Movie Review
The short form review is that this is a movie people should see. It's well done and it shows a part of history that we need to keep remembering. It's not a typical "Nazis are bad" kind of thing. Yes. We all know how it ends. Good storytelling is all about how you get to that ending and this is mostly good storytelling.
I didn't know this was based on a book until I saw it in the opening credits. The characters in the movie are based on real people. This is not - and I repeat not - a documentary. A number of reviews are nitpicking things like language, knowledge of events, etc. If you're a purist, you're going to have the same issues. Accept it or not.
The main character here is Hermann Göring. Second to him is who is probably meant to be the main character Dr. Douglas Kelley as the psychiatrist who's in Nuremberg prison to make sure all the prisoners are mentally fit to stand trial. Russell Crowe takes over this movie, which casts a shadow over Rami Malek. Rami tries and does a decent job of holding up his end of the story, I'll give him that.
But on to the movie itself.
The opening is great. It's also historically accurate. Hermann Göring surrenders to an American force, and tells them to get his luggage out of the car. After that things slow down considerably.
There's debate over what to do with the captured German high command. The prevailing attitude is to just shoot them and be done with it. But US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson wants more - he wants legal justice. Of course there's no precedent for it and this is where the movie bogs down. These parts are interspersed with what's going on in the prison so it makes for uneven pacing.
The "how do we do this and make legal history" part has to be slow, because it was slow. In short, the justice has to convince the US command, then get the rest of the allies on board. No one thought it would work. Heck, even he had his doubts. The Russians were the last to give in and at least make a show trial of it. This kind of thing simply can't be exciting. It can't. It's necessary to set it up but it's more the times when it's safe to take a bathroom break.
The trailer scene with Colonel Burton C. Andrus saying "Welcome to Nuremberg" has to do with the prison, not the trials. The movie expands on that by telling them the conditions of their imprisonment (bleak) and that they don't get any special privileges as captured officers under the Geneva Conventions because they aren't captured officers. The rather smartly done methods to prevent suicide are explained as well.
The battle of wits between Göring and Dr. Kelley, and the battle of everything between Dr. Kelley and prison commander Colonel Burton C. Andrus take up the slack.
Note here - Colonel Burton C. Andrus is not a pleasant man. Not at all. He's the one who sets the rules at the prison and he's not at all hesitant to enforce them or make new rules as needed. He's not happy about having the psychiatrist there since he sees the prisoners as being held until they're found guilty. But he'll follow his orders.
Where the movie falls flat is trying to show why Göring and Dr. Kelley would become friendly-ish, not that they did do it. The movie makes a reference to the prisoners wanting to talk and Dr. Kelley is more of a neutral listening board than anyone else there. Actually, he's the only one they're allowed to talk to more or less. But they do this to build up how much Göring is a smart opportunist and someone that is going to be a problem to corner in the trial.
Another psychiatrist is brought in to examine the prisoners and there's friction between the two doctors. The new one is immediately talking about how he's planning on writing a book about this and eventually Dr. Kelley admits he's been working on getting the material for one too. There's a tentative agreement to write one together. The new doctor brings in the conflict of someone who's there for the opportunity to talk to the famous Nazis while he still can, while Dr. Kelley is shown as someone who cares for what he considers his patients.
Dr. Kelley warns the justice that he's not going to win against Göring. He's also been asked/told to share anything the prisoners say that will help him win. This brings out the ethical dilemma of Dr. Kelley vs Colonel (I think that was his rank at the time) Kelley. It's pointed out that since his command has been reading his reports there is no violation of doctor-patient confidentiality. Seems he didn't think of that one.
He gains, and then loses, Göring's trust. First by not telling him that his wife and daughter were arrested, then by passing along what he meant to do at the start of the trial. So it's not just sitting out there - his wife was arrested in connection with art theft and the daughter was sent to "the nuns" since she didn't have any parents to take her in. Dr. Kelley lied about it, the other psychiatrist brought it up as a casual aside with a smarmy "Didn't he tell you?".
