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Mike D'Angelo - Conspiracy (2001, Frank Pierson)
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About This Title
61/100
Can't compare this to The Wannsee Conference, which I saw way back in 1995 (improbably, the Blockbuster near my dad's house had a copy) and don't really remember, but there's no getting around the fact that staging the conference in English, as performed by movie stars (plus some future TV stars, e.g. Downton Abbey's Brendan Coyle), makes it play a lot like "What if the 12 angry men were all Nazis planning the Final Solution?" No doubt the German version (which I'll revisit at some point) has a similar vibe, language notwithstanding—there's little one can do with men arguing at a large table except assign each of them a readily identifiable personality trait and aim for the ideal mix of clashing viewpoints. Here, that's somewhat complicated by the chilling fact that all assembled heartily concur on the necessity of eliminating every Jew, with any contention restricted to (a) merely from the Reich, or from planet Earth? and (b) via forced sterilization, or via mass murder? Since everyone knows all too well what they settled on for (b), Conspiracy's dramatic interest lies primarily in the bizarre circumlocutions that screenwriter Loring Mandel (who'd previously written Altman's Countdown and George Roy Hill's The Little Drummer Girl) largely invents, based on the Nazis' documented penchant for euphemism. These men know that they're talking about killing Jews—it's frankly acknowledged from time to time—but even the most viciously anti-Semitic officers don't like actually saying that aloud. So you get Heydrich stopping himself mid-sentence: "There is research being done to see whether electrocution can even more effectively, quietly put an end...uh...a period to the end of the sentence." Human beings to be asphyxiated with carbon monoxide in vans are referred to as the vehicles' "contents." (As if I didn't already loathe that word.) None of this indirection can be found in the minutes that survived, but it seems very psychologically plausible to me.
Mandel and director Frank Pierson's challenge was to keep this dudes-in-a-room talkfest...man, it sounds grotesque to say "engaging" or "compelling" or what have you. Let's say: to keep it from becoming monotonously horrifying, since we're still talking about what is, at bottom, a business meeting, its main goal being to ensure that all of these cabinet ministers (of the 15 attendees, only Eichmann is a household name) are on board with the most heinous military operation ever devised. For the most part, they succeed. Kenneth Branagh, as Heydrich (the officer in charge), leans a bit hard on counterintuitive bonhomie for my taste—it's a bit like Henry V's fake jolliness at the beginning of II.ii, sustained for the duration—but is still generally quite good, while Stanley Tucci gives an impressively self-effacing performance, depicting Eichmann as a number-crunching toadie who lashes out at underlings out of self-hatred. Inevitably, though, the most interesting moments involve what nominally qualifies, in this nightmare context, as pushback. According to the minutes, Friedrich Kritzinger, State Secretary of the Reich Chancellery, contributed nothing of note; Loring (perhaps thinking of regret that Kritzinger expressed at Nuremberg) makes him one of only two participants who's clearly uncomfortable with the idea of murdering Jews rather than deporting them. Fine work by David Threlfall, who makes Kritzinger the least evil person in the room but by no means a hero, or even remotely admirable. Best of all is Colin Firth as Wannsee's equivalent of Juror #4 (E.G. Marshall): the ultra-rationalist concerned exclusively with facts and protocol. He delivers the film's most impassioned speeches, fervently arguing against the proposed kill-'em-all approach...but what troubles him is no matter of morality or decency, but the "bureaucratic train wreck" that will ensue when the party's ostensibly secret executions inevitably get revealed via pesky details of inheritance law and divorce law and such. Firth acts these scenes exactly as if he's playing Oskar Schindler, not someone who wants to irradiate all Jews so that they can't reproduce and will quickly go extinct; the cognitive dissonance thereby produced is outstanding.
In short, Conspiracy can't help but be what you assume it is—the most blandly depraved business meeting ever held—but its details are impressively plausible (especially given the minutes, which don't directly quote anyone) and its Arendt-itude properly disturbing. Pierson directed a bunch of these historical and/or biographical cable movies (I reviewed his Roy Cohn one for an EW piece on James Woods almost 30 years ago), and he didn't sleepwalk through 'em, which is more than one can say for many of his peers on that beat.
