Nuremberg

 I went to see Nuremberg yesterday.  I have mixed feelings about it and am struggling to write.  Russell Crowe was brilliant and will be up for award nominations for his part in it.  He plays Goring (sorry can't do umlauts two dots on this laptop).  But from there I am all at sea.  The film is like two halves, before the trial and during/after the trial.  The before part is where we meet the characters and set the scene.  (I couldn't help but be reminded of my favourite book on the subject of the origins of crimes against humanity and genocide (East West Street by Philippe Sands) and perhaps a reading of that would have helped the screen writers).  However, I digress.  In the first half of the film  we meet the US psychiatrist played by Rami Malik who is sent to assess Goring and his defence before the trial.  This is where the film gets bitty, probably an edit nightmare.  Malik maybe the right choice for a somewhat naive psychiatrist, I don't really know, but he certainly came across as that.  Odd.  I found it a bit difficult to get my head around his reaction to Mrs Goring which I do not believe is factual but I could be wrong.  But to find him liking Mrs Goring, sympathising?  No.  That cannot be right.    Anyway, there is a shift in the film when the trial starts and we see historic film archive of what took place in the concentrate camps.  It moves up a notch.  Richard E Grant plays a saving of the day as the British prosecutor who steps up and cross examines Goring, a small but significant contribution to the proceedings and from a purely poetic film goer point of view saves the whole 2 and half hours of sitting there in the cinema.