Nuremberg
Almost like a post-truth Schindler’s List, Rami Malek plays an army psychiatrist Douglas M Kelley brought in to stop the inmates dying and to monitor their mental state. Only it turns out that prisoners are Nazi high command, defeated after World War Two and keep committing suicide rather than face up to what they’ve wrought on Germany and its people. Their American and British government and army captors decide the only way to deal with them, rather than summary shooting as the prisoners expect, is to bring them to trial. But how to do this, when the prisoners deny being guilty of the crime, or of even knowing the crime existed or was implemented at all? It’s someone else’s fault, never theirs.
Russell Crowe plays the corpulent but charming family man, Hermann Göring, who resolutely, even until his trial, refuses to recognise his culpability in implementing the concentration camp system and signing a death sentence against millions of mostly law-abiding, tax-paying civilians and veterans, because they represented a ‘type’. We see his vanity in wielding his ridiculous diamond encrusted baton and his love of uniforms; somehow he still manages to turn his prison clothes into a uniform looking suit and cause intrigue and fascination. He blames others (who are conveniently no longer alive), pines after the ‘good old days with Adolf’ and denies that the Final Solution was even that final, more a mass emigration programme, muddled in the administrative implementation by others. He has an inflated ego, sense of self and of his legacy — for at the same time, seeing this apparent admin mess, he didn’t once step in to sort things out, to bring ‘order’.
Determined to know who he’s dealing with, Kelley starts interviewing and testing the prisoners, starting with Göring, (having surrendered and newly arrived at the prison as a kind of celebrity). Worst of all, the prisoners can’t seem to cope with the death of their regime, still trying to make inappropriate Nazi greetings and salutes, and being reminded firmly that they really can’t, any more. Some also have the advantage in that they can speak or understand English, others need a translator, or like Hess refuse to speak or remember. Much of this situation (for both inmates and legal team( is trying to work out what’s real (to the inmates and in truth) and what are real or feigned behaviours and attitudes. Or slight of hand feints to conceal their real motives and agendas.
Because of the high drama, flouncing about and door slamming style of the movie, it’s hard to know what’s dramatised and what really happened (outside of the trials themselves. Certainly the dilemma of the legal team is true — who could they bring to justice, how deep should they go? Who was guilty and who merely ‘following orders’? Even holding the trial in bomb battered Nuremberg was a stance, for in Nuremberg it was where the whole Nazi nightmare began legally and in earnest. The original film footage we’re shown documenting the horror of the concentration camps, just after their liberation by Allied troops, highlights the indignity of the living skeleton inmates surviving amongst heaps of the skeletal dead. There are so many actual dead that they have to be bulldozed into pits to fight the spread of diseases, another final indignity. It’s the feet which get me every time — you can’t deny the essential individuality and humanness of a foot, though the Nazis tried. I couldn’t get over the human ribcages casually left smouldering in an oven — it’s the stuff of Grimms Brothers fairy tales, a night terror made real by these men (and women) and their hate (and by their administration).
The saddest thing is the wives and children of the leaders, many of whom continued to perpetuate the old ways even in defeat. Edda Göring, whom we encounter as a sweet affectionate child who adores her daddy in the movie and loves playing piano, went on to become a denier of the havoc and horror her father and his compatriots created, teetering into far right politics as a figurehead. Though most of the time she lived quietly with her mother (as we see here). Kelley is determined to prove to Edda and her mother that the victorious Allies are different to the former regime.
Whilst Göring is shown as a man who loves his wife and family in the movie, he spares no thought for the families and family lives he destroyed and annihilated. It’s through his translator, Sgt. Howie Triest (Leo Woodall), that Kelley learns the cost of the Nazi policies on people.
At the same time, director/writer James Vanderbilt, I appreciate, is trying to present the events to a generation who feel removed from black and white images, of events that happened to people 70–80 years ago; whose sufferings are recorded in broken fragments of buildings, overgrown pits and trenches, lost communities, very real life stories which sound fantastical (to this exposed Internet era) and repurposed property, still disputed and reclaimed decades later. And Dr Kelley is not the crusader (with a hero cape) to begin with that I really want him to be. Malek gives a very subtle performance, showing us someone managing their emotions through drinking, smoking, deep introspection and magic tricks.
The tone of the movie is the thing I have real issue with. On one hand it is trying to show us the men behind the monsters, that they were just men who behaved in evil ways towards other men (and women and children, and nations) and legalised it, falsely calling it all good. However, the tone can be so nuanced at points that we end up beyond the banality of evil, enraptured by the charismatic Göring and his lovely family. (Which is also the Allies’ worry about in bringing him to trial). At other points, the movie tries to overdramatise by having a dismissed Kelley pop up in his civvies for one last chat with Göring: I really can’t see this happening given how strict access was to the prisoners, or literally fighting with a fellow psychiatrist, (which is why he ends up in civvies). I’m sure friction existed along with personality and agenda clashes and rivalries, but the fist fight didn’t happen. Do we really need to be shown something like this to make us understand in-fighting and conflicting motives? (History usually has enough of its own drama — just look at the life of JFK, for example).
