“Nuremberg” debuted in Toronto in September, passed through the Turin Film Festival and now here it is, in our theaters from December 18th, with a cast of the highest caliber, among which the late Massimo Decimo Meridio naturally stands out. Russell Crowe returns to the old fast, and fortunately, because if it weren’t for him, this film would have very little to say.

“Nuremberg” – The plot

“Nuremberg” is written by Vanderbilt himself, who drew inspiration from the essay written by Jack El-Hai, centered on the experience of Doctor Douglas Kelley, the psychiatrist who was called by the unprecedented Court of Justice created by the Allies to study and in a certain sense get into the heads of those Nazi hierarchs and generals whom they had managed to get their hands on. Rami Malek plays him, and it has been understood for some time that he has only one expression to express, regardless of the role he plays. Which is the biggest Achilles’ heel of “Nuremberg”, this sensational miscasting for the role of the protagonist, which at various moments seems unbearable to us. He is partly compensated by a sober and effective Michael Shannon as Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson, Leo Woodall as Sergeant Howie Triest, Richard E. Grant as the English Prosecutor Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, while John Slattery is the Prison Commander, Burton C. Andrus. But all eyes were on him, on Russell Crowe, chosen to play the great protagonist of that trial, the Court’s most coveted prey: Hermann Göring, for years the number two of the Nazi regime.

Having left the major cinema scene for several years, the late Gladiator, however, is and remains a thoroughbred actor, capable of dominating every moment of a film which reveals many problems in terms of script and editing. Aesthetically the level is television (so it would have been said once), but above all the whole has an uncertain, confused tone, despite its being in theory a tour court procedural film. It is not easy to empathize with the protagonist, Doctor Kelley, who we follow as he gets to know the Nazi hierarchs one by one, but above all he becomes close to Göring. Drug addict, lustful, obese, narcissistic and manipulative, he will prove to be the most formidable opponent for the prosecution team, as well as for Kelley himself, divided between a professional-ethical code and the need to help a trial which, it is worth remembering, still remains very controversial today. A film designed for the general public in the most general sense of the term, and therefore a partial film, which simplifies a lot, which gathers around Crowe hoping that it will be enough. The final sensation is that of being faced with a tarot bignami film version, a missed opportunity.

Looking into the eyes of the evil that repeats itself

Russell Crowe prepared obsessively for this role. His Hermann Göring, former ace of the First World War, who later became one of the most inefficient, powerful, hated and corrupt hierarchs, appears to us exactly as he was: an intelligent man, a pathological narcissist despite his abnormal obesity, determined to play his last game in the courtroom, aware of the death that awaits him.

Crowe speaks in German, smiles slyly, then shows his claws, with Malek never managing, not even once, to hold his own. But enough is enough of his charm in showing us the face of Evil as a lack of empathy and responsibility. “Nuremberg” is afflicted by a partiality that makes it incomplete, incomplete, even quite banal in more than one moment. We talk about Rudolf Hess, Baldur Von Schirach, Donitz, Julius Streicher, Goering’s family, but little or nothing actually concerns the Trial itself.

But above all, it is very serious that Albert Speer is missing, who was the other great, important protagonist of Nuremberg, the genius who sold himself to the Devil, one of the few to save his skin. Of course, there are moments of great impact, scattered here and there.

All together, they manage to give us the difficulty in dealing with the horror that was Nazism at the moment in which its all-encompassing barbarity and deafening banality became clear. But the comparison with Stanley Kramer’s “Victors and Losers” from 1961 or with the 2001 HBO television miniseries with Alec Baldwin and a magnificent Brian Cox is simply merciless.

“Nuremberg” seems almost aware of its limits, of the long-winded first part, of its predictability. The film tries to address the theme of the moral dilemma, if nothing else it does not hide from telling us about a Trial that was influenced by internal political needs, often bending rules, procedures, or very often inventing new ones given its nature as a newborn creature. There remains a feeling of defeat, which is perhaps the best element of “Nuremberg”.

The horrors of which the world was made aware in that Trial, the establishment of real international law, was not enough, it did not save us. The look at our present, at Sudan, Ukraine and Palestine, is what ultimately allows “Nuremberg” and Russell Crowe to be worth seeing, however tragic the conclusion is: we never learn anything.

Rating: 6