It’s central flaw for me and at least one other viewer can be summed up in the headline that other viewer gave his IMDb review: ‘A missed opportunity for a deeper psychological dive’. Oddly that reviewer then gave the film a 7/10, presumably because in other ways she or he rated the film. Frankly, that is praising the food cooked for a meal because the cutlery set out to enjoy that meal is rather good.
One rule of thumb I have evolved over the years of watching films, especially Tinseltown films, is that the film’s score invariably defines what kind of film it is and what its target audience is.
A film score can often make or break a film – watch a ‘horror’ movie with sound down and all the horror goes AWOL. More than once French composer Michel Legrand was recruited by worried producers to rescue a film when they realised the score they had was not ‘working’, and Legrand did so at remarkable speed.
Working that rule – and here it works well – places Nuremberg well and truly in the tray marked ‘Middlebrow Fodder’. If I were brutal – but it’s Sunday morning, I’m drinking coffee and otherwise feeling mellow – I might
even describe the film as ‘two-dimensional middlebrow fodder’. Many will love it but don’t let that kid you.
Writer and director James Vanderbilt’s movie scores technically on all levels, and the various actors from Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon, Colin Hanks to John Slattery and – certainly not least – Britain’s Leo Woodall earn their keep but they give jobbing performances and none is in an way stretched artistically because Vanderbilt script is poor.
A script is not just ‘the words the actors’ say, it is far, far more, but Vanderbilt almost seems to cut corners in all respects.
Working that rule – and here it works well – places Nuremberg well and truly in the tray marked ‘Middlebrow Fodder’. If I were brutal – but it’s Sunday morning, I’m drinking coffee and otherwise feeling mellow – I might
Writer and director James Vanderbilt’s movie scores technically on all levels, and the various actors from Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon, Colin Hanks to John Slattery and – certainly not least – Britain’s Leo Woodall earn their keep but they give jobbing performances and none is in an way stretched artistically because Vanderbilt script is poor.
A script is not just ‘the words the actors’ say, it is far, far more, but Vanderbilt almost seems to cut corners in all respects.
He sets off hares in several directions then forgets about them. The ‘discussions’ between Hermann Göring (Crowe) and Dr Douglas Kelley (Malek), the psychologist tasked to evaluate him, the ‘moral dilemma’ of Justice Jackson (Shannon) on the ethics trying the Nazis and the ‘revelation’ by Kelley’s interpreter US Sergeant Howie Triest (Woodall) are one of the film’s two-dimensional aspects.
The introduction of several characters, including Göring’s second wife Emmy (Lotte Verbeek) and especially journalist Lila McQuaide (Lydia Peckham) are wholly inconsequential to pointless. It even occurred to me that Vanderbilt had shot more scenes which might have fleshed out this or that aspect of the film, the film was cut back and these were left on the editing room floor. Who knows?
Perhaps one small but telling detail of the film that betrays Nuremberg was made primarily as entertainment for the masses than anything more serious was having Göring’s widow and crowds of Germans in the street outside the courtroom building listening to the trial proceedings live.
‘Anything more serious’ I say? Well, yes. Hitler and the Nazis’ slaughter of five millions Jews, political opponents, the mentally ill, gypsies and homosexuals was certainly not unprecedented in history. In modern times Josef Stalin provided the template when he manufactured a famine in Ukraine to subdue its farmers who were resisting collectivisation programme. A little earlier the Turks massacred an estimated 1.5 million Armenians.
But the Nazis’ ‘final solution’ and those who were responsible needed and still needs far more serious treatment, analysis and investigation than is provided by Nuremberg. Should it really, as here, be the object of just over two hours of ‘easy listening’ entertainment for the masses?
The introduction of several characters, including Göring’s second wife Emmy (Lotte Verbeek) and especially journalist Lila McQuaide (Lydia Peckham) are wholly inconsequential to pointless. It even occurred to me that Vanderbilt had shot more scenes which might have fleshed out this or that aspect of the film, the film was cut back and these were left on the editing room floor. Who knows?
Perhaps one small but telling detail of the film that betrays Nuremberg was made primarily as entertainment for the masses than anything more serious was having Göring’s widow and crowds of Germans in the street outside the courtroom building listening to the trial proceedings live.
‘Anything more serious’ I say? Well, yes. Hitler and the Nazis’ slaughter of five millions Jews, political opponents, the mentally ill, gypsies and homosexuals was certainly not unprecedented in history. In modern times Josef Stalin provided the template when he manufactured a famine in Ukraine to subdue its farmers who were resisting collectivisation programme. A little earlier the Turks massacred an estimated 1.5 million Armenians.
But the Nazis’ ‘final solution’ and those who were responsible needed and still needs far more serious treatment, analysis and investigation than is provided by Nuremberg. Should it really, as here, be the object of just over two hours of ‘easy listening’ entertainment for the masses?
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