Nuremburg

(Movie Review)

Let me begin this review by talking about two completely different movies. Both of which I saw before I started this movie review blogging project (and thus never got reviewed here) and both of which are well worth seeing.

One is a documentary film called "Tokyo Trial" (or "Tokyo Saiban" in Japanese)about the Internationl Military Tribunals for the Far East in Tokyo.
The film is fascinating, first of all because of all the documentary footage they have collected. I didn't even know that these trials had been captured on film, but the whole trial was filmed and you can watch it just like you would watch any other modern media sensational trial.
The film was made by a Japanese film director, and so it has its biases (he implies that the whole trial is simply a victor's justice).
And yet at the same time, the fact that it is from a Japanese perspective makes it all the more fascinating. For example, the film says that the Japanese were not familiar with an Anglo-Saxon court system, and so did not expect to get a fair trail or a fair defense. They were therefore completely surprised when their court-appointed American defense lawyers actually took their jobs seriously, and provided a vigorous defense for their clients (to the point of clashing several times with the court judges). There were translation issues (at one point Tojo yelled at his translator, "you can't translate Japanese at all").
And there lots of behind the scenes politics keeping all the allied nations happy. The head judge of the tribunal, an Australian, wanted to put the Emperor himself on trial, but was forbidden to do so by the American government.
The lead defense attorney (himself an American) had so many arguments with the court that he ended up resigning in protest. And at the end the judge representing India voted not guilty on all the counts.

I watched it with Shoko at the time, and it sparked a lot of interesting conversation afterwards.

Absolutely fascinating from beginning to end. If you get a chance, you should definitely rent it.
(It's available in English, although it might be a little hard to track down Stateside. If any of my old buddies in Japan are still reading this, you can find it in most Japanese DVD rental stores in the documentary section. It has an English dub on it, so don't worry about language issues).

The second movie is "Judgment at Nuremberg" (W) which I watched with Bork a few years ago. This isn't a documentary film, but at times feels like it is. And I mean that in a good way. The speeches and the dialogue feel so heartfelt you imagine they are from real life.
The film, although fictional, depicts a trial of the lesser Nazi war criminals. At this point all the big fish have already been sentenced, but now the German judges and college professors who helped create the intellectual climate for Nazism to flourish are put on trial.
What's interesting about this film is that the defense attorney is given equal time to expand on his view, and the film gives you plenty to think about even though it comes down predictably on the side of the prosecutors. One gets the sense for watching this movie of a reality that is far more complicated.
(Also, for fellow Trekkies out there, an added bonus is a young pre-Kirk William Shatner playing a bit part in this movie--in addtion to an all star cast for the lead roles).

(As of this writing, you can watch the whole thing on youtube--check out the link here).

Which brings me to "Nuremberg", a film I rented hoping it would be just as fascinating as the others, but unfortunately I was disappointed.

This movie is not about the legal complexities of an international tribunal, or the behind the scenes politics that go into setting it up. (It hints at these issues oh so briefly in the beginning, but then it moves quickly on).
Nor is it about the difficulties of placing responsibility on a few individuals for crimes of a whole nation. (Again, it hints at this, but it's not the main focus).

No, this is mostly an "weren't the Nazis really horrible" type movie. The courtroom drama simply serves here as a forum to display all the terrible things the Nazis did.

I believe that these type of movies have a place, don't misunderstand me. No one should ever forget what happened in Nazi Germany. Nor should we forget that this happened not in some savage nation or some dark age in history, but rather in modern times, in an educated, Christian, civilized Western nation. That is a horror that can never really be over-emphasized.

I guess my main complaint is that this movie wasn't what I was expecting. Maybe that's my problem and not the movie's.

However this movie did have a kind of "after-school special" type feel to it.
"Tokyo Trial" and "Judgment at Nuremberg" both treated me like an adult. They presented the world as complex, and allowed me to make some of my own conclusions. But this movie felt like it needed to hold my hand the whole time and walk me through all the different emotions I was supposed to be feeling.

For example, whenever Nazi atrocities are being described in the courtroom, the movie feels the need to get reaction shots from everyone in the room. Just in case we weren't quite sure how we were supposed to feel about it, we need to see reaction shots of everyone getting red eyed and crying.
And they really over-do it as well. At one point, the prosecutors show documentary footage of the concentration camps, and for some reason the movie feels it can't show more than 3 or 4 seconds at a time without cutting to the reaction shot of someone crying while watching it in the courtroom.

