ON JANUARY 20, 1942, AT THE HEIGHT OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 15GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AND SS COMMANDERS ATTENDED A CONFERENCE ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF BERLIN. IT WAS A SIMPLE MEETING, WHICH BY THEEND WOULD DECIDE THE FATE OF SIX MILLION LIVES. CONSPIRACY IS BASED ON THE ONLY SURVIVING RECORD OF THAT MEETING.
On January 20, 1942, with the tide of war turning in favor of the Allies, a small group of SS officers, government ministers, and Nazi officials met near Berlin to decide the fate of Europe's Jews. Based on the only surviving record of that meeting, Conspiracy is a powerful combination of historical reconstruction and speculation that attempts to offer new insights into a pivotal moment in history.
The cast does a marvelous job of fleshing out the documentary evidence to create convincing characters. Kenneth Branagh is especially chilling as SS Chief of Security Reinhard Heydrich, who uses a combination of charm and ruthless power-mongering to gain support for his plans. Colin Firth is fascinating as Wilhelm Stuckart, a lawyer who sees the brutal tactics of the SS as a threat to his own intellectualized anti-Semitism, and Stanley Tucci gives a wonderfully understated performance as Adolf Eichmann.
Conspiracy is a carefully crafted, completely unsensational film that offers ample proof of the banality of evil. There are no histrionics and no comic-book Nazi villains, just a small group of politicians and war-weary soldiers arguing about the meaning of words and the logistics of extermination, calmly preparing to unleash an unimaginable horror on the world. –Simon Leake Conspiracy
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Rating: 1 / 5
Wow! So many wonderful reviews?! In fact. this portrayal is very mellodramatic and,, it is off all the way around. Listen, if you want a superficial and,, I can hardly get started! The only thing Authenic about this is the Uniforms and the location. Everything else is rediculous! The British accents, the overly dramatised acting- all are snide, rude and overly arrogant. The guy playing the legal rep was in fact the best actor. Most realistic. They did not even refer to each other as Gruppenfuehrer or whatever. It was General, Major etc. For every actual minute ref from the actual conference minutes, there was 200 times more ”Hollywood” filler.
Hey! I know this is a movie and Hollywood folk are not doing a documentary here but, well, it is too much of a wrong thing. Even the actors! They could have found someone that has at l;east kinda similar looks and mannersims as Heydrich! The actor was pretentious snide and silly. For those with limited knowledge, it is silly. For those with decent knowledge, it is rediculous.
Rating: 1 / 5
Solid movie ! ther’s no action just 20 members of the Nazi party and others talking at a table.I liked it.
Rating: 3 / 5
I have no issues with the substance of the film; its interpretation of the intentionally vague surviving record of the Wannsee Conference is as plausible as any other. However, especially when compared to the earlier German production “Die Wannseekonferenz” (available in this country only on VHS), it is seriously defective as a historical reenactment. It starts with the silly overflight scene at the beginning and the waiter dropping the dishes at the beginning and then gets worse. Many of the characters are ridiculously overacting and become almost caricatures, especially the vulgar, pork-faced Klopfer, but also Kritzinger, who would be great playing an English aristocrat, but fails utterly at the portrayal of a faceless German bureaucrat. To add drama, the meeting seems to be interrupted constantly by food breaks, and Eichmann puts more effort into his role as catering manager than anything else. The breaks, none of which seem documented during what was a very short meeting, also give the director plenty of opportunity to add more fictional tension, bathroom discussions, and interaction between characters. There is little indication that there was as much interpersonal conflict as depicted here. The German version has some of the same weaknesses, but much milder; in “Conspiracy”, they become much too distracting.
Rating: 2 / 5
Let’s begin with the positives: the acting is superb, and the costumes and sets are surprisingly accurate (note the bronze swastika-emblazoned napkin holders being polished in the opening scene.) Now the negatives: as a film, it drags. It is the story of a meeting of bureaucrats; how could it not? As history, it is largely speculative. The minutes of this infamous conference, from the “one surviving copy”, are barely 8 1/2 typed pages, including the list of attendees. Three of those who attended spoke on the conference after the war, when their recollections were somewhat hazy & their commentary geared towards pleasing their Allied captors. My point is there is not enough documentation available to build a movie on the subject of Wannsee. The director et al attempted to make both an entertainment and a documentary, and failed at both.
Rating: 2 / 5