Conspiracy (2001)

DIRECTOR: Frank Pierson

CAST: Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth, Ian McNeice, Kevin McNally, David Threlfall, Ewan Stewart, Brian Pettifer, Nicholas Woodeson, Jonathan Coy, Brendan Coyle, Ben Daniels, Barnaby Kay, Owen Teale, Peter Sullivan

REVIEW:

This Made-For-TV HBO original movie, based on the sole surviving copy of the transcript of the infamous Wannsee Conference, will likely be found “boring” by those without an interest in the historical subject matter—after all, at least on the surface, it consists of nothing but fifteen men sitting around a table talking—but for those with an interest, Conspiracy is a disturbing docudrama that embodies the phrase “the banality of evil”.

It is January 20, 1942.  Hitler’s dream of a “Thousand Year Reich” has become bogged down on the stalled-out Russian front, and the United States has entered the war, but far from the front lines, other matters are being discussed.  On the outskirts of Berlin, at an idyllic villa, the so-called Wannsee Conference is convened.  The conference is presided over by SS General Reinhard Heydrich (Kenneth Branagh) and organized by his loyal deputy SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann (Stanley Tucci).  The attendees: Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart (Colin Firth), lawyer and co-author of the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws, Gerhard Klopfer (Ian McNeice), Nazi Party representative and Martin Bormann’s deputy, Martin Luther (Kevin McNally), the Foreign Ministry’s liaison to the SS, Dr. Friedrich Kritzinger (David Threlfall), Reich Chancellery representative, Dr. Georg Leibbrandt (Ewan Stewart) and Dr. Alfred Meyer (Brian Pettifer), administrators of occupied Eastern territories, SS General Otto Hofmann (Nicholas Woodeson), Chief of the Race and Resettlement Office, Erich Neumann (Jonathan Coy), director of the Four Year Plan, economic initiatives decreed by Hitler and Hermann Goering, SS General Heinrich Müller (Brendan Coyle), chief of the Gestapo, Dr. Josef Bühler (Ben Daniels), administrator of occupied Poland, SS Major Rudolf Lange (Barnaby Cay), head of Nazi intelligence in Latvia, Dr. Roland Freisler (Owen Teale), Nazi judge, and Dr. Karl Schöngarth (Peter Sullivan), Nazi court official.  To be discussed: the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe”, namely what to do with the millions of Jews in Nazi clutches in both Germany itself and occupied territories.  Before the Wannsee Conference, the Holocaust had already begun, but the plans hammered out in this two hour meeting would organize it into the mass-coordinated, hyper-efficient killing machine it would become.

Conspiracy plays out much like a stage play, a sort of dark, twisted version of 12 Angry Men.  There is no Holocaust imagery; the setting never leaves the elegant Wannsee villa.  Like a play, the film is almost entirely reliant upon dialogue (taken directly from the sole surviving conference transcript), acting, and character interplay, all of which prove to be strengths.  The attendees banter, bicker, smoke, drink, and eat while discussing sterilizations and slave labor, arguing over what defines a Jew (what to do with those of “mixed blood” or intermixed marriages becomes a major point of contention), and debating the most efficient methods of extermination (or, as Heydrich winkingly calls it in one of various euphemisms, “evacuation”).  The most disturbing aspect of Conspiracy, besides discussions of forced sterilization, gas chambers, and mass shootings, is the casual atmosphere.  It could be any boardroom of any Fortune 500 company (Heydrich invites everyone to break out the wine and cigars, quipping “that’s how they do it at I.G. Farben, isn’t it?”), except that instead of discussing stocks and inventory, the attendees are discussing mass genocide.  Perhaps the most key thing that director Frank Pierson and his cast do is simply lay out the facts in no-frills, unvarnished fashion without reaching for histrionics or trying to make the conference more dramatic than it was, letting the transcript speak for itself.  The low-key, casual, matter-of-fact tone is more disturbing than any amount of overdramatics could have been.

Besides the “banality of evil” portrait it paints, the other fascinating aspect of Conspiracy is back-and-forth ensemble character interplay.  The men at Wannsee are not savages or brutes; of the fifteen who attend, eight hold academic doctorates, and there are many lawyers in the room (and a large amount of legal wrangling).  Nor are they a uniform monolith; there is as much rivalry and bickering as any other bureaucracy.  While technically outranked by several men at the table, it soon becomes apparent that Heydrich is the big fish, smoothly steering the debate toward its inevitable outcome, railroading opposition, and taking a brief tea break to have a one-on-one with a dissenting opinion and drop a veiled threat or two to convince them to get with the program (“I hope the SS does not take too keen an interest in you”, he muses coyly to the argumentative Dr. Stuckart).  Behind his veil of suave charm and the formality of group debate, it is clear that Heydrich is bent on having his way.  Colin Firth’s Dr. Stuckart initially seems as if he might provide a flicker of a voice of reason, but his strident objections soon turn out to be more due to legal hang-ups than moral ones.  David Threlfall’s Dr. Kritzinger’s misgivings might be more sincere, albeit limited (Heydrich mocks him for raising no argument against segregating and enslaving Jews, merely killing them), but he lacks the willpower to avoid ultimately knuckling under to Heydrich.  Jonathan Coy’s Neumann flits from person to person introducing himself with the title “Office of the Four Year Plan”, like a little fish in a roomful of big fish desperately trying to sound important.  There are interdepartmental rivalries (various representatives of other bureaus resent the SS taking over the entire operation and running roughshod over their own jurisdictions and authorities) and even fleeting moments when the enormity of what they’re discussing thuds home for several attendees; after Eichmann reveals Auschwitz’s capacity for eliminating 6,000 Jews per day, SS General Hofmann takes an abrupt restroom break, blaming the food.

The low-key, mostly low-profile, predominantly British (with the exception of Stanley Tucci) ensemble cast unanimously performs admirably avoiding try-hard overdramatics or scenery-chewing.  Likewise, no one is making any attempt at a German accent, which is a debatable choice but might have been the right way to go for this production, allowing the dialogue to speak for itself without any distractions.  Kenneth Branagh restrains his hammy tendencies to play the ringleader Heydrich with an easy charm veiling an icy determination, backed up by Stanley Tucci as his number two man Eichmann, a glorified pencil-pusher, hyper-efficient with ever-ready statistics and spreadsheets, and occasionally showing a flash of a venomous bully behind his officiously bland demeanor (he terrorizes the harried kitchen staff early on, and later slaps a soldier for engaging in a snowball fight while on duty).  Branagh and Tucci’s portrayals most embody “the banality of evil”; they could be all-business bureaucrats in any other organization tackling any other operation, likely with as much ruthless efficiency as they approach genocide.  Of the others, the most distinctive personalities are Colin Firth’s legalistically-fixated Dr. Stuckart, David Threlfall’s conflicted Dr. Kritzinger, who leaves Heydrich with a philosophical warning, and Ian McNeice’s vulgar, piggish Klopfer, who cracks coarse sexual innuendos while discussing sterilizations and accuses Stuckart of being a Jew-lover (Colin Firth’s cue to launch into a vehement monologue revealing Stuckart, whom we might have previously thought semi-sympathetic, to be as ardent an anti-Semite as anyone in the room).

Conspiracy won’t appeal to everyone; it’s a dry, talky, entirely dialogue-driven affair consisting of fifteen men debating, arguing, and bantering in a smoky room over wine and cigars.  But for those with an interest in the subject matter, it’s a disquietingly spare, matter-of-fact docudrama portraying the undramatized true story of a two hour meeting which had massive and monstrous ramifications.

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