There's a little scene where Dr. Kelley confronts the prison commander about this, saying "It's not who we are". Later it turns out the commander agreed and worked to have them freed. Adds a touch of humanity to the commander.
There was a suicide by someone who was determined to do it. Given the method anyone could have done this and even after they tightened up the surveillance it could have been done. It just took someone with courage and determination.
The second loss of trust is when Dr. Kelley tells the justice that Göring is going to read a statement before the trial truly starts. When he's asked to enter his plea he starts and one of the tribunal judges shuts him down saying they'll only be able to make statements before sentencing. To be honest that's a bit of a stretch in blaming Dr. Kelley because it's more procedural than anything and none of them wanted to be subject to hearing pre-trial statements from all the defendants. But they made it a betrayal.
Anyhoo. The American justice is running as primary and uses the mountain of documents as his prime material for the trial. Turns out, Göring is a slippery son of a bitch and catches him up on the foundation of his prosecution. The British barrister steps up and rescues him, forcing Göring into an admission that he was doing more than following orders and did know more than he was saying he knew.
Note - they used actual concentration camp footage in the movie trial. It's tough to watch and they didn't spare the horror of what happened. They showed a little too much, in my opinion. It went from gravitas to gratuitous. Not to say that it wasn't horrible, just that they chose to use too much footage. Pacing again.
By the time the trial starts Dr. Kelley has been kicked out of the military for talking to a reporter and only stuck around for the opening of the trial, most likely at the behest of the American justice since I doubt just anyone could get into the courtroom. He forced his way in to see the American justice rather than leaving after being told he was discharged, and told him that he's not going to win using his strategy, then gave him all his notes to use anything there to help him in the trial. Obviously it didn't help him, but if the British barrister read them it did help him. They give him back his notes after that scene in the trial.
I won't leave you hanging, although it was tempting. Early in the movie Dr. Kelley asks Göring why he joined the party. He said he saw Hitler talk above a beer hall and what he said made sense, that he gave hope to Germans after the Treaty of Versailles. He joined immediately. The British barrister got Göring to admit on the stand that he'd still follow Hitler, if he could. That was him admitting that he did know what was going on and was a part of it, which he'd done a very good job of slipping out of in the American justice's questioning. Dr. Kelley took the credit for it, saying he knew that Göring would never betray Hitler.
The movie skips over the trials themselves. The high point was tripping up Göring and the movie didn't need anything after that.
Since it's history I can say that Göring was able to suicide by cyanide capsule just before his execution. This was a real wrench in the works because he was the prize and he took his own way out. They had a brief "what do we do now?" moment then went ahead with the rest of the executions. All the bodies are shown in a cart being taken away. It's not said in the movie but I'll tidy it up here. They were cremated and dumped in the local river to prevent future monuments.
They do show one execution by hanging and it was done more to follow a narrative and for shock value than to add anything to the story, in my opinion. It also shows that whoever was doing the execution didn't know how to properly be a hangman, as the records do show. But I digress on that point.
In the end this is a movie about Hermann Göring, not Dr. Douglas Kelley. The Academy is going to have a really tough time dealing with how to reconcile what I think is an award-winning performance by Russell Crowe with who he portrayed. I also don't know if he'll be presented as a lead or supporting actor. Regardless it will be interesting to see what they do with him.
The movie ends with Dr. Kelley on the promotion circuit for the book he wrote and drunkenly saying how the Nazis weren't different from anyone else, that everyone has the same capability in them to do these things, that fascism sneaks up on you, etc. His views are not popular. This was before the experiments that show he was right about situation and people doing terrible things to other people if they're ordered/allowed to.
The timing on releasing this movie and the themes are very much timely as to the current situation in America. They go a bit heavy handed on that one without going off script too much. While it's true that the real Dr. Kelley said these things it's far too coincidental that they're part of this movie as well. Funny how a movie about how Nazis are bad uses some of their propaganda techniques itself.
