Meandering through Time online, I found this nice little nugget in an Emmy wrapup:
Best Vindication: HBO's chilling "Conspiracy" - an understated but awe- inspiring movie detailing the hour-and-a-half meeting where the Nazis hammered out the Final Solution for the Jews - got more nominations than the network's higher-profile "61*," a competent baseball movie, and "Wit," the moving but simplistic story of a professor dying from cancer, which all but grabbed Emmy voters' arms and forced them to write it onto their ballots.
I thought Wit was sublime and very much enjoyed 61*, but I'd still go along with his assessment--although by my count both 61* and Conspiracy got ten nods each.
Conspiracy took enormous risks in both subject matter and setting, and paid off with an enthralling, chilling tale that informs on any number of levels. The dialogue moves easily between almost unimaginably crude racist remarks and pragmatic legalities and logistics
It's all so fantastically....corporate.Heydrich wanted everyone "on board". But he needed to get consensus on implementation method and priority, not persuade everyone as to the need for the project. Most of them had no need of convincing.
A few people did object to the underlying goal, but the risk they presented was distraction. If the majority was spending all their time arguing with these nitwits about the need to kill Jews, how could he keep them focused on gassing and train schedules?
The brilliance of the film is its presentation of this dilemma as a management problem. Heydrich takes a different tack with each of the three main naysayers. The soldier, angry at the doublespeak covering up a gruesome reality, is treated with sympathy and respect--Help us get these desk jockeys in line, that's the best way to help your men. Stuckart is handled as a peer who just hasn't heard the news yet; a friendly warning and reminder that people are watching.
Kritzinger is the only member who is overtly threatened, and there's no hinting about it. As Heydrich observes, he is the only attendee who both objected and had sufficient influence to pull others with him--if not at the meeting, then in the government at large. So alone among the attendees, he is shown the bludgeon. He will give it his support, or a lot of powerful people will do their best to bring him down.
All just another day at the office. .
Kenneth Branagh leads an ensemble cast with a masterful corporate take on Reinhard Heydrich, who literally manages the group to consensus for the Final Solution. Colin Firth as Wilhelm Stuckart, and Stanley Tucci as Adolf Eichmann were both nominated in supporting roles, although Tucci is outshone by both David Threlfall and Nicholas Woodeson as Kritzinger and Hoffman.
Not to be missed.
It just occurred to me that Branagh and Thompson will almost certainly get Best Actor and Actress in Original Film. Together again.
