DRAMA; 2hr 28min
STARRING: Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon
Burden of proof: Malek (left) and Crowe
In the post–World War II of 1945, US Army psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley (Malek) is tasked with the supremely unenviable mission of evaluating the mental fitness of the captured members of the Nazi High Command to stand trial as war criminals in Nuremberg, Germany. Chief among his subjects is the late Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring (Crowe), a wily behemoth with a narcissist’s inflated sense of invincibility.
For an embodiment of depravity, with his quick intelligence and affable twinkle, HG is paradoxically easy to like. This leaves Dr Kelley — no slouch in the perception stakes himself — feeling his hazardous way through the dangerous ground between professional rapport and a genuine human relationship.
Adapted by writer-director James Vanderbilt (Truth) from Jack El-Hai’s 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, the first two acts of this inside story set the scene for a courtroom confrontation by homing in on the international political jockeying necessary to pull the unprecedented trials together. If the evangelical zeal of US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson (Shannon) is pivotal to that patience-testing process, Dr Kelley’s own ethical jockeying with his evasive patient is no less critical. “What I did, I did for my country,” Göring smugly proclaims, while denying all knowledge of killings at Nazi work camps. “Tell me you would not do the same for yours.”
The courtroom in which Justice Jackson’s “first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world” takes place has been re-created with the accuracy that duty of care demands. The entire production is just as impressive, cloaked in its tragic weight of history and anchored by the commitment of a commanding cast. But what truly hits home is the actual concentration camp footage. Played in court, indelible and terrible, its images speak the condemning volumes that six million victims could not.