The Book
If you're not into the minutia of the Rorschach Test then this book is not for you. There's a scene in the movie of Dr. Kelley performing the test on several prisoners but for fuck's sake does this book go into how much he absolutely loves the test, who else loves the test, who's a proponent of the test, the history of the test, how the test works, where the test should be used, etc.
The short version here is that Dr. Kelley used the Nazi prisoners as lab rats to try to find a way to identify evil via psychiatry. Most of what he did was not to deal with the prisoners' mental status for trial but for his own research for the book he fully intended to write from the beginning. He did get closer to Göring than any of the other prisoners but Göring was also the most well-known and therefore most marketable prisoner. And to be honest he was the most interesting of the bunch.
The book spends more time on various prisoners and what their mental states were, or at least what he perceived them to be. When the new doctor showed up, that doctor gave different interpretations. Which led to Colonel Andrus being sick of them both. Other psychiatrists and psychologists of various Allied nationalities also had their chances to talk to and examine the prisoners. It was a veritable revolving door of mental health professionals at that prison.
Colonel Andrus deserves a bit more explanation than just being a hard-ass. He was a career military prison administrator who didn't fool around. His job was to enforce discipline and that's what he did. In Nuremberg the prisoners weren't allowed to talk, were on a rigid schedule, were subject to thorough cell searches often, and he would rotate mealtime seating to prevent cliques and potential disruptions. Anything that interfered with the efficient running of his prison was dealt with. For the record he did help Göring's wife and daughter but by having the daughter brought to where her mother was imprisoned, not by getting them freed. The movie got it half right.
The movie had Dr. Kelley taking letters back and forth between Göring and his wife/daughter. This didn't happen. Not at all. Dr. Kelley had no real interest in anything but the prisoners and what he could get from them while he could.
Dr. Kelley asked for transfer once the trial started. He'd gotten everything he could and wasn't interested in the trial itself. He wasn't discharged. He got promoted before leaving the service and went into private practice.
When he left Germany he took all his notes, his souvenirs (he was getting prisoners to autograph copies of their books, that he looted from a local library), and copies of the other doctor's notes. The other doctor was upset about all this. He had to find employment and was kind of full of himself, thinking that his role at Nuremberg had more weight than it did back in civilian life. He also did work on his book but it wasn't a success either.
He had a lecture circuit and settled into criminology since it was something new and he felt that he had a unique insight into it, due to Nuremberg. He milked that for as long as he could and sometimes longer. He settled into teaching and lecturing police departments on using testing, such as the Rorschach Test, on new recruits. He kept those roles for most of his life.
He did talk about how there was no real difference between the Nazi command and anyone else. That's a true thing. He lectured on it. He believed it. And later, after his death, the famous Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgrim experiment proved him right that people will do terrible things if they're given the opportunity to do so.
Dr. Kelley committed suicide, taking cyanide. Kind of ironic but that's what he did. It wasn't a capsule but for some reason he had it in his house.
The book paints a very different picture than the movie. Dr. Kelley is not a likeable person. He was in an unhealthy marriage and was an uncaring, abusive parent. He was out for fame and did whatever he felt he needed to do to get it. The fact that the other doctor's book, and subsequent second book, did do well was probably another reason he took the paths he did.
The book also doesn't paint as pretty of a picture of Göring either. The book has him as more of a petty tyrant who needed constant approval rather than the scheming and composed temporarily inconvenienced man the movie portrays.
The myth that the bodies were cremated at Dachau, which was then torn town, is just that - a myth. They were cremated at a local cemetery. The ashes being scattered in the local river was true and the reason of not wanting a central focus for future neo-Nazis was true. It's why Hitler's bunker is a parking lot. They really did do their best to remove centers for potential martyrs.
I did try to find a way to read the book the real Dr. Kelley wrote but that's in various rare book libraries since it didn't sell well and the publisher didn't print all that many copies. If I could have found it to read I would have, just to contrast it with the movie and this book. But alas, it's not to be.
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