Nuremberg (2000)
DIRECTOR: Yves Simoneau
CAST:
Alec Baldwin, Jill Hennessy, Brian Cox, Christopher Plummer, Michael Ironside, Matt Craven, Len Cariou, Herbert Knaup, Colm Feore, Charlotte Gainsborough, Max von Sydow
REVIEW:
Shortly after the end of WWII, between November 1945 and October 1946, twenty-two senior Nazi war criminals were tried in public in the war-torn city of Nuremberg. The location was ironic: once the site of annual Nazi rallies, it was now the setting for the trial of the Third Reich’s most infamous surviving leaders. The staging of the trial had been agreed by the US, UK, and USSR and endorsed by the United Nations. The International Military Tribunal, under Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence, sentenced twelve of the accused to death and seven to imprisonment, while three were acquitted. The prosecution team was led by American Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, played here by executive producer Alec Baldwin, and also included representatives of Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. This TNT original movie was based on the book Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial, by Joseph E. Persico, and aside from Jackson being played by the significantly younger and more photogenic Baldwin, and saddled with a perfunctory romantic subplot with his secretary Elsie (Jill Hennessy), it seems to stick pretty closely to the facts.
The trials were held in the massive Palace of Justice, one of the few mostly undamaged buildings remaining in Nuremberg, and the film replication of this setting is as accurate as possible. The devastation of the almost leveled city outside of the courtroom is also convincingly recreated, boasting exceptional production values for a TNT original movie. Jackson and Elsie's romantic subplot is completely needless and has no place in a film about Nazi war crimes trials, but fortunately it is not given enough screentime to seriously damage the film. Besides the pointless and half-hearted romantic subplot, another drawback to this otherwise accurate and interesting film is that of the twenty-two defendants, only Hermann Goering (Brian Cox in an Emmy-winning, charismatic performance) and Albert Speer (German actor Herbert Knaup) are given significant attention. On the plus side, the filmmakers obviously made a serious effort both to stay close to the facts, and to cast the defendants with actors who physically resemble them. Brian Cox and Herbert Knaup are fairly close to Goering and Speer, but Roc LaFortune as Rudolf Hess, Bill Corday as General Jodl, Frank Fontaine as Field Marshal Keitel, Ken Kramer as Fritz Sauckel, and Sam Stone as Julius Streicher are all exceptionally close matches (and have about five lines between them). The courtroom testimony may strike some as tedious, but for those who are not expecting an action movie, the words and descriptions of the events are powerful enough even before the sequence showing actual archive footage of the concentration camps. Much of the footage shown in this lengthy, quiet sequence has been shown in innumerable films and documentaries, but it never ceases to be hard to watch. The musical score is nonexistent for the majority of the film, but when it does pop up it is effective, often striking a haunting violin sound at an appropriate moment. The whole cast generally does fine, but Brian Cox as Goering deserves the most praise for his deservedly Emmy-winning performance. The buffoonish caricature which lesser actors have made of the role is nowhere to be seen here. However poor some of his military decisions may have been, Hermann Goering was not a fool, at the trial he proved himself far more intelligent than anyone expected, he had a forceful personality and could often be charming, and Cox's performance is right on target. He has just enough scenes with his wife and daughter for us to see that he cares for his family and wants them to be safe, and yet we also see enough scenes of the defiant Nazi on the stand, refusing to admit any responsibility for or even knowledge of the crimes of the Third Reich and displaying nothing but contempt for the entire trial, to keep him from gaining sympathy. Dominating the other defendants, by turns charming and bullying, alternately devilishly jovial and solemnly self-righteous, Cox's performance is brilliant, and he walks away with each and every one of his scenes.
Fortunately, although Cox often steals the show, Alec Baldwin and Christopher Plummer provide solid counter-balances as the main prosecutor characters, particularly in a scene where Goering’s smugness breaks Jackson’s cool, and another where Lord Maxwell-Fyfe (Plummer) struggles through a disturbing account of Nazi mass murder. The film goes into detail about the preparations, goals, and difficulties inherent in the trial; Jackson and the others are determined to keep the moral high ground by giving the Nazis the fair trial they never gave their innumerable victims, but at the same time are agonized by the knowledge that a completely fair trial by necessity includes the possibility of failing to prove guilt and having to let some of the worst war criminals in history go free. Plummer is dignified throughout, and Baldwin hits a few weak notes, especially early on, but is in top form during several passionate speeches during the trial and his confrontations with Goering which are some of the highlights of the film. Some of these early scenes involving the trial preparations and Jackson's relationship with his secretary are a bit dull, with a few corny Hollywood type lines here and there, but once the trial actually begins, Nuremberg finds its footing and is a well-made, often engrossing historical drama. Michael Ironside is solid and authoritative as the prison warden who despises Nazis, and Matt Craven is also very good as the Jewish military psychologist Gustav Gilbert, who attempts to penetrate the defendants’ defiance and unravel what made them do the things they did. The only one he makes any real headway with is Hitler’s former architect and later Minister of War Production Albert Speer, effectively played by Herbert Knaup (the only authentic German actor among the defendants) as at least ostensibly the polar opposite of Goering- conciliatory, willing to acknowledge his responsibility, and eager to cooperate with the court. Speer was the only defendant to plead guilty and accept the consequences for his role in the Third Reich (he used slave labor to keep the war effort going), and this factored into his receiving a twenty year imprisonment rather than life or execution. There are many who feel that he has often been whitewashed and that his guilty plea had more to do with saving his own neck than any genuine regret. The film pretty much lets you form your own opinion, which might frustrate some viewers who prefer things spelled out to them in black-and-white, but given that no one can see into Albert Speer's head, I think the ambiguous, open to interpretation portrayal is sensible. By the way, Nuremberg, with its substantial focus on Speer, could make a good companion piece to the biographical Speer miniseries Inside The Third Reich, starring Rutger Hauer, which does not depict the trial. I also liked that the filmmakers paint at least the principal defendants, especially Goering, as three-dimensional individuals, taking a more complex and thought-provoking approach rather than resorting to simplistic stereotypes. Like it or not, Hermann Goering and all of the other Nazis were human beings, not monsters from another planet. It may disturb some viewers to find themselves chuckling at one of Goering's witty remarks, or even thinking that he occasionally makes what sounds like a legitimate point. Cox makes Goering come across as such a persuasive figure that you may feel the need to remind yourself that of course he isn't right...is he? Some say portraying Goering so human makes him look sympathetic; I personally feel that showing his warmer side only makes it all the more horrific that he and the rest of the Nazi government did what they did. The distinguished Swedish actor Max von Sydow has only a cameo early on, but Colm Feore makes a powerful and lasting impression with his cameo as former Auschwitz Kommandant Rudolf Höss. Feore does an excellent job serenely detailing the exterminations at Auschwitz with no visible emotion whatsoever, especially when he is asked how many people were exterminated in a day, and he robotically replies “10,000, but only at peak efficiency.” His tone, as dry and matter-of-fact as if he is naming any ordinary business figures, is deeply chilling, and seems extremely accurate to anyone who has skimmed his posthumously published memoirs. Since the filmmakers obviously put such effort into filling the defendants’ dock with near physical dead-ringers for the real Nazis, it is unfortunate that most of these actors are given almost nothing to do.
With the exception of the minor love story subplot between Jackson and his secretary, and the underuse of the other Nazis, and for those who are not expecting an action film and do not mind a talky courtroom drama, Nuremberg is a very well-done and interesting film. As noted in my review, there are things which are skipped over or given short shrift by its focus on only two defendants, but for someone who doesn't know much about the trials, I would definitely recommend Nuremberg as a good place to start.
