NUREMBERG (2000) – Evil fascinates

When World War 2 ended, the Allies decided to put all the top Nazi leadership on trial. The “undertrials” would be given the best of “Western” justice – the very kind of justice that they had denied to most, if not all, their victims in the countries occupied by them. The trial of the top Nazi leaders was a prolonged affair, with almost all of them pleading “Not Guilty”. After all, they were only “following orders.

Nuremberg(2000) is a 2-part TV movie, available as one 3-hour movie on YouTube that delves into this complex war-crime trial.

https://youtu.be/f7p7DDihpvQ

Keeping the focus on Goering is a clever script device, as it would be impossible to tell the story through all the surviving Nazis. The Nazi Armaments Minister, Albert Speer, was the only one who admitted to some of the crimes. It would have made an exciting viewpoint if the script had pitted Goering and Speer against each other. Rudolf Hess, the other Nazi who had fled to England in 1941 to the UK, supposedly to negotiate a separate peace before the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, is only a peripheral figure in this drama.

So who was Goering? A sybaritic buffoon who wore loud uniforms? A pompous leader who had lost almost all his power by the war’s end? The drug addict given to boasts of wonder weapons?

All these aspects of Goering’s life are conspicuous by their absence. Yet we seem to know more about Goering than any other leader since – as already mentioned – he is used to examine the overall Nazi power structure and the inside story of how Nazi Germany became a criminal nation, indulging in war crimes.

However, back to the TV movie. What does it suffer from? Simple. The staple of many good versus evil stories. The evil Nazis are led by the fat – oh so fat – Hermann Goering (Brian Cox). The Allies brief the handsome – oh so handsome – Justice Robert Jackson (Alec Baldwin). Justice Jackson is all that is symptomatic of the victorious Allies – handsome, decent and law-abiding, which is in direct contrast to the loathsome Hermann Goering. Goering is given to boasting a “larger than life” self-image which he meticulously cultivates to connect to his American captors and passes off all the atrocities as nothing but by-products of war. The film unfortunately also feels like a typical “courtroom” drama where the handsome lead actor usually gets the nasty villain to confess. By browbeating him. Shouting at him. And so on.

However, the film is true to the real history as it happened. As Justice Jackson drills Goering relentlessly, citing evidence after evidence, Goering – like all good brainwashed Nazis – denies everything and counterattacks, Jackson.

One would think that Supreme Court Justices would be older and not as handsome or young as Alec Baldwin, who – inevitably – has a young female assistant to give that non-existent romantic frisson. Goering baits Jackson repeatedly, but hey – you can’t mess with American Justice, can you? (In reality, Justice Jackson made quite some goofs and lost his composure whenever Goering baited him, but the script tells you otherwise).

So what’s great about the film? Simple. Brian Cox, as Goering, makes evil fascinating to watch. It’s a masterclass in acting, and it is impossible to dismiss Cox’s performance as the typical villainous carpet chewing. Cox has got under the character’s skin, and he IS Goering in his various shades. Cox eats the cast for breakfast and then some. His Goering is genuinely fascinating, and you wonder how it is that ordinary decent Germans fell victim to Nazi ideology. You then know they were seduced – as Goering here seduces the entire court. One of the best lines about the nature of evil is said by one of the American lawyers, as a lack of empathy. It is an excellent definition.

The rest of the film has all the typical stereotyped characters – Allied lawyers hemming and hawing, the obligatory Jewish lawyer assigned to the task and told to be balanced, the troublesome Russians, the unrepentant Nazis – all these were, of course, real.

Goering was unrepentant till the end. He cheated the hangman, committing suicide by biting a hidden cyanide capsule.

Watch it to see how evil can seduce.

Real History – 3 out of 5

Equipment / Kit – 4 out of 5

Locations/substitutes – 3 out of 5

Masala elements – 2 out of 5

Total – 3 out of 5