MORTFILMS

When the court rose on November 20^th 1945 in Nuremberg, Germany,  to convict some of the leading members of the Nazi elite (a few key figures missing because of some pesky suicide on their behalf; Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels most notably), I imagine that many hoped – perhaps foolishly – this would spell the end of fascism in Germany. 80 years later (to the exact day I watched this as well!) I am sat, half needing a piss, in a cinema seat wondering how this film will be misinterpreted by the wide array of nutjobs and idiots charmed by the AfD. Russel Crowe plays Hermann Göring, who, as an American soldier will kindly tell us in the opening minutes through some of the worst expository dialogue I have seen in a film, was Hitler’s second in command. I mean that guy might as well of given us Göring’s social security number, address, the names of his pet lions (yes he actually had pet lions – MJ would be proud! Maybe not…), the time he spends on average thinking about Hitler’s underdeveloped balls, and if he likes Bernie Sanders and would vote for him if he ran for President. I think we might be able to take an educated guess and say ‘probably not’ for those last two. Crowe is pretty good as Göring, and though we get a bit too much Thanos to his Third Reich, he has a good German accent and does a great job of playing such a reprehensible and narcissistic character. Most if not all the problems with the presentation of Göring and co. come from the script and its seemingly apparent need to Marvelify the Nuremberg trials with quips and some one-note characters. There are a couple well-done scenes and fortunately all the really abysmal bits (apart from when Michael Shannon – who is pretty good in this! – says ‘Welcome… to Nuremberg’) seem to nestle in the first half of the film. The biggest achievement of Nuremberg is presenting Göring and (at a stretch) Rami Malek playing himself as a psychiatrist as complex characters. You get to see Malek’s character, Douglas Kelly, charmed by his own intellectual curiosity and by Göring. This results in him conducting far too much personal extra-curricular research before he realises ‘Christ, this Göring guy might not be so good!’ in a tense scene in which he shouts at Göring for being part of an especially evil fascist regime in the 40s. I would like to think everyone in the audience wanted to stand up and shout ‘fucking finally!’. The best scenes are probably where the archival Holocaust footage is shown and the prosecutors prosecute. There’s a relatively good twist with a forgettable side character which I imagined worked well for anyone attentive enough or for those who found the actor hot (fair). One of the biggest problems with the film, which is seemingly unavoidable and certainly not exclusive to this film but emblematic of most biopics, is the balance of exposition for the uninformed that is already evident for and known by the clued in. I find myself a bit conflicted here. The clearly (and I mean not at all subtle) expository dialogue like that ‘Hitler’s second in command line’ presents itself as annoyingly fake and ham-fisted to anyone who knows about Nazi Germany or the Nuremberg trials already. Equally, those lines the basic details of who on earth these people are necessary for those who don’t already know. The biopic genre seems to become a game of how well a film can hide the exposition from one group while delivering it to the other. Nuremberg doesn’t do this well. If you want an introduction into the final hurdle of WW2, give this a shot. Or watch Stanley Kramer’s 1961 Judgement at Nuremberg. When the film ended about half the audience stayed firm in their seats. Maybe they were expecting, in true Marvel-esque form, a post credit scene revealing Hitler is not actually dead and instead living it up in Argentina?