Conflicted loyalties and psychological duelling at the first-ever trial for crimes against humanity

Nuremberg
DIRECTOR: JAMES VANDERBILT

Adapting history for the screen, especially history as important as the first ever trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity, is a balancing act between fact and dramatic fiction. A similar balancing act is the subject of Nuremberg, a film essentially focusing on the relationship between former Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, played with genial narcissism and pomposity by Russell Crowe, and the young psychiatrist tasked not only with establishing the competence of the 22 senior Nazis standing trial but also with the ultimately futile quest to seek out what personality traits these architects of the Holocaust might share, in the belief that if evil could be psychologically define, future atrocities of this kind could be prevented.

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