoiler on whether he succeeded.
His is one of the many personal stories told here that are true to history.
Another one, and it surprised me, is that Douglas Kelley really did befriend Goering’s wife Emmy and their daughter Edda. He smuggled letters back and forth for the family, a breach of the rules. The movie has it that this is what got him dismissed from Nuremberg, but Google research says this is inaccurate, that he left his position voluntarily, believing his work to be completed and anxious to start on his book.*****
The young German/Jewish/American gofer and translator Howie Triest was also a real character. His parents helped him flee Germany in 1937 but they went on to perish in Auschwitz.****** My friend who saw the movie with me and who’s a stickler for historical accuracy said if he came to America at the age of 17 he would have still had a German accent.
But this is a minor quibble, as is the ‘Hollywoodisation’ of the opening scene which depicts Goering’s capture. It shows Goering dramatically ripping some white lace off his daughter’s dress to wave out of his car window as a flag of surrender, when in reality his aides had contacted American forces to pre-arrange his surrender so he wouldn’t be captured by the Russians. In this case I feel the facts didn’t get in the way of a good story.
To the filmmaker’s credit they stuck to the truth by acknowledging the superior courtroom skills of the chief British prosecutor David Maxwell Fyfe, played here by Richard E Grant. He comes across as dull and uncharismatic compared to his American counterpart, but it was his cross-examination of Goering that helped clinch the guilty verdict. It’s a powerful scene.
At one stage Shannon’s character Jackson says ‘no pressure’, in that ironic modern way. I think this was a linguistic anachronism, and I also wondered whether they would have used the word ‘terrorism’ in the 1940s to describe political violence.
These quibbles aside, Nuremberg is a terrific movie and well worth seeing.
Below, find some extra historical detail but beware, there are spoilers.
* The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII, by Jack El-Hai.
** Many of the others were already dead – Hitler himself, Himmler, Goebbels, Heydrich – or had fled, such as Adolf Eichmann. Rudolf Hess had flown himself to Scotland in 1941, but was brought back to face trial at Nuremberg. He was one of seven to receive a prison sentence rather than the death penalty.
*** In 1947 there was a third trial specifically looking at the responsibility of German legal bureaucrats and judges in the Nazi war crimes. This was the issue at the heart of Stanley Kramer’s 1961 masterpiece Judgment at Nuremberg.
****I was barracking for him but he didn’t get it.
*****Kelley ended up committing suicide in 1958. Strangely, it was the same way Goering chose in his declared aim to avoid the hangman’s noose: by swallowing a cyanide capsule.
****** He was with the army when it liberated Buchenwald, and he lived on to bear witness to the Nazi atrocities, both at Nuremberg and in later documentaries. He lived till 2016.