James Vanderbilt
Norimberga

Perhaps one may wonder whether, today, it is appropriate to propose a film dedicated to the trial held for the Nazi officials at Nuremberg between 1945 and 1946. The event was at the heart of the famous film "Judgment at Nuremberg" by Stanley Kramer, while a television series that came out years ago also addressed this judicial event. Certainly, the subject matter is weighty and important, especially considering that the trial unfolded over many months before arriving at its final verdict. In the case of "Nuremberg", directed by James Vanderbilt, the overall result has its highs and lows, but it can be said that the film is still worth watching.

Based on the book "The Nazi and the Psychiatrist" written by Jack El Hai, the movie recounts those intense months during which a panel of eminent judges (including the American prosecutor Jackson), representing the Allied nations, had the task of analyzing and judging the war crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The final verdict for the 22 Nazi leaders on trial is well known.

Less well known, however, was the analysis undertaken by the American psychiatrist, Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Kelley, who interviewed these officials to ascertain whether they were so-called normal people who had ended up acting monstrously due to exceptional circumstances, or if they were people intimately and inexorably sadistic and evil. In short, was evil something peculiar only to these individuals by definition abnormal?

In this meticulous work, Douglas Kelley observes that someone like Hermann Göring had a complex personality, rich in nuances, not without a certain sinister charm that made him an ambitious, shrewd, and manipulative man. And it is precisely these characteristics that would lead to his downfall, as being Hitler’s direct deputy couldn’t prevent him from endorsing all the atrocities of the Nazi regime—especially regarding the final solution against Jewish communities condemned to perish in concentration camps. To this must be added that the American psychiatrist is greatly impressed by such a person, as if he is experiencing that very condition well described by Nietzsche, who warned not to gaze too long into the abyss, lest it also gaze into us.

I previously mentioned highs and lows in Vanderbilt’s film, which are inevitable when the subject is so heavy. Surely, the movie has a classic Hollywood structure, not immune to certain dramatized aspects of the plot. There are historical inaccuracies: we see, for example, Göring surrendering to a U.S. patrol, when in reality he would have fled rather than let himself be captured. Nor is it clear why, during a discussion among the Allied judges (curiously with neither French nor Soviet representatives), there is a reference to the Nazi invasion of Norway in 1944 (when in fact it had already happened in 1940). Even more entirely invented is the episode in which prosecutor Jackson visits the Vatican to seek moral and political support from then Pope Pius XII (who, unlike his successors, was not so approachable and appeared rather solemn and aloof).

But if the flaws are present, so too are the strengths of the work. Technically, the director is very skilled in creating an atmosphere—between prison and courtroom—that is extremely claustrophobic, where the Nazi criminals are, as they deserve, forced to miserably live out their final days. Seeing them so diminished, one is compelled to ask: was it really worth exercising so sadistically so much power, only to end up, at best, spending one's days in a cell or ending up hanged? They are only men entirely devoid of dignity, like Hess, who pretends not to remember who he was and will take his secrets to the grave. And what about Julius Streicher, formerly so defiant, who weeps desperately like a child because he doesn’t want to face the gallows and ends up wetting himself?

Undoubtedly, amid such rabble, Göring stands out as a titan of the enigma called "human being." Sublimely interpreted by Russell Crowe (an Oscar nominee), he manages to almost enchant the viewer, as he also comes across as a conscientious family man, worried about his wife’s and daughter’s fate. One could call him a "golden daddy," albeit one who, among other things, had a passion for looting large quantities of art stolen from Jewish families sent to the camps. Truly an incredible art collector—at others’ expense.

And the confrontations between him and the psychiatrist constitute the best moments of the film, with Rami Malek, in the role of Douglas Kelley, trying to decipher the mystery of Göring. In Malek’s performance, one cannot deny the actor’s diligence, but Russell Crowe is truly so imposing as to overshadow everything around him. And, faithful to the part, he is so adept as to ingest cyanide to avoid the noose, while Douglas Kelley would meet a no less tragic fate: he wrote and maintained, until the day of his suicide, that people like the Nazi officials (far from extraordinary) can be found anywhere if each of us gives in to the wicked instincts that dwell within the individual soul.

In conclusion, what remains is the awareness that the warning delivered to humanity by the Nuremberg trials—in the course of which footage of the liberation of the camps was shown, as also seen in the film—has nevertheless not prevented other crimes in wars after 1945. And every day we have documented evidence of this.