Nuremberg: Russell Crowe is chilling as Hermann Göring in this compelling Nazi drama

James Vanderbilt’s film Nuremberg shares many similarities with David W. Rintels’ equally starry 2000 docuseries of the same name. Both track the establishment, processes and arguments of the Nuremberg trials in the aftermath of World War II, both adapt non-fiction books (Rintels’ source was Joseph E. Persico’s Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial, 1994, Vanderbilt’s is working from Jack El-Hai’s The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, 2013), both extensively incorporate harrowing documentary footage from Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps (1945) which was screened at the actual trials, and both attempt to understand the Nazi psyche.   

Other differences between the two reveal the feature’s greater dynamism as it engages more with character, and comes with a stronger narrative focus. While Gustave Gilbert, the psychologist prominent in the miniseries, also makes an appearance in Vanderbilt’s film, the director shifts attention to the psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), an altogether more flawed, more interesting person, whose own arrogance makes him a compelling foil for Hitler’s Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe). While Kelley shows Göring feats of prestidigitation, and dreams of future fame for publishing the definitive study of the Nazi mindset, Göring overshadows him, and promises – accurately – that his own magic trick will be to avoid a hanging.  

Like the miniseries, this Nuremberg presents the efforts of Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) both to set up the court and to prosecute Göring, but Kelley is at its heart, which has the advantage of allowing the evils of the Nazis to be uncomfortably psychologised as part of the human condition. But there are disadvantages, too. Göring is wily and smart, but hardly the manipulative Hannibal Lecter figure that Kelley imagines, and, closely supervised in his bare cell, is too obviously desperate and pathetic to be, as Kelley claims, right where he wants to be.  

Similarly, Kelley’s centrality requires that he appear to play a more essential role in the workings and outcome of the trial than he really did. Perhaps this reflects Kelley’s own narcissistic world view and his sense of self-importance, which matches Göring’s own.

When Russell Crowe’s Göring claims that Hitler’s appeal was in his promise to restore national greatness, and his othering of convenient scapegoats, the statement comes with obvious resonance. Similarly, Kelley’s final assessment that every nation (expressly including America) and every person has the capacity to enact or submit to Nazi-like authoritarianism serves as both contemporary critique and warning. So not only is Vanderbilt’s film much less dramatically inert and more entertaining than Rintels’ series, but it also has, and fully exploits, the advantages of its own political timing. 

► Nuremberg is in UK cinemas now.