Nuremberg Movie Review
EDITOR’S NOTE: SaddleBrooke is home to a concentration of highly educated and successful residents. This review was submitted by one of those and the author asked for anonymity.
The events depicted in “Nuremberg” are largely a precursor to the classic 1981 movie “Judgment at Nuremberg”. Only a small portion of this new movie overlaps the actual court trial in the earlier film. The majority of this new movie focuses on the personality of those on trial, with particular emphasis on Herman Göring .
As the Nuremberg trials are set to begin, a U.S. Army psychiatrist (Rami Malek) is charged with evaluating the German generals who are the first men ever to be tried by an international judicial process for the precedent-setting charge of “Crimes Against Humanity”. Malek’s role is not so much to determine if the defendants had the capacity to stand trial as it was to discover what motivated these men to commit such atrocious acts. Those acts included the killing, the starvation, the robbery, and enslavement of millions of human beings. These acts were not the accidental by-products of war so much as due to the deliberate and planned objectives of the Nazi policy of Jewish extermination. The movie explains how Hermann Göring’s combination of genuine war hero patriotism, intelligence, charisma, and narcissism, had contributed to what may be the greatest crime in history.
Russell Crowe was perfectly cast as Nazi Reismarschall Herman Göring, the second in command of the Third Reich after Hitler. Crowe’s performance may well earn him an Academy Award and may be the best of his career. His German character is one of the best foreign accents on film.
As the film progresses, Crowe’s performance illustrates the danger of providing a forum for the devil to speak. Even though the psychiatrist had warned the American prosecutor of Göring’s defense, Göring was so convincing when providing his own testimony that it appeared that he may be found not guilty, until… well, you will just have to see the movie.
The film includes video evidence of the horrific crimes with actual news-real footage just as it was shown to the world for the first time publicly in 1946. Amazingly, what happened in the Nazi death camps was only a rumor on the world stage until these disgusting images from the concentration camps were made public. This film and its predecessor underscore the significance of the Nuremberg trials to help us prevent these atrocities from ever happening again.
Russell Crowe’s Göring manages to make good on his promise to the doctor whose hobby is magic tricks. When Herman Göring at one point proclaims that “no man has ever beaten me” we first assume that is only his narcissism talking, until he proves it later in making good on his promise to perform his own bit of magic by “cheating the hangman’s noose.”
Finally, “Nuremberg” is a great piece of work with a stellar cast, in a fascinating character study and commentary on human nature. And like all great 2.5 hour movies, it keeps you so engrossed you don’t notice the time in your seat.
Hint: Use the restroom before the movie starts!