At the same time, the writer/director tries to oomph up the drama, (as if there weren’t enough already) by adding antagonism and discord, starchy stern prejudiced military stickler types, door slamming, misunderstanding and dismissal, as well as a cheeky good-looking journalist who equally charms information out of the gullible to get her story. Unfortunately, Kelley is the sap here who has to prove himself — and ultimately decide what to do with what he’s learnt through his research.
I found myself longing for judgement because of the historical weight of what these men had done, specifically to the Jewish people in the name of legalised anti-Semitism to extermination ends, even eradication. But, (like Kelley), the movie wants us to watch and listen — it’s only when we see the actual liberation footage and get into courtroom proceedings that we start to understand the full impact of what was wrought on the nations of the world in the name of policy — and in the service of the Führer. (And worse still, under testing and in conversation, these men are still happy to express it in some cases and judge everything through a skewed racial lens). For example, foul Streicher (Dieter Riesle) sees Jewish vaginas and presumably Aryan ones in the ink blots he’s shown. He also sees ‘Jewish’ professions and non-Jewish ones; it’s so warped, it almost feels unreal. All he needs is a tin hat and WIFI to create the same vile hysteria in modern times. Horribly, though Chaplin and lots of cheeky comics tried, rather than being laughed into obscurity and bad painting, they got entire nations, their leaders, their governments and their citizens to go along with this, (some with tremendous enthusiasm), enforced it as everyday Law, progress and policy, and used it to justify the murder and torture, the vanishing of millions, embedded it into everyday life — school, family, church, the look and layout of towns, cities and shopping districts, the railways and manufactories.
Partly in uncovering the stories of other political prisoners, the vile eugenics, and prisoners of conscience (as the movie shows, there were American POWs in concentration camps too) we’ve lost focus (much like on a palmed coin) on a whole national and political regime turning on its citizens and racialising the whole system, the whole of life, along blood lines. Startlingly, most people (ordinary, apparently reasonable people) went along with this, even agreeing with it as they turned in their friends, neighbours, workmates, partners and family members. It was an incredible rejection as ‘Jewish’ names were removed from war memorials, Jewish cemeteries were desecrated and synagogues burned, businesses vandalised by the state and then their poor owners forced to pay that same vicious state for the repairs and damage costs, citizens were even taxed for being ‘Jewish’, (just for existing). At the same time, the same state wouldn’t let its citizens leave without fleecing them of everything first — and even then, denied them visas, having taken everything away. You only have to look at the camps, in its weird economising of people into who could work and who couldn’t, who could stay alive to labour and who couldn’t, as living torturous and cruel medical experiments, and even in death, turning them into material parts — piles of suitcases, gold teeth, hair, clothing, belongings, shoes, art collections, abandoned homes, businesses and communities. The real liberation footage was heart-breaking. But I think in the teaching of the Holocaust, in banal ways, that bad people do bad things and let’s not let this happen again, we’ve lost this focus — of a whole people group being targeted (and irrationally), as it encompassed people who didn’t identify as culturally or religiously Jewish, and those who did but were proud patriots and veterans, those who were happily Orthodox and proud to wear religious symbols, and everyone in between according to the rewritten Law. Which is why the telling and recording of survivor stories (and the needed fight against AI fakery) is so vital to keep reminding us of the truth of these events. It’s the rescuing of the tattered living corpses onto stretchers which got me, the shock, gratitude and pity of it all, individuals reduced to a number on their arm or stomach and sucked of their vitality by a ruthless people driven system. Of children aged by the loss of everything which makes childhood safe and secure.
Get Cultures: Arts Reviews and Views by Susan Tailby’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Thankfully, the movie’s tone starts to shift as the legal team (American and British) start to wonder how to effectively prosecute the Nazi high command — and get them to confess on the stand, under oath, that they were murderers and knew what they were about.
Though we don’t see much of him, Hess (Andreas Pietschmann) is curious — promising peace if only we will sack Churchill and let Germany rule the world. Because there’s so much nuance, the army and the prosecutors come across as judgemental bigots, harsh. Which while brusque, isn’t fair when you consider that they’ve just won a war, what they’ve seen and who they’re dealing with. This isn’t a gang up (like Versailles) by the victors on the defeated — this is about how to prosecute war crimes for the first time. In showing the Nazis as very human, we aren’t given the same nuance for much of the military — who are thinly one dimensional.
Thankfully the real life footage and Sgt Triest’s family revelation bring us back to where we should be, and Kelley does save the day with his reports of the characters of the Nazi high command. Thankfully Richard E Grant’s Sir David Maxwell Fyfe fights back in the courtroom, pushing Göring’s pomposity-ometer with his fixation on his role and status, reminding him that he was still in role, still titled and active, as the concentration camp policies accelerated, the murdered numbers accelerated, and as the highest political role, still apparently didn’t know what was happening in the nation he was in charge of. Rather than giving Streicher some comeback as anticipated, Triest ends up helping horrible Streicher to his judicial execution. The man is deeply distressed, weeping and refusing to dress — in parent to child mode, Triest coaxes him into dressing and escorts him to the scaffold. It’s a horrible end, one of many, accompanied by the opening of heavy cell doors and the sounds of death, and yet much less terrible than the ones they forced onto millions of civilians.
