A Trial Without Tension: How The Movie ‘Nuremberg’ Fumbles Its Own Case
(REVIEW) Holocaust movies have long had a firm place in American cinema. It’s no wonder since they naturally lead to stories with clear lines of good and evil — giving strong moral lessons that reinforce values Americans hold dear such as freedom and equality.
From “Schindler’s List” (1993) to “Life Is Beautiful” (1997), “The Pianist” (2002), “Son of Saul” (2015) and “The Zone of Interest” (2023), the genre has remained constant. The past couple of years have been no different, with films ranging from Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Company’s “White Bird” to Angel Studios’ “Bonhoeffer” and “Truth & Treason,” to Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut “Eleanor the Great,” and smaller indie faith-based films like “Triumph of the Heart.” Even many movies not directly about the Holocaust — such as “The Brutalist” and “Guns & Moses” — deal with its legacy.
“Nuremberg” tries to claim a spot in this lineup, with an impressive cast, stoic moral gravity, and strong lessons for the present day. But while the pieces are there, the sloppiness of the execution betrays the increasing fragility of the secular religion it tries to reinforce.
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Based on the 2013 book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist” by Jack El-Hai, “Nuremberg” follows U.S. Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (played by Rami Malek) as he carries out an assignment to investigate and monitor the mental status of Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) and other high-ranking Nazis in preparation for and during the Nuremberg trials. As the trials begin, Kelley becomes locked in a dramatic psychological showdown with Göring, trying to prevent him from using the proceedings to restore the Nazi image on the world stage.
The film boasts an impressive cast. Malek believably plays a brilliant man who is simultaneously cocky and insecure, but guided by strong moral intuitions. Crowe is convincing as a charming, charismatic man capable of both great evil and great vulnerability. The supporting ensemble fills out the cast nicely. Michael Shannon yells and grinds his teeth entertainingly through his many speeches. Richard E. Grant is delightfully charming. And John Slattery brings a relaxed gravitas to every scene.
The film treats its subject matter with a grave, stoic reverence that feels refreshingly old-fashioned in its approach to historical drama. Serious people speak seriously about the serious matters they face — whether it’s the Holocaust, the stakes of the trial or the nature of evil. The lighting and camerawork are consciously dramatic yet restrained, allowing the story and events to speak for themselves. And the events are fascinating, from the political intrigue behind forming the trials to the growing frenemyship between Kelley and Göring.
But the film never figures out exactly which of these threads it wants to follow. Is it about the relationship between Kelley and Göring? The trials themselves? The nature of evil and whether the Nazis were unique or not unique? Is it trying to educate viewers about Holocaust history, or say something new about it? The movie jumps back and forth between Kelley and Göring’s scenes and ones following the legal development of the trial, with neither thread given room to breathe or develop beyond surface-level treatment.
Take Kelley and Göring. “Nuremberg” sets up their story as a cat-and-mouse psychological chess match in which each man tries to gain the other’s trust while gaining the upper hand. As they attempt to outmaneuver — and understand — each other, their mutual respect grows. Yet the film shows almost no actual back-and-forth manipulation, no truly deep conversations, and the final confrontation does not even take place between them; Kelley simply sits on the sidelines watching.
We are told that Kelley emerges with deep insight into the Nazis from his time with Göring. But I couldn’t tell you what that insight was. His final statement on American radio — that the Nazis are narcissists who want power — is exactly what he said about Göring within seconds of meeting him. So what was the point of the rest of their conversations? As Göring said, the inkblot tests told him nothing.
This makes film’s presentation feel extremely — for lack of a better word — basic. When a story is well-executed making the filmmaking invisible can work, but when it’s not, it feels boring. The lighting and camerawork fall into extremely standard shot/reverse-shot patterns. The dialogue is all text, no subtext. Every other line is a speech about why the Nazis are bad, offering the insight of an average second-grade textbook. And every joke feels like a relic from the 1990s.
