Conspiracy

It's 1942 and the Nazi's are having a high level pow-wow to figure out what to do with all those pesky Jews they seem to have about the place. To develop a solution, ideally a final one.

It's essentially a film about peoples faces.

Content aside it takes a shape recognisable from the millions of meetings that take place in a million offices every day at every level. They are administrators, some are blinkered by their own agendas, some have power and are prepared to wield it, some are loud and others quiet and some only came for the free food.

But as each man realises what they're truly discussing, the horrors that they are hiding behind careful lawyerly language, it begins to take it's toll, appearing in different ways upon the faces of the different personalities around the table.

As a film it's hampered somewhat by the fact that while certainly an extraordinary meeting it is a meeting all the same. Dry and filled with detail. However it's plot, such as it is is really just a platform for a set of strong acting performances, without which there really wouldn't be much, if anything of value to be found within. Containing a list of some of Britain's finest character actors within it's credits, as well as Stanley Tucci it can fortunately deliver in the performance department. Especially worthy of note are David Threlfall as the only man at the table both abhorred by the proposals and able to show it, Kenneth Branagh as the soft voiced monster in charge and Colin Firth as a lawyer who I found myself seeing as one of the more sympathetic characters despite the fact that his objections are seemingly based on his own personal pride.

It's not the fastest paced of all movies but it's one I found effective. Alongside the aforementioned faces, it conveys in a very subtle manner the real horror of the Holocaust: the reduction of human beings to mere logistics, the dehumanisation that allowed it to happen. For many at the table all those lives are simply numbers they are responsible for reducing. There is so little dissent that I found myself clinging to any available, the tired looks on the faces of the soldiers who will carry out the order, the purely selfish criticism, all are magnified by the tyranny both in and outside of that room.