Apart from the tone, the only thing which lets the production down is a technical error- we’ve been told that the Nazis can’t keep a chair against the walls of their cells. In every interview shot, Göring’s chair is very close to the wall. Maybe he was allowed to move it if his cell was being visited — it seems an inconsistent detail, given how the regulations were enforced. The film previously stressed the prisoner responses to being prisoners, to coming to trial, to dealing with the fact that they were facing the death penalty. The removal of shoelaces, no belts, cardboard desks which couldn’t take weight, no toilet seats…. and yet one still manages to commit suicide by creating a rope out of towel border.
I’d be interested to see Judgement at Nuremberg to see how this movie compares. What makes this movie stand out is the performances, not just Crowe, but Rami Malek as a great lead, John Slattery as Colonel Burton C. Andrus, Michael Shannon as Robert H. Jackson fighting to bring the Law back to bear on these twisters of the Law, and Richard E Grant as Sir David Maxwell Fyfe. Equally impressive is Leo Woodall, though a British actor, who sounds authentically ‘all American’. What it also does well is suspense: this is the first trial, a media sensation and no-one knows how it’s going to go or how to get the outcome which brings justice for the millions of victims. Nor do they know how all these narcissists, many of whom love a photo opportunity or a microphone or an audience, are going to react to the limelight of a public trial.
We see convincingly how manipulative Göring is, how enormous his ego is (as he sits in the trial box like a throne, and poses before the court to have his ‘best side’ captured by the photographers. Contrastingly, we experience how clever Kelley is in sussing out these people, allowing them to speak whilst he listens and builds up a rapport to encourage them to trust and talk, without being influenced or being too friendly. It’s also about remaining human in the face of such inhumanity — Kelley (atleast in the movie) contacts Göring’s family, ensuring that they are not imprisoned/separated for long for art thefts and passes letters between them. He is kind to Göring’s child because he is human, in contrast to Göring, who can only see his own sphere of influence and perhaps empire.
Unlike Gustave Gilbert’s writings (played by Colin Hanks), a second and perhaps rival army psychiatrist, Kelley’s 22 Cells in Nuremberg is out of print. Another aspect the film does well is to show someone seeing something almost beyond comprehension, who then can’t look away and wants everyone else to realise and see what he’s seen, to learn, to listen and do something about it to make a different world. Only people don’t want to know, even though the Law was able to make its point against these perpetrators of evil. I hope as a result of the movie there will be pressure on a publisher to reprint his important work.
We effectively see Kelley’s being in a strange place at a strange time in a very strange situation utilising his professional ambitions to understand ultimate evil. For everyone else, to make sure this never happens again, to create a legal precedent for future global conflicts, to prevent martyrdom and eulogising, to call some wars crimes. Can he trust himself and can others trust him, whose side is he really on (if he has a chosen side)? This is strongly conveyed throughout.
Another key moment is the controlled journalistic access to the executions and how they’re managed, in witnessing these events.
It is very watchable, but I think overall, that The Zone of Interest covers the impact of the Nazi regime on everyday life (particularly on children) so much more impactfully and consistently. I was expecting more of A Few Good Men in a World War Two setting. The film’s overall tone felt too loose, too vague for too long; whereas what was needed (in history as in art) was to speak out sooner. Notwithstanding, we are (just like in a coin vanishing trick) invited to think about where we’re directing our gaze, who we’re looking at, who and what we’re following — and to see if we’re really seeing honestly. Have we really seen a coin vanish or is it concealed whilst we look elsewhere? Though it has done it’s work in making me want to know more about this historical period, particularly about the children of Nazi officials. It intrigues me that it’s only as elders or in the next generation down, the grandchildren, that families linked to the Nazi regime are really able to look at things and examine what really happened. It’s also very conflicting — as The Zone of Interest showed, the same leaders could be Janus faced — happy family men, and yet brutes during their ‘day job’.
Watch the ending though — Bryan Tyler’s string based, Shawshank-y Redemption-y score will have you in tears, if the rest of the movie hasn’t already (or the end titles telling us what happened next).
Though I’m a Gentile, I just wanted to say Kaddish after all of this:
Yis’ga’dal v’yis’kadash sh’may ra’bbo, b’olmo dee’vro chir’usay v’yamlich malchu’say, b’chayaychon uv’yomay’chon uv’chayay d’chol bais Yisroel, ba’agolo u’viz’man koriv; v’imru Omein.
Y’hay shmay rabbo m’vorach l’olam ul’olmay olmayo.
Yisborach v’yishtabach v’yispoar v’yisromam v’yisnasay, v’yishador v’yis’aleh v’yisalal, shmay d’kudsho, brich hu, l’aylo min kl birchoso v’sheeroso, tush’bechoso v’nechemoso, da,ameeran b’olmo; vimru Omein.
Y’hay shlomo rabbo min sh’mayo, v’chayim alaynu v’al kol Yisroel; v’imru Omein.
Oseh sholom bimromov, hu ya’aseh sholom olaynu, v’al kol yisroel; vimru Omein.
