{"id":277029,"date":"2025-11-11T06:10:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T06:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/277029\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T06:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T06:10:07","slug":"hermann-goring-loved-his-kids-thats-whats-terrifying-james-vanderbilt-rami-malek-and-michael-shannon-on-nuremberg-period-and-historical-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/277029\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hermann G\u00f6ring loved his kids. That\u2019s what\u2019s terrifying\u2019: James Vanderbilt, Rami Malek and Michael Shannon on Nuremberg | Period and historical films"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among the Nazis who were prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946 was Hitler\u2019s second-in-command, Hermann G\u00f6ring. Less widely known, though, is the involvement of the US psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who spent more than 80 hours interviewing and assessing G\u00f6ring and 21 other Nazi officials prior to the trials. As described in Jack El-Hai\u2019s 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist<\/a>, Kelley was charmed by G\u00f6ring but also haunted by his own conclusion that the Nazis\u2019 atrocities were not specific to that time and place or to those people: they could in fact happen anywhere. He was ultimately destroyed by this discovery, and what he saw as the world\u2019s reluctance to heed it.<\/p>\n

The writer-director James Vanderbilt, whose script for David Fincher\u2019s enigmatic serial-killer drama Zodiac<\/a> similarly explored the real-life case of a professional being corroded by his pursuit of truth, has used The Nazi and the Psychiatrist as the basis of his new film, Nuremberg. Russell Crowe plays the preening, charismatic G\u00f6ring, Rami Malek plays Kelley, and Michael Shannon is Robert Jackson, the American supreme court justice who was not only instrumental in mounting the trials but went head-to-head with G\u00f6ring in court.<\/p>\n

The line \u2018Hitler made us feel German again\u2019 is haunting. Very reminiscent of a line we hear today<\/p>\n

For Malek, it allowed him to re-examine ideas about evil that had been on his mind since playing Safin \u2013 the man who killed James Bond, no less \u2013 in No Time to Die<\/a>. \u201cWhen I was playing a Bond villain, I used to remind myself, \u2018He\u2019s an evil human being.\u2019 Then I started to question those thoughts.\u201d He wanted to believe in evil, he says, but his empathy kept getting in the way. \u201cThe banality of it all struck me as well as it did Douglas Kelley. It must have been quite jarring for him to know that this could happen at any time, under any political regime, and it wasn\u2019t restricted to a group of men in that period. We see now, and will continue to see, that atrocity is able to rise furiously and vigorously in mere moments. Sometimes it is because we\u2019re willing to turn a blind eye towards it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Not supposed to be comfortable\u2019 \u2026 Michael Shannon and Rami Malek as the US supreme court justice and the psychiatrist who prosecuted G\u00f6ring during the Nuremberg trials. Photograph: Scott Garfield\/AP<\/p>\n

Vanderbilt recognised in this material a kind of real-life Silence of the Lambs quality, with Kelley drawn into a seductive dance with a psychopath. \u201cOne of the fascinating things about G\u00f6ring was that he was funny, gregarious, charming,\u201d says the film-maker. \u201cHe loved his wife and kids \u2013 which to me makes him even more terrifying. He wasn\u2019t Darth Vader, you know? But he craved power and was comfortable with other people suffering so long as he could maintain that power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shannon witnessed his co-star\u2019s electrifying charisma in the role. \u201cRussell really took the note about G\u00f6ring being a charming man,\u201d he says. \u201cSome of the people playing the other members of the Nazi high command didn\u2019t even have lines but he always made them feel like a group. They came in together singing songs, with Russell leading them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crowe had been attached to the film since 2019, and Vanderbilt had already been working on it for five years by then. But before it began shooting, another Holocaust movie emerged that adopted a radical new approach to the subject: the horrors in Jonathan Glazer\u2019s Oscar-winning The Zone of Interest<\/a>, which is set largely in the house and garden adjacent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, are heard and hinted at but never shown.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw The Zone of Interest while we were in pre-production,\u201d recalls Vanderbilt. \u201cIt\u2019s a great film. I loved its point of view.\u201d How concerned was he that it might leave the more traditional Nuremberg looking archaic, or even obsolete? \u201cI think there\u2019s room for different approaches,\u201d he says. \u201cOur film is a little bit more classical. A friend of mine calls a certain type of film \u2013 and The Zone of Interest isn\u2019t one of these \u2013 \u2018spinach movies\u2019. You know: you have to eat your vegetables, do your homework, take your medicine. I worked hard to not make Nuremberg feel that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shannon believes audiences should take their dose of Nuremberg, however. \u201cIt ought to be mandatory viewing,\u201d he says. \u201cEverybody should see the film, and everybody should think about what happened, because it has huge relevance to what\u2019s happening now. But also, it\u2019s a piece of entertainment. And that\u2019s a strange thing, to make a piece of entertainment about such a serious subject. It\u2019s a movie in the grand, old-fashioned sense of the word.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018You have to imagine what you can\u2019t see\u2019 \u2026 The Zone of Interest. Photograph: A24<\/p>\n

