Conspiracy

Rating:
Summary: it's important to know what words mean.
Review: I lazily fell on HBO one afternoon and found this movie. I was enthralled similar to the way I was the first time I saw 12 angry men. How can a movie around lunch be so compelling? this is brilliantly acted and the cinematography is stunning. I absolutely deplore the topic and found this a most riveting movie due to the acting and intellectual justification for murder. I have read the Wannsee Conference minutes and there certainly was a tremendous amount of creative liberties taken with the script, but just the same, it was well done and I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I suspect the power of the performances is the greatest draw but I also think the topic adds a sureal and unexpected weight to the performances as only genocide could. I highly recommend this if for the acting alone. The dynamics between attendee's is amazing due in large part by some 1st class acting.

Rating:
Summary: The Nazis come up with the "Final Solution" over lunch
Review: "Conspiracy" is based on the original minutes of the Wannsee Conference held on January 20, 1942 in Berlin where the Nazi worked out "The Final Solution." The of this HBO production is something of a misdirection, because this hour long meeting that would result in the death of 6 million European Jews might have been secret, but it was not exactly clandestine. This is not a meeting where the participants made their plans in hushed whispers, but something that eerily smacks of a board meeting at a large company. These men were going to become mass murderers on a scale rarely seen in human history, but they seem more like bureaucrats than anything else, which is just another level of the horror involved here.

"Conspiracy" goes beyond the recreation of this infamous meeting for the 1984 documentary "The Wannsee Conference," both of which are based upon the lone surviving record of the gather of 15 Nazi officers head by General Reinhard Heydrich (Kenneth Branagh). Included in the group are Lt. Colonel Adolf Eichmann (Stanley Tucci) and Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart, Interior Ministry (Colin Firth), and within an hour they come up with their solution to the "Jewish question." However, this is a sense in "Conspiracy" that they are not so much debating what it to be done but being asked to sign on to the plan that Heydrich is revealing directly and indirectly throughout the meeting in his quest for "unanimity."

This time around the horror is in the details, as these men try to come up with the most efficient way of killing and disposing of that many people while one guy does the math. Given that we know what is going to happen what stands out are not those who cannot wait to start the killing as much as those who have "reservations." Stuckart, who wrote the Nuremberg codes, is aghast at what these new policies will mean for the rule of law in Nazi Germany, as the courts are filled with divorce cases separating Jewish and Aryan spouses. However, Struckart makes it clear he hates Jews as much as the next person at that table. Then there is Dr. Wilhelm Kritzinger (David Threlfall), Permanent Secretary of the Reich Chancellery, who obviously has misgivings on moral grounds, but ultimately can offer no more obstacle than a story, which serves as the final statement on the proceedings when related by Heydrich to Eichmann after the meeting.

The end of the film, where we are informed as to what happened to the participants, is particularly interesting. I was surprised how few of these 15 Nazis were actually executed for war crime. Several of them would die during the war while others would be imprisoned, but a surprising number were released for lack of evidence. I was also interested to find out exactly who failed to destroy their copy of the minutes, although there is nothing particularly insightful about the revalation beyond satisfying my curiosity. In terms of Holocaust films "Conspiracy" a footnote to the mass exterminations, but of interest for what it provide in terms of rare insights into what the Nazi bureaucracy was actually thinking as it launched the "Final Solution."

Rating:
Summary: The Rationalization of Genocide
Review: "Conspiracy" is a brilliant reenactment of the fateful meeting that implemented the logistics of NAZI genocide. The film shows how easily an idea as horrific as one of mass murder can be politely discussed by a committee having a nice lunch on a quiet day.

The peaceful surroundings of the chateau where members of the NAZI apparatus met parallels the ease with which most of the individuals contemplate the mass homicide. Most members seemed disturbed not at all with the concept, but simply the logistics of its implementation: firing squads vs. gas? If gas, what kind? Carbon monoxide or cyanide; Xyclon-B perhaps? How large should the facilities be? How many undesirables can they "evacuate" per day? How to dispose of the bodies? Should they be used for work?

Kenneth Branagh plays SS Chief of Security Reinhard Heydrich convincingly; showing his cool resolve and functional outlook in carrying out the will of a madman. Colin Firth shows more the hippocricy of party members who esoterically intellectualized the advacement of racial hatred with moral gusto but soon found their morality at odds with the all too obvious political ramifications of what they preached. Stanley Tucci also renders an exquisite performance of Adolf Eichmann, Heydrich's devoted disciple and ultimate successor in implementing The Final Solution.

