EXCLUSIVE: The Nuremberg trials, where officials of the Nazi high command were put on trial for war crimes and the cruelly systematic genocidal campaign that left 5 million Jews and other groups starved and murdered, has been covered in numerous narrative films and miniseries, and documentaries.
That this dark chapter in history was well worth bringing to younger audiences became an obsession for Zodiac writer James Vanderbilt, who wrote and directed Nuremberg. He knew he needed a new way in, and though it took him 13 years to get a killer cast of actors and the money to direct the epic drama that Sony Pictures Classics world premiered Sunday at the Toronto Film Festival, Vanderbilt said he never wavered in his belief in the path provided by the 2013 Jack El-Hai book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist. The resulting film drew a rousing ovation at TIFF, a fitting start to its Oscar season rollout for all the work the filmmakers put into it.
The Nazi in the book title was Hermann Göring, who became the highest-ranking Third Reich leader after Adolf Hitler’s suicide that ended World War II. The latter was Lt. Colonel Douglas Kelley, a U.S. Army psychiatrist assigned to pre-trial evaluate Göring and other smug Nazi leaders, seeing this as a shortcut to riches and fame through the surefire bestselling book that would surely follow. Add to that the dilemma of U.S. Supreme Court Judge Robert H. Jackson, who became obsessed with prosecuting Göring so he and other caught Nazi leaders wouldn’t be martyrized with simple shootings and hangings. So convinced that exposing their crimes on a worldwide stage with a trial was the only way to expose the enormity of Reich atrocities and achieve closure, Jackson put at risk his fast track toward becoming Chief Justice. His career will essentially be over if the charmingly arrogant Göring succeeds in convincing the world that he and other Nazis were following orders and knew nothing of the devious Final Solution that was waged in secret while they were preoccupied in fighting Allied forces in WWII.
Wrestling over a decade with those rich character dilemmas got Vanderbilt an incredible roster of actors who here work at the height of their game. Russell Crowe as Göring; Rami Malek as Kelley and Michael Shannon as Jackson. Add vet Richard E. Grant as Jackson’s British prosecutor counterpart, and White Lotus’ Leo Woodall, the newcomer who was the talk of Telluride for Tuner and here plays Sgt. Howie Triest, who reveals he is more than a naïve translator being manipulated by Göring. John Slattery and Colin Hanks also shine. Among the dilemmas: how much actual footage to show of the Nazis staging mass burials of Jewish victims whose bodies were pushed into pits by bulldozer. The Nazis shot those films that played in the real Nuremberg trials, and they are as stunning and horrible than the footage Hamas terrorists shot during their heinous October 7 assault on Israelis. Vanderbilt showed enough of that real footage to frame the enormity of what took place in the camps, but didn’t belabor it to the point it would be unbearable to watch.
While he would put the script aside to do other things like make his directing debut on the Robert Redford-Cate Blanchett starrer Truth, about the downfall of CBS News legend Dan Rather, Vanderbilt used the years to research and flesh out elements of this story. Particularly with the Supreme Court judge-turned-prosecutor, whose risky journey rose in prominence to where it gets equal billing to the Nazi and the psychiatrist.
“I wanted to create something timeless, the great historical thrillers I grew up with like JFK, Apollo 13 and Glory, movies that are about really serious subjects but are entertaining,” Vanderbilt said. “You go on a ride with them, an emotional journey. It was really important for me to get that part right. And it was really important for me to get all the historical stuff.”
During that gestation, he watched Crowe’s celebrated portrayal of Roger Ailes, the man who built Fox News but also preyed on the natural ambition of aspiring young female newscaster wannabes, and surreptitiously groomed them to serve his twisted sexual desires. The complex portrayal wasn’t that far from Göring, who was the guy behind the guy atop the Nazi hierarchy who on the surface was a charming narcissist reputed to be a great dinner party guest, but was at heart a cunningly manipulative villain.
“I took a long time before I showed it to anybody,” Vanderbilt said. “And then Russell came in, right after he played Roger Ailes. He was sort of ride or die on it from that moment forward. It’s a tough movie to get made; it almost happened a couple times and then didn’t. But he stuck with it.
Russell Crowe in ‘Nuremberg’
Scott Garfield
“The other thing that happened as I sort of built it was it kept growing,” Vanderbilt said. “Jack’s book is fantastic, but it was really focused on Russell Crowe and Rami Maek’s characters. But as I did more research I learned about Robert Jackson and how this trial was build the airplane while you fly it. There was no international law, there was no nothing like that. And I was so taken by the story of a guy who’s a Supreme Court justice, who puts his career on the line to say, we have to do this. This is something that has to happen. Where the U.S. Army was saying, you want to put soldiers on trial for following orders, you think that’s a good precedent to set? When we got the Jackson character right, Russell said, ‘Shannon, man, you got to get Shannon.’ They worked together on Man of Steel and just loved each other. I told him, I’ll try.