The narrative drama in the movie is framed as a battle of wills between prosecutor Robert Jackson (Alec Baldwin) and unrepentant Nazi Hermann Goering (Brian Cox). Some of the more complex issues surrounding the trial are hinted at in their dialogue, but the way the story is framed, what they're actually saying isn't important. What's important is how much time Goering is given to answer each question, and which one of them is able to control the atmosphere in the court.

In conclusion, I very highly recommend the documentary "Tokyo Saiban" and the film "Judgment at Nuremberg."
"Nuremberg" isn't nearly as interesting however.

...Which is unfortunate, given that it's a very long film to watch--3 hours long. It was originally a TNT 2 part TV movie, which they packaged as one long movie for the DVD release. Since they had so much time to fill, it's a shame they didn't use it better.

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Actually while I'm on the subject of TV movies, I should make a quick bloggy note here about my reviewing policy. (This probably isn't of any interest to anyone else but me, but I'd like to get it off my chest anyway).
Since I've started up this reviewing project, I've been quite strict with myself about reviewing every theatrical release movie I've seen. TV movies are a bit of a gray area though. Especially if they come out in two parts, I often will classify them as a mini-series and don't feel the need to review them.
For example, the British TV version of Terry Pratchett's "Hogfather" (W), or "The Colour of Magic" (W) were both films I saw, and then decided that since they were 2 part television mini-series, I wasn't obligated to add them to my reviewing project .
Same with the BBC "Gunpowder, Treason and Plot" (W), and "The Devil's Whore" (W).

This movie, however, because it was put onto a single DVD, and because it had been edited together into a single movie (with no ending credits popping up halfway through), I decided to count as a movie rather than a mini-series. But it's a gray area, and in the future I'll continue to review or not review TV movies on a case by case basis.

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Last word on Nuremberg goes to professor Chomsky:

"...what was considered a crime [at the Nuremberg trials] was based on a very explicit criterion, namely, denial of the principle of universality. In other words, something was called a crime at Nuremberg if they did it and we didn’t do it.

So, for example, the bombing of urban concentrations was not considered a crime. The bombings of Tokyo, Dresden, and so on -- those aren’t crimes. Why? Because we did them. So, therefore, it’s not a crime. In fact, Nazi war criminals who were charged were able to escape prosecution when they could show that the Americans and the British did the same thing they did. Admiral Doenitz, a submarine commander who was involved in all kinds of war crimes, called in the defense a high official in the British admiralty and, I think, Admiral Nimitz from the United States, who testified that, ‘Yeah, that’s the kind of thing we did.’ And, therefore, they weren’t sentenced for these crimes. Doenitz was absolved. And that’s the way it ran through. Now, that’s a very serious flaw.

When Chief Justice Jackson, chief counsel for the prosecution, spoke to the tribunal and explained to them the importance of what they were doing, he said, to paraphrase, that: ‘We are handing these defendants a poisoned chalice, and if we ever sip from it we must be subject to the same punishments, otherwise this whole trial is a farce.’ Well, you can look at the history from then on, and we’ve sipped from the poisoned chalice many times, but it’s never been considered a crime. So, that means we are saying that trial was a farce.

....

...at Nuremberg, we weren’t trying the people who threw Jews into crematoria; we were trying the leaders. When we ever have a trial for crimes it’s of some low-level person like a torturer from Abu Ghraib, not the people who were setting up the framework from which they operate. And we certainly don’t try political leaders for the crime of aggression. That’s out of the question.

The invasion of Iraq was about as clear-cut a case of aggression than you can imagine. In fact, by the Nuremberg principles, if you read them carefully, the U.S. war against Nicaragua was a crime of aggression for which Ronald Reagan should have been tried. But, it’s inconceivable; you can’t even mention it in the West. And the reason is our radical denial of the most elementary moral truisms. We just flatly reject them. We don’t even think we reject them, and that’s even worse than rejecting them outright.

If we were able to say to ourselves, ‘Look, we are totally immoral, we don’t accept elementary moral principles,’ that would be a kind of respectable position in a certain way. But, when we sink to the level where we cannot even perceive that we’re violating elementary moral principles and international law, that’s pretty bad. But, that’s the nature of the intellectual culture--not just in the United States--but in powerful societies everywhere

...Go read the entire interview here.

Link of the Day
Chomsky on Haiti, and other stuff too (recommend skipping ahead to point 2:30).

Nuremburg: Movie Review (Scripted)