The movie is as concise and to the point as Reinhard Heydrich's sinister oversight of the committee's progress. Staying on track and keeping the listner focused on the morbid task at hand, the audience is mesmerized by the bureaucratic dryness of the proceedings until its chilling end. There's obviously some poetic license as to the dialogue of the characters outside of the meeting minutes, but it's believable in every way.

A great film that everyone must see so as to be warned about human nature. This film doesn't only show the horrors of NAZI Germany, it also shows how easily the human mind can rationalize and trivialize the large scale implementation of amoral if not criminal policies; it's interesting to note that most of those attending that fateful meeting were attorneys or had a legal professional background. Finally, as the film reveals the logistics of bureacratic function in general, it is perhaps an ominous portent as to how our corporate establishments (or any other human institution)can both rationalize and trivialize human life when evaluating loss and profitability: a common symptom when such entities are deciding to market or dispose of goods they know are dangerous or even deadly: it's just on a smaller scale and less discriminate.

Rating:
Summary: Final Solution to a storage problem
Review: CONSPIRACY serves as a reminder of the banality of human evil, even at its most horrific.

On January 20, 1942, with Nazi armies stalled in the snow at the gates of Moscow, a lakeside mansion in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee is the venue for a conference. Fifteen government bureaucrats and high ranking officers of the SS gather. History is advised to remember these otherwise appallingly ordinary representatives of the human species: SS General Reinhard Heydrich (Reich Security Main Office), SS Lt. Colonel Adolf Eichmann (Office of Jewish Affairs), SS Lt. General Heinrich Müller (Gestapo), Gerhard Klopfer (Nazi Party Chancellery), Wilhelm Kritzinger (Reichs-Chancellery), SS Lt. General Otto Hofmann (Race and Settlement Main Office), Dr. Georg Liebbrandt and Dr. Alfred Meyer (Reichs-Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories), Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart (Reichs-Ministry of the Interior), Undersecretary Martin Luther (Foreign Ministery), SS Major Rudolf Lange (SS Taskforces in Latvia), Director Erich Neumann (Office of the Four Year Plan), Dr. Joseph Bühler and SS Colonel Karl Schöngarth (Government-General of Occupied Poland), and Dr. Roland Freisler (Reichs-Ministry of Justice).

Even after coerced emigration, 132,000 Jews remain in Germany. As the Wehrmacht gobbles up territory, millions more - potentially 11 million - will come under Nazi control. As it's put in this film, there's a burgeoning "storage problem", and the chairman of the meeting, Heydrich (Kenneth Branagh), is calling for unanimous agreement on a "final solution".

As the viewer sees, it's not the concept of the eradication of the Jews from Germany and the occupied territories that fuels the debate, it's the modus operandi, and which individuals, particularly those of impure blood resulting from a confusing variety of mixed marriages, are to be targeted. At one point, even the semantics of the process - "evacuation" vs. "execution" - are at issue. And, of course, it all must be done legally as proscribed by the Nuremburg Laws. Finally, after the group dances around the issue of method, Heydrich and his deputy Eichmann (Stanley Tucci) get to the crux of the matter. The Jews are to be gassed in special camps established for that purpose. At the current stage of technology, the gold standard is apparently 60,000 exterminations a day.

The impact of CONSPIRACY derives from the chilling ordinariness of the conference and its tone. These fifteen might just as well be the top management of a large corporation discussing the eradication of rats from one of its manufacturing sites, or the construction of an assembly line to produce more and better widgets. As a note of interest, nine of those present were lawyers by training.

Branagh renders a positively brilliant performance as the ultimate devil's advocate, who steers the meeting to its foregone conclusion with a mixture of charm and quiet menace. When Kritzinger (David Threfall) objects that Hitler has declared to him personally that execution of the Jews is not his intent, Heydrich cooly reminds him, "Yes, and he will continue to do so." Plausible deniability, you see. And later in a private conversation when Heydrich demands Kritzinger's full support, the SS General remarks that the latter would be a difficult man to bring down - but it could be managed.

