James Vanderbilt, “Nuremberg” (2025)
Combining elements of the psychological and legal thriller genres, James Vanderbilt’s “Nuremberg” follows the Nuremberg trials that were held by the victorious Allied nations (the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union) against the surviving leaders of the defeated Nazi Germany for various crimes against peace and humanity from November 1945 to October 1946, from the point of view of US Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (played by Rami Malek) who is assigned to interview and assess the mental fitness of various Nazi war criminals, including Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), Rudolf Hess (Andreas Pietschmann), Robert Ley and Julius Streicher, to stand trial and answer for their crimes. The film is based on US journalist Jack El-Hai’s 2013 work “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist” which focuses on the interactions between the young Kelley and the cunning and manipulative Göring.
The film takes several liberties with actual events, partly for the sake of building a plausible (though simplified and stereotyped) narrative with some tension that a mainstream audience will follow – this does mean that much historical context that would help explain the behaviour and conduct of the Nazi war criminals during the Second World War is omitted. After Nazi Germany surrenders to the Allies in May 1945, Göring gives himself up to US forces in Austria. News of his surrender reaches Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon), Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, who has the brainwave idea of establishing an international tribunal to charge and indict Göring and other surviving Nazi war criminals. Jackson’s idea gets the green light after he blackmails Pope Pius XII into supporting such a tribunal, and arrangements to set up the tribunal begin in earnest. Kelley is called away from his regular work treating soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder to Europe to assess Göring and his fellow criminals with the help of interpreter Sergeant Howard Triest (Leo Woodall). While Jackson and British barrister Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (Richard E Grant) busy themselves establishing the tribunal, Kelley establishes a warm rapport with Göring who helps the psychiatrist with his examination of Rudolf Hess, provided Göring can send letters to his wife and daughter. Against his better judgement, and in violation of medical ethics concerning doctor-patient relations, Kelley ends up acting as a letter courier for the Göring family.
During the actual trials, several incidents – Ley’s suicide, the arrest of Göring’s family, and the broadcast of footage by the prosecution detailing Nazi atrocities in the concentration and death camps which Göring denies knowledge of while he was Reichsmarschall, the result of which Kelley gets drunk and blabs all he knows about Göring to a young female reporter who promptly writes up his personal confessions in a US newspaper – lead to Kelley being dismissed from his role. (In real life, Kelley was promoted and ended up consulting for both the US Army and the US Air Force.) He prepares to leave Germany but is shamed by Triest who warns him of the moral danger of assuming he is nothing more than a passive observer. Kelley then decides to turn over all his papers on Göring to Jackson and Fyfe, warning them that Göring intends to use his trial to grandstand and defend the Nazi regime’s conduct and behaviour over the past several years.
For a lengthy film of some 150 minutes, “Nuremberg” moves at a brisk pace, combining a fair few sub-plots in its dramatisation of the Nuremberg trials. The tone of the film is even throughout, which works to both the film’s advantage and disadvantage: the neutral mood keeps audiences distant from Göring’s manipulative charm but at the same time does little justice to Kelley’s reactions and emotional state when he realises that Göring has been taking him for a ride, even though he knew early on that the Nazi leader was a cunning bastard. Kelley’s eventual slide into alcoholism, depression and suicide seems to be treated by the film as something of an afterthought. The plot generally holds well until after the prosecution screens its evidence of concentration camp torture and killing, when it falls apart after Kelley is shaken by Göring’s duplicity and (in true Hollywood hero style) determines to get his revenge on the general after Triest’s lecture. Much of the dialogue in the film does not ring true to the period (late 1940s) but instead reflects Hollywood’s assumption that audiences watching the film need to have history explained and interpreted through the current 2020s-period pop-culture lens.
The film’s chief glory is Russell Crowe’s portrayal of Hermann Göring: a very subtle and nuanced performance that conveys the man’s intelligence, cunning, smooth charm and self-assured composure. Malek and the rest of the cast offer solid if not always outstanding performances. The cast might have done even better than they have, and Crowe would all but have another Best Actor Oscar in the bag, if the script had been better written and directed to match the actors’ willingness and ability. Unfortunately, accurate historical portrayal and a better understanding of the Nuremberg trials and of the political circumstances in which they took place are sacrificed in favour of a hackneyed Hollywood tale about taking personal responsibility and ordinary people being capable of doing extraordinary things – people like Robert Jackson, whose work connected to the trials helped establish a basis for international law – or of committing heinous acts of genocide.
At least the film does not end on an optimistic note: in an unexpected scene near the end, a twitchy Kelley warns a US radio audience that fascism could very well take hold in the US. For saying this, while promoting his book based on his interviews with Göring and other Nazi war criminals, he is booted out of the radio station by its managers. This scene is a clear comment on current US politics under US President Donald Trump, but it can also be interpreted as foretelling the arrival of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the witch-hunt practices he initiated in hunting down supposed Communists in US politics and society in the 1950s.