The film “Nuremberg”, based on Jack El-Hai’s book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist”, has opened in international release. It revisits the tribunal that began on November 20, 1945, where 24 Nazi leaders stood trial. Twelve were later sentenced to death by hanging, seven received life sentences or long prison terms, three were acquitted, two died by suicide, and the case against Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was dropped because of severe illness.
The article notes that Nuremberg was chosen deliberately: Nazi Party congresses had been held there since 1927, and in 1935 the city gave its name to the racial laws that pushed Jews out of German public life. The tribunal itself, along with subsequent trials through 1949, helped lay the foundations of postwar international law and introduced genocide and crimes against humanity into legal practice.
The new film centers on two figures: Hermann Goering, played by Russell Crowe, and American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, played by Rami Malek. After the deaths of Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels, Goering is the highest-ranking Nazi left among the defendants, while Kelley is brought in to determine whether the prisoners are fit to stand trial.
The film combines two distinct strands. One is a large-scale legal and political drama about preparing an unprecedented court proceeding, with U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson and his allies playing key roles. The other is the psychological confrontation between Goering and Kelley, presented as a duel between two highly skilled manipulators.
In the reviewer’s view, that second strand gives the film its greatest force. Crowe’s Goering keeps changing masks: charming conversationalist, commanding leader, devoted father. Malek’s Kelley works more subtly, holding pauses, listening closely, inspiring trust, and quietly drawing out the admissions and emotions he needs.
At the same time, the film does not stop at the familiar formula of evil being punished. Its central conclusion is darker: even Nuremberg is not enough to eliminate forever the possibility of such figures returning. The final emphasis falls on the idea that people like Goering have not disappeared and may be waiting for another moment to rise again, even within democratic societies.