Nuremberg ★★

There have been many films and miniseries about the trials at Nuremberg, most notably the excellent 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg directed by Stanley Kramer. However, writer and director James Vanderbilt takes a unique approach with Nuremberg. Adapted from the novel The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai, it expectedly follows the trials though also follows the work of psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) who was brought in by the United States military to serve as the psychiatrist at Nuremberg prison. He was tasked with assessing the competency of the men set to stand trial, including Hitler’s second-in-command Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), and to prevent further Nazis dying from by suicide before they could stand trial. It also follows the effort of Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon) and the joint international effort he leads to bring these Nazis to trial and the role that Kelley’s psychiatric work played in ensuring that these men would pay for their crimes against humanity.

It is a fascinating and sturdy historical drama, at times a bit stodgy and a film that seems destined to play in history classes for years to come, benefitting considerably from its terrific cast. Malek plays a man who is cocky and arrogant when he first arrives, convinced he will be able to write a book all about how he was able to identify pure evil in humanity, only to have all of his hypotheses blow up in his face. The chemistry Malek shares with Crowe, especially, drives at what Nuremberg is after: these men are not so different from ourselves. The two become quite friendly and Kelley even visits Göring’s family (who were living in hiding after his surrender) on a few occasions, bringing letters between the imprisoned Nazi and his wife. Malek plays Kelley as a man who actually quite likes Göring, struggling with the cognitive dissonance that arises once footage of the Holocaust’s grave atrocities is played in court. How could this man who is so affable and charming be capable of committing such crimes? Crowe’s natural charisma works wonders for this role, as well as his ability to dive into the psychosis of this pompous and, as Kelley describes, “narcissistic” man. He carries himself with such a presence and aura that one cannot help but be awed. However, at his core he is a balance of a fragile self-image determined to thrust itself upon the world and a normal man who loves his wife and daughter, desperately hoping he can return to them one day. Michael Shannon and Richard E. Grant also impress as lead attorneys in the prosecution of the Nazis, while Leo Woodall gets a few standout moments as a young American soldier assigned to Kelley to serve as a translator. His scene at a train station where he recounts his own family history is rich with pathos and a raw emotion that gives Woodall a fantastic chance to demonstrate his ability.

However, Nuremberg falters. Its biggest issue is that it knows. It knows where this is going to end up. It knows what happened and it knows how Vanderbilt wishes to tie it to modern issues with the rise of fascism in the United States. Characters speak as if they have seen the future, talking not only in a very modern tongue but with a foresight and on topics that never quite arise naturally. A line in a late night library run about the “rumors” at what was really going on at the work camps is an apt example, a throwaway line that is a nudge to what is coming and feels stilted and awkward the second it is said. Nuremberg, throughout, is after creating moments that can be used as a clip online about “why we got here” with everything seeming to pause as a character delivers some powerful and poignant line summing everything up. They are speaking about Nuremberg and the Nazis, but the intention behind the line is always clear and feels disingenuous for the time and more indicative of a writer-director after creating powerful lines than a powerful film.

Elsewhere, it is didactic and obvious, heavy-handedly speaking about how the rise of fascism would happen in Germany and even closing on a post-war radio interview Kelley gives where he says it could happen in the United States because the Nazis were not dissimilar from Americans or any other nation’s people. The conclusions are right, but the film cannot help but just come out and say it, even as it already excelled in showing it without the further elaboration needed. Göring is a normal man. His backstory is even normal, having heard Hitler speak above a coffee shop about the power of Germany in 1922 and joining up with the Nazis immediately after. He is a man of unchecked ambition, unbothered about who he hurts in the process of advancing his own interests. He, as Kelley says, did not care whether the Jewish people were exterminated or not as long as his ambition was advanced. He was content to help stoke the hatred against them because it was beneficial to his political power, not because he legitimately hated them. He did not even consider them, outside of using them as a pawn. Nuremberg is capable of showing this, but it does not trust the audience, instead overwriting itself in the name of driving home its already clear points.

Vanderbilt’s overall focus on the script yields issues in other spots, especially the pacing. Nuremberg is not distractingly slow, but it does feel choppy at times as it struggles to condense its bifocal narrative into a cohesive film. It is torn between following the developments of the trial – from Jackson’s initial attempts to make it happen to it actually happening – and of Kelley’s work. It is guilty of having numerous scenes where characters sit around trying to figure out how they will ever pull something off, then in the next scene it is all set and they already pulled it off. There is no dramatic thrust and tension, just stiff recreation with no anticipation. Perhaps this being afforded more time – Nuremberg may be the rare film that would benefit from being a mini-series – would help it breathe more, but as it stands, it struggles to find a way through its large and ambitious story.

Nuremberg is a film about humanity. Psychologically, is someone who is evil and capable of the atrocities that the Nazi committed fundamentally different from any other person? Nuremberg is a smart and at times incisive film, one that refuses to simply “other” Nazis and instead portrays them as normal human beings. They have families. They have passions. Göring is excited to learn a magic trick he can show his little daughter. Göring and his fellow defendants are also culpable in the death of around 6 million people in concentration camps. Nuremberg impresses with this approach to the material, offering a human look at such monstrous acts. It is not out to portray the Nazis as simply evil, but rather as complex humans that resemble everyone else, having nothing exceptional about them psychologically that would foretell such acts. A terrific ensemble cast is a further asset, but an overwritten and didactic script never allows Nuremberg to breathe while a more seasoned directorial hand could have helped it find itself structurally. Instead, Nuremberg is crushed under the weight of its ambition, even as it has plenty to endorse and appreciate.