USA, 2025, drama, director: James Vanderbilt, starring: Rami Malek, Russell Crowe, Michael Shannon.
Everyone is well aware of the Nuremberg trials where the Nazis were brought to justice. However, the main highlight of any well-told story is the lived experience of real people. This resonates even more than horrific crimes turned into statistics.
Before us is the story of a psychological confrontation between the talented psychiatrist Douglas Kelley and the Reichsmarschall of Nazi Germany, Hermann Göring, the outcome of which will determine the result of the Nuremberg trials.
Evil can be persuasive, and that is precisely the main problem in fighting it. Hermann Göring is not easily fooled. He has an answer for everything. War is war, you are no better, you also razed cities to the ground, Germany had to rise from its knees, you should not have punished us so severely after the First World War. We silenced our opponents? So what, the people elected us and gave us those powers. The Jewish question? By the “final solution,” I meant only deportation, not murder. Labor camps? Of course, everyone had to work for our victory. These are roughly the arguments he uses to justify himself. Thus, the psychiatrist must find his Achilles' heel to make him admit that he knew everything, understood everything, and sanctioned it all as Hitler's right hand.
Even war must be conducted according to the rules. The cruelty with which the Germans treated civilians had to be punished. It now seems that such a trial was inevitable, but back then, from a legal standpoint, it appeared impossible. If achieving justice requires doing something for the first time in history and thereby creating a precedent, then it must be done. For example, today this concerns the issue of a reparations loan for Ukraine funded by frozen Russian assets, which remains unresolved precisely due to legal nuances.
The film contains historical inaccuracies, but in my opinion, such things can be forgiven in a work of fiction. Douglas Kelley sometimes seems overly meticulous; in his attempt to remain objective, he occasionally flirts with the Nazi. Yet, this is a correct narrative move because, as I mentioned above, evil can be persuasive. The main thing is that he ultimately does the right thing. Another important conclusion of the film is that any nation can become Nazi and commit criminal acts. There was nothing in the Germans that cannot be found in the representatives of other nations.