What does get time to breathe? Anything reminding us of how bad the Nazis were. The film devotes long stretches to documentary footage of concentration camps. It gives generous time to a soldier describing how his family was victimized by the Nazis. And it ends with Kelley trying in vain to warn the American public that what happened in Nazi Germany could happen here.
This makes “Nuremberg” feel more like a sermon than a movie. It is less concerned with providing insight than with repeatedly hammering home the “right” lesson.
This makes sense. As many have noted, as Western culture has become more secular, it has developed new cultural scripts and symbols for defining good and evil. British historian Alec Ryrie pointed out in an article in First Things that Hitler has become the modern world’s reference point for moral meaning:
“We still believe that Jesus is good—but not with the fervor and conviction with which we believe that Nazism is evil… The swastika packs a far greater punch. … Play or joke with that, and you make yourself a monster.”
Culture critic Jonathan Pageau has made a similar point: Hitler functions as our modern-day devil.
“Not only is Hitler the devil,” Pageau argues, “he’s worse than the devil. If I call you a devil, you might get annoyed. But if I call you Hitler, you might punch me.”
Hitler is conceived as “the worst thing that humanity has ever imagined,” he added.
World War II and the evil of Nazism became the fundamental myth of the modern West. How do you know what evil is? It resembles anything associated with Hitler: Totalitarianism, racism and bigotry. How do you know what good is? It resembles whatever opposed him: Freedom, tolerance and equality. Religion can be good if it supports these things, but bad if it hinders them.
We see this laid out in the conversation chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) has with the pope when he tries to convince him to support the Nuremberg trials. Jackson wants the pope’s moral authority to give the trials legitimacy. But the pope refuses. He asks Jackson if he’s religious. Jackson says no. The pope asks what he believes in. Jackson says he believes in man and the institutions man builds. The pope points out that Jackson is willing to circumvent those very institutions to get what he wants, and so he declines. Jackson reminds the pope that he stood by when the Jews needed him and essentially blackmails him by threatening that history will remember the Catholic Church that way. The pope then agrees to support the trials.
Here we see the establishment of secular humanism — the concept of “human rights” rather than Christianity — as the dominant religion of our age. And it happened because Christianity failed to stop Hitler, but a coalition of Allied forces, united not by faith but by their opposition to Nazism, succeeded.
But it is a fragile religion, built on mythologizing humanity as avatars of good and evil in a way real humans cannot sustain. As Pageau points out, making Hitler the devil is untenable because “the devil is the incarnation of everything evil in the world. Hitler is a very particular manifestation of that evil in a very particular place. And so there’s no way he can play that role forever.”
Comedian Trevor Noah similarly notes in his book “Born a Crime” that Hitler is only the incarnation of evil in the Western world. In places like Africa —where Noah is from — there are figures considered far worse.
“In Europe and America, yes, Hitler is the Greatest Madman in History. In Africa, he's just another strongman from the history books,” he added.
And, of course, we see this myth breaking apart. From rising left- and right-wing antisemitism to a proliferation of “postliberal” ideologies — including Christian nationalism — a thousand alternatives to the modern liberal order are emerging. All wildly different, but united in rejecting the “postwar consensus.”
“Nuremberg” ends with Kelley desperately warning Americans that they are every bit as capable of becoming new Nazis as the Germans were. Essentially, he warns them of their vulnerability to the devil. The film seems almost desperate for us to fear the potential Nazis in our midst. But even here, we see hints of why this mythologizing is collapsing. We have had hundreds of Kelleys every year since the Nazis became moral archetypes — voices warning that “those people,” the ones we happen to disagree with, are Nazis. Eventually, the label loses its meaning, or people begin to suspect that maybe the Nazis weren’t uniquely evil after all.
“Nuremberg” wants to reaffirm the secular mythology of the post–World War II West — one it rightly sees as a bulwark against both modern and ancient evils. But its bland and lackluster execution feels almost eerily appropriate as that ideology begins to collapse under its own weight. Hopefully, the next cultural religion is not far worse.
“Nuremberg” is playing now in theaters.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.