“And then a couple years ago, Richard Saperstein called me up and said, I remember the script. I love this script. And I said, well, that’s great. I’m not really interested in optioning it. He goes, no, no, no, I want to make it. And I was like, oh, you want to make it? That’s a different conversation. Let’s do that.”
The former New Line exec formed Bluestone Entertainment as a producing/financing company, and it co-financed the film with Walden Media’s Frank Smith. With the script full of historically accurate complex characters, Vanderbilt turned it over to the stellar cast and it turned into an acting clinic, all unfolding in the drama that drew such a strong reaction last night. The culmination comes in a pivotal courtroom scene in which Jackson tries to undo the highly confident Göring’s assertion that he knew about the work camps but not how SS leader Heinrich Himmler transformed them into centers to systematically exterminate Jews and others. Like Hitler, Himmler committed suicide before he could be brought to justice, so he was an easy scapegoat for Göring.
Vanderbilt, Crowe and Shannon all decided this courtroom showdown should be done in a single take. Both actors grew up on the stage, and the result was an intense chess match between two actors known to be able to dial up the intensity, but here created a carefully calibrated chess match.
“[It was] probably one of the most challenging, thrilling and resonate days I’ve ever spent on a film set,” Crowe said. “Michael and I knew each other from Man of Steel. We did a huge fight sequence together in that one, so we had the benefit of that. We’ve been in the trenches together before, so to speak. There’s a trust and a respect. I admire him as an actor and I appreciate him as a person.
“The courtroom scene was originally scheduled to be shot over 4 days. Michael and I discussed how there didn’t seem to be natural stopping points,” Crowe said. “The scene was written like a duel, a fight sequence with concepts and philosophies as weapons. There were things to say and things to hide for both men. It had a built-in momentum to the writing, and the words allowed a myriad of opportunity. It had a kind of symphonic ambition. Even though it’s largely just a two-handed conversation, there’s a lot on the line leading to Richard E. Grant’s crescendo. We had a chat with Jamie and put forward the suggestion that we could play it as written. 17 pages in a day. I think we were giving him what he had dreamed about, and hoped for while he was writing it.
“No responsible production company is going to sensibly plan to hit a page count like that in a single day,” Crowe said. “As excited as he was about what we were suggesting, I think Jamie made some joking remark about how 17 pages in a day “isn’t humanly possible.” I deadpanned in return, “Michael and I are from Krypton.“
No responsible production company is going to sensibly plan to hit a page count like that in a single day. As excited as he was about what we were suggesting, I think Jamie made some joking remark about how 17 pages in a day ‘isn’t humanly possible.’ I deadpanned in return, ‘Michael and I are from Krypton.’
Russell Crowe
Shannon said he honed his craft in stage plays since his teens, and sparked to the chance to go toe to toe with Crowe.
“We didn’t even rehearse,” Shannon told Deadline. “We said, Jamie, let’s just turn the cameras on and see what happens. If it is a total wreck we’ll just do it again. I always beg for the first time to be on camera because I think something happens the first time you do something that just doesn’t happen again. It may be riddled with mistakes. I mean, not that I even know what those are, but the first time … it’s like most things in life, the first time is special. So I try and advocate for it to be recorded somehow. When you do that, the thing about a scene like that is that we’re both trying to catch each other off guard. So there’s an advantage to not knowing entirely what the other person’s going to do beforehand.”
That left bystanders feeling they were watching two elite boxers facing off in the ring, moving and feinting in the moment to land the knockout punch the other isn’t expecting.
“We’re both trying to trick each other,” Shannon said. “We’re both trying to get each other to lose. And so I think it’s a perfect opportunity to not rehearse and to let people kind of live and die in the moment.”
For the rest of the cast, the single take was mesmerizing.
“Running 25-minute takes with four cameras for the courtroom cross examination would be a challenge if you don’t have Russell Crowe and Michael Shannon experiencing the ebb and flow,” Vanderbilt said. “It became this verbal gunfight. Russell and I talked about how it’s a boxing match, two guys going at each other, the back and forth of it. This guy is getting over on the other one. No, now this one is winning. And letting them play that out in real time. We did that whole thing in one day. And the rest of the cast is in the courtroom because all the characters are, and I remember John Slattery afterwards going, oh, I’m in that movie. Okay, that’s the kind of movie I’m in. Okay, good. Got it.”
Malek would play a different version of the cat-and-mouse game with Crowe’s Göring, theirs within the claustrophobic confines of a jail cell. But the Oscar winner was blown away watching his castmates on that courtroom set.
“It was the way we wanted to work,” Malek told me. “We would never want that chopped up and having to come back to it, on different days, not even consecutive days. It would’ve been deflating. I’ve seen almost every play Mike has done, most recently a Eugene O’Neill play in New York and London. I’d see him every morning working on those lines, drilling them. Russell and I looked at each other in that courtroom after the first take, and knew he was at the top of his game, on fire, and it was chilling. And that audience of actors stood and gave him a standing ovation. Not once, not twice, almost every single time those two went head to head. That was predominantly for Michael, but I can’t speak more highly enough for what Russell brought to this and the chances he took.
