A brilliant film

Rating: 10/10 (26 February 2001)

I consider this as one of the finest 10 films ever made. As in any of man's finest endeavors, it raises more questions than it answers. Perhaps the strongest point made by the movie is raised by Maximilian Schell as the defense attorney when he reads the majority opinion of the US Supreme Court written by Oliver Wendell Holmes in the Virginia eugenics decision where he justifies the sterilization of women, and it is rejected by the court. The justices at Nuremberg, both in reality and in the film, exercise the legal argument of tu tuque to reject the defense. (What we have done doesn't count - what you have done does count.) This is further exemplified many years later in the US military court's handling of the My Lai massacre in Viet Nam. We are left to ponder whether the Nuremberg trials advanced our humanity in the way we adjudicate war crimes or whether Hermann Goering was right when he said that all the trials proved was that the victors get to judge the vanquished.
The performances given in the film are both powerful and moving. It is hard to find fault with a superior cast and a brilliant director working with a masterful script and a subject that raises fundamental questions of human ethics and morality. 10 stars!