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Sacha Baron Cohen leads a campaign for justice in Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7 |
Vietnam is in full swing with young men dying in their thousands
to defend a cause many are starting to believe isn’t worth it. Nixon has just
been elected – and his government wants to make an example of these left-wing,
hippies he believes are drowning out “the silent majority”. Student leaders Tom
Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), hippie activists Abbie
Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), and pacifist David
Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) are arraigned in court for conspiracy to incite a
riot, facing a ten year prison sentence. Black Panther Bobby Seale (Yahya
Abdul-Mateen II), who wasn’t in Chicago at the time, is thrown in to make them
look more threatening. With radical lawyer William Kunstler (Mark Rylance) in
their corner, the defendants deal with a slanted case from the government, being
backed all the way by the judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) who can’t hide
his contempt for them.
The Trial of the
Chicago 7 feels like it’s on the cusp of making a grand statement about the
rights and liberties of Americans, at a time of great civil unrest. With the
country more divided now than it’s ever been
since the events of the film, this should be a timely message. But somehow the
film doesn’t quite manage to deliver it. There is too much going on – an
attempt to cover divisions in the left and counter-culture, the events in Chicago
in 1968, the trial, clashes outside of court – it’s almost as if Sorkin the
director has failed to marshal Sorkin the writer into making a clear and
coherent thematic point. Instead the film becomes a chronicle of shocking
courtroom events, affecting, but not as earth-shaking as it should be.
Part of this is the fragmented script. An occasional device
is used, whereby Hoffman turns the events of the trial into a lively stand-up
routine at some unspecified future point. This is a pretty neat idea as a framing
device – however it only pops up at odd moments rather than giving a spine to
the film (as well as missing the chance to filter events through the perception
of one member of its sprawling cast). You end up thinking it’s just Sorkin the
writer coming up with a way of giving us information Sorkin the director can’t
work out how to do visually.
This tends to affect a lot of the stuff outside of the courtroom. Sorkin’s dialogue is surprisingly plodding here, too often ticking the boxes or establishing backstory and motivation that will play out later. He has his moments and his gift for capturing revealing details make for brilliantly inspired speeches and dialogue riffs that reveal acres of character while feeling very light. But, considering what he is capable with (and could have done with this material) it feels like autopilot.
That’s the problem here: it’s a little too pedestrian. Only
an argument between frustrated liberal Hayden and his lawyer Kuntsler captures
something of the dynamic pace of Sorkin at his best. Other scenes – such as an
out of courtroom scene between decent just-doing-my-job prosecutor Richard
Schulz (a low-key but very good Gordon-Levitt) and Hoffman and Rudin – are a
little too on-the-nose in making their points about liberty, truth and
justice.
The strongest moments by far are in the courtroom – and the true-life
staggering lack of proper procedure followed there. The film is rightly angry,
without tipping too much into outright preaching. It’s shocking to see how
little the rights of the defendants were respected. Much of this came from the
attitude of the judge, Julius Hoffman: a traditionalist, his contempt for the
defendants clear throughout, handing out contempt of court charges like
sweeties. Frank Langella stands out as a man so convinced of his own morality –
and so locked into his own certainty about right and wrong – that he is
completely unaware many of his rulings are biased and is deeply hurt at being
accused of racial imbalance, while having the only black defendant literally
bound and gagged.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is superb as Bobby Searle, the Black
Panther leader furious at being roped into the trial. Searle loudly – and
vigorously – protests the trial has not been delayed to allow his lawyer to
attend and that he has been refused (consistently) by the judge his right to
represent himself. The treatment of him is shocking and appalling. But it feels
like no attempt is made to put this in wider context either of civil rights at
the time or in America since. And that feels like a major miss. We’re only a
few degrees from the same effectively happening today.
This is part of the film’s general problem in finding its
real focus, or wider context. I suspect its heart is probably in the views
expressed by Hoffman on the stand – particularly those around not having his
thoughts on trial before – but this film is too scatter-gun.
What the film does do well is with the quality of its
performances. Sorkin may be a rather a visually flat director – his shooting of
the convention riots completely fails to conceal the lack of budget – but he
encourages great work from actors. Redmayne and Cohen give skilled performances
as the acceptable and radical faces of left-wing politics. Strong is wonderful
as a hippie with a firm sense of right and wrong, while Carroll Lynch is great
as a pacifist driven to the edge. Mark Rylance excels as radical lawyer
Kunstler, softly spoken but passionate, who brings fire to proceedings.
It’s a shame though that The
Trial of the Chicago 7 settles for mostly being a walk-through of the
trial. An attempt to really capture a sense of the deeper politics gets lost,
and the failure of the film to really draw parallels with today or place these
events in their wider context feels like a missed opportunity. Even the film’s
end captions don’t give you as much information as you would hope – especially
telling considering its abrupt ending. A well-meaning effort, but a middle-brow
film.
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