On the banks of the Begnitz River and with some of Germany’s most emblematic and enchanting bridges, Nuremberg can be considered a model of an ideal Bavarian city. However, it was there that Nazi leaders were tried for their crimes in a process that established international criminal law, and it was there that cinema became evidence for a trial for the first time. The film about what remained of the horrors of the extermination camps shocked the world 80 years ago, and may have determined each of the 13 death sentences (plus three life sentences). Perhaps for this reason, and because of the contradiction that always surrounds any great discovery, few cities represent horror at its most hideous in its unchanging beauty. james vanderbilt new movie, Nurembergtalks about all this. It recreates the most famous and decisive trial in modern history, but it does so with great attention to each of its paradoxes. And only the established starting point is surprising: the novel’s hero, played by Rami Malek, is the psychiatrist responsible for deciding whether Hermann Goering (played with an over-the-top gesture by Russell Crowe) was in his right mind to do and permit what he does and permits.
“My initial interest arose not so much from the history, in capital letters, as from the point of view of telling it,” the director says of Jacques Hay’s book on which the film is based. He continues: “We must not neglect that it is a true story. Dr. Douglas Kelly was assigned to determine whether the defendants were competent to stand trial. It was important to know whether or not there was individual responsibility and whether they were aware of their actions although they could always rely on the principle of due obedience… But the really interesting thing is that the material allowed us to get into the deepest part of the monster. “Such an approach was never used to address World War II or the years that followed.”
The film is actually presented as a psychological duel between the psychiatrist and the former Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe. The idea is to trace the precise threshold at which madness becomes evil, and vice versa. The director is, in his own way, an expert in this field. We must not forget that this is a scenario that is perhaps the best film of recent times dedicated to revealing the dark mechanisms that operate in the mind of the greatest and most mysterious killers. ZodiacWritten by David Fincher, signed. “We tend to believe that society learns from its mistakes, and that the atrocities of the past are somehow not repeated today. However, the limits of what we are capable of do not seem to change over time. In certain situations, humans are capable of taking the most extreme actions over and over again. “The human condition seems to be the same,” Vanderbilt muses, stitching together the past, present, and who knows if the near future.
The Nuremberg Trials were relevant for many reasons. The most obvious of all concerns the birth of international criminal law. But apart from the legal formalities, many of which are not exempt from controversy (the charges against the accused were only defined as “crimes” after they had been committed, for example), what is fundamental in the opinion of the director and his film relates, specifically, to our days. “We are talking about countries that may then become enemies,” he says. The United States and Russia were at the beginning of the Cold War, yet they both decided to choose justice over revenge. The story of Attorney General Robert Jackson, Michael Shannon’s character, is incredible. In the United States he is a footnote, but he was a man on the Supreme Court who faced off against the army that wanted to execute all Nazi leaders. He stood up and said: “We cannot turn the elimination of an already surrendered army into another act of war.” The army said it was a bad idea to prosecute the men for following orders, but he insisted. He even took a leave of absence from the Supreme Court, risking his career, to become Attorney General. In short, he insisted on putting justice before revenge, which is the truly heroic part of this whole story that concerns us all now.
But not only that. For the first time, cinema was used as evidence, and before the horrified eyes of the world, the only possible images of extermination camps were shown: the image of piled-up corpses. He continues: “That is why we decided to use real images in our film. Even the audio narration is the same as the story of the trial. There is nothing entertaining. I remember that in Winners or losersStanley Kramer’s 1961 film about the same conspiracy, has the prosecutor narrating via footage. I wanted, in a way, to pay tribute to cinema itself, to its crucial function, which is also moral. “We only showed six minutes, while the trial was about an hour of film.”
Vanderbilt asserts that the wounds of the past are the same as those of the present, and without daring to draw more parallels than are just and appropriate, he cannot help but issue a final warning, which is also a warning. “It’s terrifying how we’ve shortened our attention spans. We spend more time looking at our phones than looking at the sky. We want everything quick and easy. And in this perfect storm we’ve gotten ourselves into, historical memory loses as much value as the concept of truth itself.” The discrediting of the press, the success of lies on social media, far-right revisionism, and the neglect of our history are all part of the same disease. It is necessary to look back. My father and grandfather told me about World War II. For younger generations, Nazism is as distant as the Middle Ages. “This cannot be,” he concludes.
Nuremberg, an idyllic city, a trial in the darkest of times, and now a very dark film on its way to a very impressive Oscars win. Everything is very contradictory.