Unlike previous films about high-stakes trials, Vanderbilt’s film is not a courtroom drama, but a psychological thriller based on Jack El-Hay’s nonfiction book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.” “Nuremberg” focuses on an interview between Goring (Crowe) – commander in chief of the Luftwaffe and the second most powerful man in the Reich, behind only Hitler – and Army psychologist Lt. Col. Douglas Kelly (Malek), who must determine whether the Nazi leader is mentally fit to stand trial.
Kelly is young, ambitious, and attracted to the nature of evil.
“What if we could analyze evil?” He asks in advance. “What makes Germans different from us?”
Spoiler alert: not much.
In his book, “22 Cells in Nuremberg,” Kelly concluded that the Nazis on trial, including Goring, were ordinary men – ambitious and cruelly narcissistic, perhaps, but not psychopaths – and warned that the capacity for Nazi-level evil is not uniquely German, but exists in every society, including America.
This is the core of Vanderbilt’s argument, the existential warning that pulses through “Nuremberg.”
The Nuremberg trials began 80 years ago
The Nuremberg Trials were held from November 20, 1945, to October 1, 1946, when the Allies prosecuted 22 of the top surviving Nazi leaders, as well as six German organizations.
It is 80 years since the Nuremberg Tribunal established the principles of international law – along with the concept – if not always the reality – that crimes against humanity will not go unpunished.
But the memory of that moment has faded, as have the lessons learned from World War II and the genocide. The slogans, symbols, and ideology of Nazism are back with a vengeance, adopted by the far right across Europe, the United States, and beyond. The plea of “never again” seems more urgent than ever.
A film that reminds audiences that we’ve been down this path before, and know where it leads, feels like a worthy endeavor.
But the impact of “Nuremberg” rings strangely hollow. It’s a piece of glossy entertainment that’s more show than test.
A polished production that clashes with the horrors it depicts
The subject matter of “Nuremberg” hasn’t lost its urgency, but Vanderbilt’s film feels old-fashioned in the worst way — an iconic picture that sidesteps, rather than confronts, its own conclusions.
Vanderbilt’s Goring is never an ordinary man who is demonized, but is always larger than life. How could he be otherwise, played by Russell “Gladiator” Crowe?
The acting in “Nuremberg” is nevertheless superb – Crowe especially, as the coarse, shrewd Goring, whose every joke and aside is calculated for strategic effect. The confrontation is intensely staged in the interrogation room and the courtroom. The production design is as sophisticated as you’d expect from a prestigious Hollywood release.
But the film’s brilliance is rivaled by the horror it depicts. The director sets out to make a film about moral calculation, but makes a film about performance: for Goring’s court, for the actors’ camera, for Hollywood’s conscience.
At one key point, prosecutors present concentration camp footage; Vanderbilt chooses to show actual images. But rather than grounding the film in seriousness, the scenes of mutilated, mutilated, emaciated bodies only emphasize how gentrified and artificial everything around them seems.
It’s the opposite effect of Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning “The Zone of Interest,” whose simple, ethereal staging — shot in natural light, at a distance, with no score — amplifies the simple monstrosity of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss.
Implications of the Nuremberg trials
The spectacle at the center of “Nuremberg” rings even more hollow given the state of international law. In the end, we have to celebrate the triumph of justice, yet the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the successor to Nuremberg, has done nothing to stop the modern atrocities taking place in Ukraine and Gaza.
There have been several films and documentaries made about the Nuremberg trials, including Stanley Kramer’s 1961 classic, “Judgment at Nuremberg”, starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich and Maximilian Schell. The film was nominated for 11 Oscars and won two, and was selected for preservation by the US Library of Congress in 2013 as “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”.
Kramer’s “Judgment at Nuremberg” endured because of his desire to implicate not only the Germans, but also the watching spectators.
That’s what’s missing in “Nuremberg”: Vanderbilt points to that danger – “What makes them different from us?” – but retreats into the safety of period decorum. The result is a film about evil that’s handled with such care that it can’t get its hands dirty.
In the end, “Nuremberg” fails not because of a lack of craft but because of a lack of conviction. The questions it raises about accountability, collusion and the fragility of international justice could not be more serious. Yet for all its sparkle and strength, the film never quite holds the court. It recreates history without actually calculating it.
Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier
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