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Rami Malek and Russell Crowe - Nuremberg (2025)
Rami Malek and Russell Crowe in Nuremberg (2025)
It was unprecedented. Although expectations were that the hierarchy of Nazi Germany would be lined up and executed, instead, the victorious Allies placed Germany’s defeated leaders on trial. They were charged with war crimes as well as a new concept in law, crimes against humanity. The Soviets anticipated a show trial like the ones Stalin staged in Russia, but the U.S. insisted on the rule of law and the UK and France agreed.
The 1945-46 trial conducted in the bombed-out city of Nuremberg has been appraised in many books. Stanley Kramer’s 1961 film Judgement at Nuremberg fictionalized one of the “subsequent procedures” against lower ranking Nazis. Writer-director James Vanderbilt’s new film, Nuremberg, is based on Jack El-Hai’s nonfiction book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, and focuses on Douglas Kelley, a U.S. Army psychiatrist tasked with examining the defendants. Soon enough, Kelley discovers that the ringleader in the cellblock is Hermann Göring, Luftwaffe commander and Hitler’s heir apparent. His primary task is to prevent the prisoners from suicide; most of them are pathetic, fulminating and hateful, but Göring? Kelley is fascinated.
Kelley is played by young and eager Rami Malek, but as often happens, the villain gets the memorable lines. Russell Crowe puts his actor’s strengths to trial and passes every test. He is startlingly effective as Göring, a larger-than-life figure physically and psychologically. By some accounts, Göring was more popular among average Germans than Hitler’s other minions. Unlike those grim demi-autocrats, Göring looked like the life of the party, Nazi or otherwise. Crowe’s Göring is true to the historical record. He’s charming, manipulative, good humored (but don’t cross him), narcissistic, smart and perhaps more psychologically acute than the psychiatrist examining him. Göring arrives in captivity addicted to opiates, pain management from his wounds during World War I. The imprisoned Nazi goes cold turkey and gives himself an exercise regimen to lose weight. The Holocaust? Göring shifts the blame.
Nuremberg’s important side story involves Robert H. Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court justice who leads the American prosecution in court. Michael Shannon depicts Jackson as a man of solid convictions. “I tend to frown on executing men without a trial,” he says, overcoming opposition in Washington from politicians who want a speedy hanging.
Despite a few patchy dialogue moments (people didn’t speak in 1945 the way we do in 2025), Nuremberg correctly draws the contours of history and its leading characters, nailing many precise details. The U.S. commandant at Nuremberg jail, Col. Andrus (John Slattery), was an old, no-nonsense cavalry officer who really patrolled the prison with a riding crop. Göring actually got the better of Jackson during cross-examination until the wily British prosecutor, David Maxwell Fyfe (Richard E. Grant), goaded him into admitting complicity in Hitler’s crimes.
In his own mind, Göring had the last word, cheating the hangman with a cyanide capsule. Several of his colleagues were hung and others given long sentences. As the screenplay acknowledges, the Allies were also guilty of crimes and the prosecution sometimes stumbled. Several German leaders were even acquitted for lack of evidence. By many standards, it was a fair trial.
The script gives Kelley mixed motives, including the book deal he hoped to obtain in the trial’s aftermath. However, he also seems genuinely interested in the results of his Rorshach tests and talk sessions. “What if we could dissect evil?” he asks an associate. “If we could psychologically define evil, we could make sure nothing like this will happen again.”
Kelley’s notion that science could find the answer to evil was naïve, as was Jackson’s hope that the Nuremberg tribunal would usher in a new age of justice for the victims of state-sanctioned violence. The international tribunals formed in the wake of Nuremberg have had some but not great success in detaining and punishing politicians guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity, largely because the world’s leading nations, including the U.S. and China, scoff at their authority.