At the film's conclusion, the fate of all involved is provided in text overlay. Heydrich was assassinated by Czech partisans. Eichmann, Bühler and Schöngarth were tried and executed. All the rest either went free for lack of war crimes evidence, served time and were released, died of natural causes, were killed in the closing months of the war, or just disappeared. Indeed, Klopfer sold insurance after the war and presumably died in his bed.

The Final Solution took planning. As Eichmann angrily berates an Army chauffeur for engaging on whim in an undignified snowball fight with his fellow drivers awaiting their masters, "Things just don't happen."

The record of the Wannsee Conference which served as the basis for CONSPIRACY came from Luther's copy of the minutes discovered after the war. Ironically, Luther himself was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944 for plotting against his boss in the Foreign Ministry.

Rating:
Summary: "Our most important war...."
Review: "Conspiracy" is a perfect example of what happens when you pair a first-class cast with a first-rate script. You discover (or re-discover) that you do not need explosions, MTV-style editing or gimmickery to tell a good tale. This movie has all the budget and movement of a play, and is entirely dialogue-driven. But it works. Oh boy, does it work.

It is generally credited by historians that the infamous "Wansee Conference" of January 1942 was the real beginning of the Holocaust, i.e. of the Nazi Reich's all-out effort to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Prior to that, the Reich had contented itself with kicking them out of public life, taxing them into beggary, subjecting them to every form of humiliation, and essentially negating their status as human beings. When the war started, however, this policy, known as the 'emigration solution' (i.e., solve the "problem" of Jews living in the Reich by forcing them to emigate) became obsolete. The inefficient and corrupt Nazi bureaucracy was ill-suited even to handle the relatively small population of German Jews; and Nazi conquests, however, quickly increased the number of Jews in German-occupied territories to around eleven million. In other words, the very success of the German military effort in Europe had actually increased the size of the 'Jewish problem' a hundred times over. And since forcible emigration of 11 million people outside the German sphere of influence was not possible, something else had to be done to tackle this 'problem.' But what?

"Conspiracy" is about the bureacratic genesis of the Holocaust. It shows, in more or less real time, a fictionalized version of a real-life conference of 15 officials from the SS/SD, Gestapo, Railway Ministry, Interior Ministry, Government General, and Ministry of Justice, which was chaired by Reinhard Heydrich and organized by Adolf Eichmann. As a movie, however, it is really a study in the essential amorality of bureacracy and, to use a tired phrase, the banality of evil.

First off, the performances are superb. Kenneth Branagh gives probably the best turn of his career as Heydrich, a man who has absolutely no philosophy, ideology or morality other than a Terminator-like determination to carry out his orders, whatever they may entail, and to crush any obstacle in his path. You get the feeling he would be just as content to kill everyone with brown hair or webbed feet if that was his assignment, and if a few fellow Nazis happen to oppose him, then he would be just as happy to 'evacuate' them as any Jews. In fact, the description that Dr. Stuckart uses for the Jewish people in the film, "arrogant, self-obsessed....(but) sublimely clever, and intelligent as well" is actually a very good description of Heydrich. Branagh portrays him as a man with no human qualities himself, but excellent instincts about human nature. He knows when to condescend, when to bully, when to threaten, and when to appeal to self-interest, and he can shift from one to the other and back without a trace of discomfort.

Stanley Tucci, as Eichmann, is also very good. Like Heydrich shifts his personality around like a revolving door depending on what is required of him, but he is also a true-blue bureacrat in the worst sense of the word. To his superiors, especially Heydrich, he is utterly subservient; hovering about like a dog, laughing politely at jokes he doesn't find amusing, attempting with limited success to be 'one of the guys' when Nazi vulgarity rears its head. But to his subordinates he is a coldly arrogant bully, slapping one soldier in the face for throwing snowballs outside, telling another he will pay for a dish he broke by accident. In fact, he reminds me of a couple of schoolteachers I had growing up....and at least one boss.

Colin Firth is brilliant as Wilhelm Stuckart, the lawyer who drafted the Laws for the Protection of German Blood and Honor (better known as the Nuremburg Laws), and who is perfectly content to see all the Jews of Europe sterilized and shipped off
to be used as slave labor, possibly even exterminated wholsesale, so long as it is all done within a 'legal framework' (HIS legal framework). Eichmann characterizes the bureaucrat from hell, then Stuckart is certainly the lawyer from hell; a person who has no gods before the law, and simply cannot abide the idea of the whole crazy scheme being perpetrated without benefit of a legislative blessing. Eleven million murders? That's nothing. But without enacting a law first? Unthinkable!

