Late on James Vanderbilt’s “Nuremberg” (a counterfeit title, but still better than the book film is based on, the chewy “Nazi and psychiatrist”), we finally come to the necessary. Most people who hear the word ‘Nuremberg“These days – but really not allA problem that the film will try to fight with-oundly imagine the German city where 1945 and 1946-attempts by some of the Nazis’ highest ranked leaders took place. These attempts were Living brought life to Stanley Kramer’s classic from 1961 “Judgment at Nürnberg,” Which particularly included real images of the Nazi concentration camps to illustrate some of the horror committed by the accused (and of course later convicted).
Vanderbilt is trying the same thing In the last act of his film. As with Kramer’s film, the images stop almost time, astonishing and frightening and outrageous, because the courtroom and its many inhabitants try to process what they see. It is the darkest moment in a movie that should not have to split liberally from its predecessor to make its mark, and yet do just that, repeatedly and in many ways.
In both emotion and form, “Nürnberg” is either classic or hard, depending on the stomach for such films. Everything is necessary. None of it is new. If there are people who still need to be convinced that the Holocaust did In fact, and, tragically, yes, that seems to be the case today – pieces of “Nuremberg” can strike back their evil misunderstandings. But when trying to sell the idea that what happened during World War II is fast Above all, the historical tragedy itself is forgotten. That the film is so deeply rooted in reminding people of the dangers of politicizing hatred is a cruel irony; By doing this about today we lose the potent lessons yesterday.
Based on Jack El-Hai’s Book 2013 and with a script of Vanderbilt, the film opens with Punchy Promise. It’s spring 1945. Hitler is dead. The war is, in many respects (but decisive, not everything), over. Hermann Göring (a deeply invested Russell Crowe)-the highest ranked German military official of all time, a man so powerful in the Nazi party that he was given the title ReichsmarschallA designation that was created completely for him and made him superior to every German military officer – has been arrested. And he, along with two dozen or such great Nazi players, has been thrown into a secret military prison because the Allies decide what they will do with them.
The US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (a restrained yet powerful Michael Shannon) has an idea: a trial, a court, where the Allies will gather to try to judge the Nazis. Jackson’s idea (the movie is not trying to make the trial completely His concept, but comes fucking close) does not have much legal precedence, but he is convinced that it is the only way to not only punish these evil, but makes them such Pariahs that Germany would not dare to rise again (just as they had after the First World War and their own type of punishment). At the same time as Jackson and his team prepare the trial, the Army sends psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) to enter the prisoners’ mind before being tested.
But Kelley is approaching the task with a two -time plan: he would eventually write a book about what he discovers about his patients (like Göring, the good doctor was, in the heart, quite ambitious), one that will help everyone “dissect evil” so that we can fight against it better. But while Jackson and Kelley should feel in line with their goals, “Nürnberg” holds them far apart and in battle, instead turns attention to the growing band between Kelley and Göring.
The fact that Kelley and Göring becomes something that friends are crucial to the entire driving force in the film and Kelley’s possible results-there is nothing in themselves different with these evil men, and they can even be able to swing good men to their side through charming scraps and shared experience-but it is delivered in the most clear way possible. There is no cat-and-mouse here. There are few surprises. Kelley goes all-in too early (just a stage-stalking Leo Woodall, as an American solid with a secret, gives the appropriate level of doubt to the couple’s exchanges). Early victories for Kelley (Ah ha, Göring do Understand English!) Go nowhere.
Instead, we look at the two men chatter and bicker and play games both the head and the variety of the board and wait for something – something – to change between them. When Jackson and his team gather a case and the courtroom just meters from the war criminal cells, “Nürnberg” tries to build their own arguments (the courtroom and cells, it must be noted, look fantastic thanks to production designer Eve Stewart). It is never clear what they are. Göring is charming? Kelley is a Stoge? The Nazi leaders knew nothing? Did they know everything? These are complicated things? It is, and it is not, but “Nürnberg” never really finds that line.
When Kelley starts visiting Göring’s wife and daughter, getting cozy, learning Göring’s sweet kiddo magical kids and ferry messages back and forth to start, things get really sticky. What exactly Kelley gets out of this? We are long past the DOC claim with transition for information – and how stupid to assume that either man was stupid enough to ever forget the real power dynamics in their interactions – and so these visits seem to exist simply for discomfort.
The fact that the real Kelley married during this period is never mentioned (Kelley is in many ways completely unconscious for us). That he might have missed his own wife (with whom he would continue to have three children) and wanted some temporary domestic amenities being never considered. Simple enough characterization, probably true, and yet completely skating here. Malek is quite good in the role, thin as it can be, which gives real curiosity and confusion to Kelley and portrays him as someone unsurpassable who really did not want to be.
Despite the film’s heavy nature, there is an odd row of peppiness to some of its procedures. There are some pages about Göring’s self-resolution that scan as funny (when he hands over to the military he just asks them to carry his luggage, hard-have) and sequences that only flow due to smooth overlap dialogue (“We will never get Russia on board!” cut down “Sir, Russia is on board!”). It is a small distraction before the necessary: to come to the trial, get to something closer to the truth, come to testimony and not laugh.
When Vanderbilt does not flush the same iconic, changing images that Kramer used decades ago, its strength feels different. We have seen everything before. We have to see it again. But in the space between these two statements, “Nürnberg” cannot find much new to say. Saying something old is really better than not saying anything at all, but how, on this Moment, can we still lean on the old words and the old ways? There must be something more. The future and the past require it.
Rating: C+
“Nuremberg” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2025. Sony Pictures Classics releases the film in theaters on Friday 7 November.
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