Nuremberg is a historic town. For the uninitiated, it is a town in Germany that was primarily infamous and famous for the same reason. It had great pertinence to the Holy Roman Empire and was thus pontificated by the Nazi regime, who chose this city to host their grand conventions and rallies.
Hitler convened the Reichstag at Nuremberg to pass the doctrine that revoked German citizenship for all Jews and other non-Aryans. This is also the city where, post–World War II, the trials for the remaining leaders of the Nazi Party were held. It was a historic trial, the first of its kind. Trying war criminals who had committed heinous crimes in various lands and nations had no legal precedent. There were no laws to try them under, for they were aggressors in multiple nations. It was thus decided that special laws would be drafted — special international laws — and thus the party members were tried under them.
The biggest, or the highest, official from the Reich to be tried in this trial was Hermann Göring, the Reich Marshal of the Third Reich. He was second in command to Hitler and drew the highest amount of attention. I don’t want to get into the details, but he was a bad, bad man who did heinous things. From drafting and passing inhuman laws to ordering a final solution, this man is probably stationed in hell with his head dipped in a swimming pool of sewage.
I bring all this up to talk about Nuremberg, the film. Being a World War II nut, I was aware of this history for much of my adult and adolescent life. Needless to say, I was really excited to see the film. Rich source material, a great cast, and a boundless budget. Nothing could go wrong, right? Aha!
The final product was mediocre. Never have I seen a film go off the rails due to one miscast and surprisingly dodgy writing. It’s not Russell Crowe or Michael Shannon, whom I absolutely adore, but this recently over-pedestalized, Oscar-winning actor, Rami Malek. What on earth was that? Rami Malek plays the main character, Douglas Kelly, the psychiatrist who’s brought in to evaluate and study the psyche of the Nazi top brass.
Needless to say, his transition from Mr. Robot to Mr. Human to Mr. Doctor has not worked out. In every bloody role, from James Bond to this, we get the same Rami Malek — the googly-eyed, disoriented, clueless buffoon who finds comfort in solitude but is forced to interact due to his plot role.
Just like Jack Nicholson in his later years, no one for a second believes that Rami Malek has played anything but himself. And the writing — oh, the writing , there are so many inconsistencies with the world that’s been portrayed. Spoiler alert: the scene where the psychiatrist confronts the subject for being an evil, evil person and calls him out for being a fiend — this just does not happen in real life. That’s just lazy writing.
I’m referring to the scene where it is, for the first time, revealed that the concentration camps were more vile and more heinous than initially thought. Pretending as if the psychiatrist’s inputs were in any way helpful in determining the judgment of the case was a reach. Let’s be real.
In the end, it is also hinted or, rather therportrayed that Kelly falls into alcoholism and his eventual suicide due to the failure of his book and other professional contributions. That’s another bit of lazy writing. There’s simply not enough precedent established in the film for me to be convinced, or for an average audience to be convinced, that this is something he would be capable of.
Overall, much like Oppenheimer, it is a gross romanticization of events. They may have been alluring to the uninitiated. However, as is the latest trend, mass-produced films have just become fraught with attempts at finding, well, the final solution.