Excellent film.
Based on the minutes of the actual meeting, The Conference shows the meeting where the Final Solution was proposed and planned. The film contrasts the high stakes and utter brutality of the subject matter discussed with the sedate and bureaucratic procedure of what takes place in the room.
That is the twin achievement of this film, to make an entire film in one location, without action, mostly of seated discussion, absolutely riveting, while simultaneously making you understand how sitting through this meeting, like most work meetings, would be mundane, technical, and boring, without the film itself ever being boring. There is the petty posturing, the departmental territorialism, the microaggressions, and the impatience to just get to the fucking end. Questions of the eradication of millions of people become secondary to when the tea break is, what there is to eat, stepping out for a fag break. Eichmann flirts with his secretary and Meyer doesn’t like his seat and Heydrich asks Stuckart how his wife is doing and when’s she due.
My worry at the start of the film was that it was gonna be difficult to follow who everyone was. There’s 16 characters around the table, they all arrive in quick succession and are introduced with their title and rank. The military are all in uniform and they all have the same haircut. I worried everyone would get lost in the shuffle. But with skillful performances and direction, each character emerges, their temperament, their priorities. The film draws out the small nuances of interactions to show relationship dynamics, these tiny powerplays for dominance. If you like something like the Mindhunter tv series, you’ll like this. All these horrendous actions discussed sedately while seated around a table, all this gripping tension driven from minute expressions and behaviour, how each person is seeking something they need and even in ordinary conversation are trying to establish the power to have that met.
And another impressive feat is to make a film this engrossing while having absolutely no one to root for. Every character is a bastard, a mass murderer. No one here speaks up for the Jews, or looks like they have any hesitation or compunction about what they are doing. Your heart rises for a moment when it looks like Kritzinger is going to raise a moral objection to what they are doing, only for it to sink immediately when he asks the question of the burden this will put on the mental health of their soldiers. After carrying out the annihilation of millions of people, will they be able to come back and be productive members of society? We don’t want them shell-shocked or alcoholics or blunted with sadism. They should be able to come back and be bakers and bankers and schoolteachers and carpenters. How can we make mass murder easier on them?
What I liked so much about this film is, by making it about the boring admin side of an atrocity, by making it so identifiably mundane as a work meeting, with its handouts and its cost projections, by making it about departmental targets to get their numbers down, it demythologises and de-exceptionalises it as an event. So much of media about the Nazis present them as evil incarnate, this time, this place, where Hell put a foot down on earth. The black-and-white film, the skull and crossbones insignia caps, a seeming caricature of malevolence in uniform, all marching lock-step like they are no longer human beings but mechanical, like many ants making up a great hive, no longer human at all. And instead of learning from them, they become iconic; instead of believing this is what people are capable of, we believe it is what we are incapable of, an evil beyond our comprehension. But it was mostly made up of things like this, just this. Boring meetings. Departmental targets. Discussion about transport and quotas and scheduling. When Kritzinger brings up how to make the eradication of other human beings easier on the troops I was reminded of the documentary Machine, where the Americans argue for using AI in military action so as to ensure soldiers are less likely to be traumatised from the effects of war. When the attendees bicker about how difficult it is to deport so many Jews from Germany only to have to find places for them in other occupied territories, whose officials are already trying to reduce their own Jewish populations, I am reminded of listening to the narrative of refugees in Europe, British politicians insisting they are France’s problem, France insisting they don’t want them, Greece insisting they can’t support new arrivals, and everyone complaining about the tightness of borders, and never the treatment of human beings. These were not exceptional arguments being made at Wannsee, they were the same arguments made many times before and after. The Conference rehumanises this story, and in doing so, shows it to be the work of ordinary people, accountable for the impact their decisions have on others.
An excellent film, skillfully executed and beautifully performed.