Ian McNeice, as Stuckart's nemesis Dr. Klopfer, a corpulent Nazi Party bigwig with a disgustingly smug and vulgar way of handling himself. .... He's a raging anti-Semite who is all for killing the Jews, so long as the Party doesn't lose any administrative turf to the SS in the process. He has no respect whatever for the law despite being a lawyer himself (as is almost everyone in the room....go figure that one....); and unlike the brilliant but rather naive Stuckart, Klopfer has no illusions about rule of law in Nazi Germany. We have the power to do what we want, he says; we can always re-write the laws afterwards.

"Conspiracy" was written by Loring Mandel, who deserves special praise for penning a movie that is nothing but conversation but which is still very gripping. I'm surprised some people would quibble with his dramatic interpretation of what happened; how could you make an entertaining about what the actual conference was probably like -- fifteen Nazi lawyers drinking wine, eating canapes, and reading figures about mass deportations and what does or does not constitute a Jew? Mandel's script gets to the heart of the mentality behind the Holocaust, which was that despite being at war with the British Empire, the Soviet Union and the United States of America, despite being outnumbered six to one in manpower and 20 - 1 in industrial capacity, despite fighting on multiple fronts and lacking most of the natural resources necessary for war, and despite the unspoken consequences to themselves and their country's reputation if they lost the war and their 'secret' was exposed, the mentality of WWII Germany was still open to the idea of diverting massive resources into slaughtering defenseless civilians by the million. If that isn't the bureacratic blindness from hell, what isn't?

Rating:
Summary: Giving a Face to "Evil"
Review: Watching the film, "Conspiracy," is quite an experience. One feels themselves almost identifying with the characters and viewing them as nothing more than a group of business men, at an important luncheon, discussing a pressing matter.
Of course, these are not merely business men, and what they are discussing is mass genocide. We hear these mens names in documentaries on the History Channel and in history books, but it is quite fascinating to put a face to them in this film.
The script is solid and the acting is terrific. While there isn't much in the way of physical action here, the dialogue is riveting and thought provoking.
Brannagh is perfectly calm, cool and collected and Tucci is wonderfully understated. Colin Firth all but steals the show with his monologue in which he basically says "treat them like animals and history will martyr them and view us as the evil one." Interesting perspective indeed! This line, along with much of the rest of the script really makes one think.
I highly recommend this film to any history buff or anyone who just enjoys clever dialogue and terrific acting.

Rating:
Summary: Chilling history aptly shown.
Review: This dramatisation of the Wannsee Conference and what materialised from it is truly riveting. The personages of Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann were well presented in this film and provides a good look into the character of the two men who defined 'The Final Solution'.

Rating:
Summary: veery good movie
Review: This was a very chilling movie. We observe how fancy, elegant, ordinary men discuss how to kill millions of people with a clear conscience and no pity. Few men during the meeting show a little disgust over what they are talking about, but quickly give in and accept the inevitable. The movie is effective in a way that it has no action nor violence, and shows us the monstrousity of the Nazis through a normal meeting, where history was shaped forever. By the end of the film, we realize that the Holocaust depended on people able to think like Jeffery Dahmer.Don't miss it.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding in every respect- bottom line.
Review: Every performance in this film is incredible. The sets are beautifully recreated. The direction is perfect. If this had been released in theatres it would have drawn some attention from the "Academy".

Rating:
Summary: Excellent film but somewhat inaccurate
Review: I believed Conspiracy to be an excellent film in most
ways. Most surely it is superior to the historical films
in the theaters or on television. All the actors did a much
better than average job, especially Tucci and Branagh.
However, the portrayal of SD Security Chief Reinhard
Heydrich by Kenneth Branagh might be considered to
be inaccurate. In the film he is portrayed as a sinister
idealist who completely accepts the mad philosophy of
National Socialism and is ready to do the Furhrer

's bidding. However, this is contrary to how many writers descibe him. There is no doubt he was a terrible man who
had a leading role in the Holocaust, but it is believed
personally he was neither anti-semetic nor did he buy
into Himmler's and Rosenberg's bizarre vision of an "Aryan
Master Race." He was a sadistic opportunist who had a chance
to rise up the political ladder and took it. I am neither
a historical revsionist or sympathetic to the Nazis.I present
an alternate interpretation of Heydrich.