61/100
Can't compare this to The Wannsee Conference, which I saw way back in 1995 (improbably, the Blockbuster near my dad's house had a copy) and don't really remember, but there's no getting around the fact that staging the conference in English, as performed by movie stars (plus some future TV stars, e.g. Downton Abbey's Brendan Coyle), makes it play a lot like "What if the 12 angry men were all Nazis planning the Final Solution?" No doubt the German version (which I'll revisit at some point) has a similar vibe, language notwithstanding—there's little one can do with men arguing at a large table except assign each of them a readily identifiable personality trait and aim for the ideal mix of clashing viewpoints. Here, that's somewhat complicated by the chilling fact that all assembled heartily concur on the necessity of eliminating every Jew, with any contention restricted to (a) merely from the Reich, or from planet Earth? and (b) via forced sterilization, or via mass murder? Since everyone knows all too well what they settled on for (b), Conspiracy's dramatic interest lies primarily in the bizarre circumlocutions that screenwriter Loring Mandel (who'd previously written Altman's Countdown and George Roy Hill's The Little Drummer Girl) largely invents, based on the Nazis' documented penchant for euphemism. These men know that they're talking about killing Jews—it's frankly acknowledged from time to time—but even the most viciously anti-Semitic officers don't like actually saying that aloud. So you get Heydrich stopping himself mid-sentence: "There is research being done to see whether electrocution can even more effectively, quietly put an end...uh...a period to the end of the sentence." Human beings to be asphyxiated with carbon monoxide in vans are referred to as the vehicles' "contents." (As if I didn't already loathe that word.) None of this indirection can be found in the minutes that survived, but it seems very psychologically plausible to me.
Mandel and director Frank Pierson's challenge was to keep this dudes-in-a-room talkfest...man, it sounds grotesque to say "engaging" or "compelling" or what have you. Let's say: to keep it from becoming monotonously horrifying, since we're still talking about what is, at bottom, a business meeting, its main goal being to ensure that all of these cabinet ministers (of the 15 attendees, only Eichmann is a household name) are on board with the most heinous military operation ever devised. For the most part, they succeed. Kenneth Branagh, as Heydrich (the officer in charge), leans a bit hard on counterintuitive bonhomie for my taste—it's a bit like Henry V's fake jolliness at the beginning of II.ii, sustained for the duration—but is still generally quite good, while Stanley Tucci gives an impressively self-effacing performance, depicting Eichmann as a number-crunching toadie who lashes out at underlings out of self-hatred. Inevitably, though, the most interesting moments involve what nominally qualifies, in this nightmare context, as pushback. According to the minutes, Friedrich Kritzinger, State Secretary of the Reich Chancellery, contributed nothing of note; Loring (perhaps thinking of regret that Kritzinger expressed at Nuremberg) makes him one of only two participants who's clearly uncomfortable with the idea of murdering Jews rather than deporting them. Fine work by David Threlfall, who makes Kritzinger the least evil person in the room but by no means a hero, or even remotely admirable. Best of all is Colin Firth as Wannsee's equivalent of Juror #4 (E.G. Marshall): the ultra-rationalist concerned exclusively with facts and protocol. He delivers the film's most impassioned speeches, fervently arguing against the proposed kill-'em-all approach...but what troubles him is no matter of morality or decency, but the "bureaucratic train wreck" that will ensue when the party's ostensibly secret executions inevitably get revealed via pesky details of inheritance law and divorce law and such. Firth acts these scenes exactly as if he's playing Oskar Schindler, not someone who wants to irradiate all Jews so that they can't reproduce and will quickly go extinct; the cognitive dissonance thereby produced is outstanding.
In short, Conspiracy can't help but be what you assume it is—the most blandly depraved business meeting ever held—but its details are impressively plausible (especially given the minutes, which don't directly quote anyone) and its Arendt-itude properly disturbing. Pierson directed a bunch of these historical and/or biographical cable movies (I reviewed his Roy Cohn one for an EW piece on James Woods almost 30 years ago), and he didn't sleepwalk through 'em, which is more than one can say for many of his peers on that beat.
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