Rami Malek in ‘Nuremberg’
Scott Garfield
“He wanted to make a statement that he was not to be effed with as Herman Göring, and that set a tone for it that was very calculated. My character was a very calculated man, and to a degree even more so than Russell’s Göring and Mike’s Jackson, the latter of whom basically could have had an incredible career but with one of the bravest acts of humility, decided to go down another road and seek justice. And I find that incredibly admirable. And I think that really infused by what Mike did in that role. There was this look Mike gave. I’m sitting there watching this stage play of the highest echelon every day, and Mike has this look where he’s defeated. As an actor watching another actor, I thought, Ooh, I don’t think that’s the moment for this. It took me a while to realize what he was doing. It was, I can do nothing more at this point. I’ve given it my all. And you just see Jackson as someone who never gives up, but he was standing down at that moment and I thought, you don’t want him to give up because you see the fire and the passion that this man has.”
Malek realized Shannon’s decision was right: “I think Mike encapsulates all of that in his performances, but especially as Justice Jackson,” he said.
Malek saw similar subtleties from Crowe in this 25-minute actor’s clinic.
“The thing is that Russell, and we’ve seen him do it many times in movies, is he can dial up the intensity just as much as Michael can, but I thought that there, what you risk having is two great actors chew in the scenery, and this was something much different. It was more, especially I think on Russell’s part, it was this meticulously calibrated mix of narcissism and arrogance.”
There was also something else, as Göring was only too aware that if he didn’t sell his defensive position, he would end up swinging from the hangman’s rope, with all the world watching what symbolically was meant to be a definitive end of hateful Nazi values.
“Desperation bleeds in, it’s threaded in there, and Russell does this seamlessly because it weaves its way through the way evil surreptitiously does. Russell knew exactly how to pick his battles his moments. Watching it, you can easily identify with the quiet person in an argument. I believe something inherently as human beings watching that, perhaps it’s just me, but you feel as though that person may be telling the truth. I think that Russell discovered that the more calm he could be, the more rational he would appear.”
Like Shannon, Malek had his own chance to go toe to toe with Crowe, two Oscar winners in the confines of a small prison cell. The usual strategy would be to remove the cell walls and get better camera coverage, but just like the 24-minute take in the courtroom, the claustrophobic environs better served the performances, so they left up the walls. Malek’s psychiatrist had to decide between ambition and the fame that awaited the book he’d write, the cozy relationship he developed with Göring including serving as an emissary between the Nazi and his wife and daughter who’d been secreted away nearby, and the enormity of Göring’s Nazi legacy and whether that warranted putting a thumb on the scales of justice and violate his professional oath to make sure the Nazi leaders paid.
Malek dialed in with a psychiatrist for Mr. Robot and did the same here to fully understand the weight his character carried.
“We started to break down Göring as a classic narcissist,” he said. “And Doug, I would say is a classic obsessive, an ambitious human being. And there’s a sense similarly to Jackson, where I think he wants to be remembered. So there’s an element of narcissism in him also that I think to a degree tethered him to Göring in a certain way.
“He was charmed by [Göring]. And I think there was an element I always thought of in Doug, who felt that his father never really lived up to his potential, whereas here was a man who had such gravitas and charm and people describe him as the first person you’d invite to a dinner party. But there’s also something quite tortured about Douglas Kelly. It is a bit of ego. It’s a bit of ambition, it’s a bit of wanting to prove yourself, but I suppose those are the characters that I’ve gravitated to my entire life. There’s an element of complicity that he has. There’s an element of waging trying to identify a moral corruption, this deep delve into dissecting evil, which he found fascinating. When people have given themselves to a career with such ambition and desire and are so invested, perhaps they can get a bit blinded to the actual world around them, what’s taking place around them. And I found that extraordinarily fascinating.”
Then we have Woodall. His popularity from White Lotus and performance in Tuner left the Telluride crowd speaking well of his future prospects. But he’s still a 28-year-old who did his best to belong in this all-star ensemble.
“It was a bit bonkers and I couldn’t quite believe that I was working with not just those three, but John Slattery and Richard E. Grant,” Woodall said. “They all bring so much wonder and magic and gravitas to the film. But of course, I spent most of my scenes with Rami and Russell. My first day I was translating German, which I do not speak a lick of, but had to learn a bit for the movie. It was fascinating to watch these two to juggernauts of acting go toe to toe. There was one scene in particular where they were doing the Rorschach test, and I don’t think I speak a word, but watched them carry on and just improv. And I got so sucked into it as not as an actor, but as an audience member. Rami turned to me at one point and said something like, what do you think Howie? And I responded in my natural English accent, completely out of character. I was so engrossed in what they were doing, I lost it for a moment. But I did refrain from asking for autographs or selfies, which would have been a dead giveaway.”
Source link
