Nuremberg (15)

In early May 1945, the upper echelons of the Nazi party are in disarray following the death of Adolf Hitler from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Fuhrer's bullish second-in-command, Hermann Goring, surrenders to American troops in Austria. Supreme Court associate justice Robert H Jackson is charged with identifying a legal framework within which Goring and other members of the Nazi regime can be legally tried for war crimes in front of an International Military Tribunal.

LondonNet Film Review

Nuremberg (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Based on Jack El-Hai’s non-fiction book The Nazi And The Psychiatrist, Nuremberg dramatises the mind games between Hitler’s second-in-command and an American shrink in the days leading up to the 1946 International Military Tribunal on German soil. “This city is about to become the greatest show on Earth,” a journalist (Lydia Peckham) excitedly observes as the eyes of the world turn to bomb-ravaged Nuremberg as a place where unspeakable acts committed during Europe’s darkest hours might be calmly exposed and guilty men brought to justice…

In early May 1945, the upper echelons of the Nazi party are in disarray following the death of Adolf Hitler from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Fuhrer’s bullish second-in-command, Hermann Goring (Russell Crowe), surrenders to American troops in Austria. Supreme Court associate justice Robert H Jackson (Michael Shannon) is charged with identifying a legal framework within which Goring and other members of the Nazi regime can be legally tried for war crimes in front of an International Military Tribunal. To ensure transparent co-operation between Allies, the tribunal will be presided over by four judges representing France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Brilliant American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) travels to Nuremberg, where the prisoners are being held. Sergeant Howie Triest (Leo Woodall) operates as his translator with Nazi party members who only speak German. Kelley becomes fascinated with Goring and the American gains his patient’s trust by delivering letters to Goring’s wife Emmy (Lotte Verbeek) and young daughter Edda (Fleur Bremmer). As the day of reckoning draws near, Jackson prepares to prosecute flanked by British former solicitor general David Maxwell Fyfe (Richard E Grant) and Goring makes a bold prediction: “I’m going to escape the hangman’s noose.”

Nuremberg reduces complex international diplomacy and political brinkmanship to a conventional courtroom drama anchored by a powerhouse performance by Crowe as the overweight figurehead of a party that ruthlessly targeted and exterminated an entire race as a euphemistic Final Solution. He twinkles with malevolence as Goring, firmly believing he is in control of his fate and eager to test the resolve of Malek’s wily student of human behaviour, who understands the importance of his role: anything less than total victory in the courtroom will be utter defeat.

Vanderbilt’s storytelling is linear and when prosecutors at the trial show filmed evidence of the concentration camps, the director shows us real archive photos and footage of the dead bodies of Holocaust victims and emaciated survivors barely clinging to life. It is the first and only time that Nuremberg brings home, with the force of a sledgehammer-blow to the solar plexus, the sickening reality of what transpired behind barbed wire and closed doors.

– Jo Planter