He, too, admires The Zone of Interest. \u201cIt puts the audience in a position where they have to imagine what they can\u2019t see,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s when you\u2019ve truly engaged them.\u201d But whereas Glazer\u2019s film shows next to nothing, Nuremberg takes the opposite tack: it includes a five-minute excerpt from the documentary footage of the concentration camps that was projected during the trials.<\/p>\n

Shooting the scene in which that is played in court left Shannon feeling queasy. \u201cWhile I was being filmed watching the footage, I was very uncomfortable with the idea of quote-unquote \u2018acting\u2019. I didn\u2019t want the camera on me. Something about it seemed kind of profane, and yet I understand why it is in the film. You\u2019ll notice I introduce the footage and then they don\u2019t cut back to me. I think that\u2019s a reflection on how uncomfortable I was. They probably said, \u2018Let\u2019s not cut back to Shannon. He looks funny.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

When I relay this to Vanderbilt, he laughs and denies any such thing. \u201cMichael was brilliant. And we\u2019re not always supposed to be comfortable when we\u2019re doing our work, right? I asked the cast not to watch the footage from the camps ahead of shooting because I wanted them to be fresh on the day. We brought in a real projector. We had 300 extras in court. I went in and said, \u2018This is going to be a tough day, but I think it\u2019s very important for the story we\u2019re telling.\u2019 We had a moment of silence, then rolled the film. I don\u2019t want to say that no acting was required, but you\u2019re seeing a lot of real emotions in those faces.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2018He came on to set singing songs\u2019 \u2026 Crowe as G\u00f6ring. Photograph: Kata Vermes\/AP<\/p>\n

One area the film-maker seems less eager to pursue is the question of what it means to be releasing Nuremberg into a world in which fascist ideas are increasingly mainstream and even detoxified, and in which one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world can give what appears to be a fascist salute in public and still go on to be richly remunerated.<\/p>\n

Much of the dialogue in Nuremberg resonates with our times. Not least the moment when G\u00f6ring says admiringly of Hitler that he \u201cmade us feel German again\u201d. Vanderbilt denies any intentional echoes of a more recent US political slogan. \u201cI wrote that line in 2014,\u201d he points out. Maybe so, but he also chose to keep it in the script even once the Maga movement had gained not only adherents but ubiquity. \u201cSure. Look, I understand the desire to relate it to today, and I\u2019m not saying people shouldn\u2019t. I\u2019m not trying to be vague. I just think that all good drama speaks to us about where we are now.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s understandable that Vanderbilt should not want to deter Trump supporters from seeing his film. Malek, though, is less circumspect. \u201c\u2018Hitler made us feel German again\u2019 is a haunting line that is shattering in its simplicity,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd it\u2019s very reminiscent of a line we hear today, which ends with the same word.\u201d He is conspicuously not repeating the Maga slogan to which he is referring. However: \u201cI think everyone reading your newspaper will know exactly what I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supervillain \u2026 Malek in the Bond movie No Time to Die. Photograph: Nicole Dove\/\u00a9 2019 Danjaq, LLC And MGM. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n

Shannon goes even further. \u201cThe danger exists outside of this movie,\u201d he says gravely when I ask whether giving so much screen time to G\u00f6ring is playing with fire. \u201cThe danger is all around us. We are suckers for this charm. It\u2019s going to be our downfall, it seems. We\u2019d rather be entertained than taken care of. It\u2019s tragic, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

He describes the experience of life in the US today as \u201ca nightmare. America is a nightmare right now. The country is mentally ill. It needs help. There seem to be delusions of grandeur and self-loathing in equal measure. It gets grimmer every day. I\u2019ve never seen such dysfunction in my life. It\u2019s really embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of the film, Kelley is reprimanded for bashing the US while promoting his book about the Nazis. Perhaps the publicists for Nuremberg will be tearing their hair out when they hear Shannon\u2019s remarks. \u201cI\u2019m sure anybody who\u2019s associated with promoting and selling this movie to the world is going to be horrified by everything I\u2019ve said in this interview,\u201d he agrees. \u201cBut I don\u2019t really care.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Among the Nazis who were prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946 was Hitler\u2019s second-in-command, Hermann…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-277029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}