Context can be everything for certain films. If the viewers are aware of certain facts beforehand, even seemingly prosaic content can be intriguing. Or extremely disturbing, as it is the case with Conspiracy, 2001 cable television film directed by Frank Pierson.
The plot takes place on January 20th 1942 at the villa in Wansee, wealthy suburb of Berlin. Nine years earlier Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party took power in Germany and two years earlier they started world war that is so far going splendidly, allowing Germany and its allies to control almost all Europe and large part of Russia. SS Obergruppenführer Reynhard Heydrich (played by Kenneth Branagh) has convened the meeting of top diplomats, legal experts, police and government officials to discuss the fate of 11 million Jews on the territories Nazis control or expect to conquer. Although everyone uses euphemisms like “evacuation” and “handling”, it is quite clear that it actually means physical extermination of almost entire population. Heydrich in no uncertain terms tells conference participants that the actual decision was already been made, while some are aware that the mass killings have already begun. The only matter to discuss are some practical details, including who is and who is not to considered to be a Jew.
Infamous Wanseee Conference, an event that many historians would later described as the closest to the formal start of the Holocaust, lasted for around ninety minutes and was recorded by stenographers in minute later known as “Wansee Protocol”. The document was discovered after the war and the actual discussions and other details later reconstructed through witness testimonies. In 1984 the protocol serves as basis for The Wansee Conference, television film in Austrian-West German co-production, directed by Heinz Shrik, known for using actual Berlin villa where the meeting had taken place, as location. Conspiracy, its remake co-produced by HBO and BBC, also uses the same villa for location, but the interiors were reconstructed in the studio. Frank Pierson, veteran who worked mainly at television, succeeded in making seemingly dull discussion between top government bureaucrats sound exciting and disturbing, especially if the viewer happens to know history and that decisions made there would result in events depicted in films like Schindler’s List or Shoah. The film takes place in real-time and, despite the lack of actual drama, it is both fascinating and frightening to see how the seemingly top experts and most brilliant minds of what was supposed to be the most progressive and most enlightened country of the world easily endorse what would become one the worst crimes in world’s history. An effect is underlined by very good casting of mostly British actors (with exception of American actor Stanley Tucci who plays Heydrich’s deputy Adolf Eichmann, main supervisor of Final Solution). Kenneth Branagh is chillingly effective as the leader who uses charm, manipulation and intimidation to put various bureaucrats in line, resulting in one of the most memorable performances of his career. Conspiracy won number of Emmys and a Golden Globe for Tucci. The film is even more disturbing now, in light of more recent events when many experts sacrificed their basic morality to justify and promote various questionable agendas, and can be even more depressive when we consider that the decisions similar to those made in Wansee can be made by AI. The conference was in 2022 again reconstructed by German television film The Conference.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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