The Trial of the Chicago 7 — truth and fiction working side by side
Starting off with a little context, 1968 was an extraordinarily tumultuous year for the United States, with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., followed by tons of protests, then the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and, of course, let’s not forget the elephant in the room, the Vietnam War and the ever-growing political tensions it was creating, so the gap in the political scene was aggravating more and more every day.
Therefore, 1968’s Democratic National Convention of late August held in Chicago was bound to be a perfect storm. Multiple political factions set out to travel to Chicago and protest the Vietnam War. 10000 like-minded people gathered, belonging to organisations such as the Youth International Party (the Yippies), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE) and the Black Panther political party. Each of them are slightly different in their political nuances, but all of them obviously lean towards the left, with a knack for social justice. After a few days, terrible violence ensued between the protesters and the Police. As a result, hundreds were hurt, belonging to both sides, and eight people, important figures among the protesters, were tried for conspiracy.
I hope I haven’t lost you, because this is where the film starts. Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ follows the the five month long trial of Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), president of SDS, Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), prime organizer of MOBE, David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), leader of MOBE, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin (Sacha Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong), founding members of the Yippies, Lee Weiner and John Froines (Noah Robbins and Daniel Flaherty), normal run-of-the-mill activists, and Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), leader of the Black Panther party. They are accused of actively attempting to incite a riot, prosecuted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Richard Schultz, a federal prosecutor, mainly defended by Mark Rylance’s William Kunstler, their trial being presided by judge Frank Langella’s Judge Julius Hoffman.
This film is a courtroom drama, Sorkin’s favourite cinematic setting, since it allows him to showcase his great talent for dialogue, and dialogue is exactly what you will get here, as it’s the case with every Sorkin film out there (‘A Few Good Men’, ‘The Social Network’, ‘Moneyball’, etc.).
Over the course of the film, one question is thoroughly analyzed by the the audience and, of course, the audience’s proxy, the jury: did those men try to incite riots or was it the Police that used unjust violence against the protesters? As with any trial, more and more facts and confessions surface every day in court and we get to know our many characters better and better. Eight people are put on trial, yet the name of the film says otherwise. This will be one of the film’s major points.
Among the actors, the ones that shine the most are Redmayne and Baron Cohen. Redmayne’s Tom Hayden is the diplomatic kind of activist, disgusted by the system he’s fighting and very confident in his rhetoric, but prudent and willing to compromise, always with a nice shirt and a straight haircut. Baron Cohen’s character, Abbie Hoffman, on the other hand, Hayden’s “evil twin brother”, if you will, is a long haired, weed smoking, hippie activist, irreversibly cynical in his conceptions, and always carrying his dry humour around to mask his disappointment in the world. These two men seem unable to truly learn anything from each other even though they are on the same team. Their conflict of ideologies is the one that really drives the film, one of the few conflicts that Sorkin doesn’t hastily dismiss as “solved” as soon as its introduced.
Other acting highlights are Abdul-Mateen’s magnetic, flashy performance as the confident leader of the main party representing the African Americans at the time and Gordon-Levitt’s more restrained performance as a conflicted prosecutor, doubting himself more and more every day. He did a good spin on the role, even though his character’s arc proved to be entirely predictable from his first few scenes. Moreover, one cannot omit to mention Michael Keaton in any film he’s in, even though his role is as memorable as it is small, such as this situation. Talking about characters, there is one thing in the writing of a character that could have worked infinitely better: the judge. I don’t mind that he ended up being a caricature, just that he was a dumb, oblivious one. What if the judge was still biased (like the system he represents), but smart, cunning, calculated?
While this is the 9th film written by Sorkin, it’s only his second directorial outing, following 2018’s voice-over pestered poker drama ‘Molly’s Game’, upon which Sorkin has improved tremendously; his big shift in style is accompanied by a significant improvement in quality. However, although the production is more than satisfying (capturing the late 60’s through the costumes, the city, the atmosphere, etc.), he doesn’t really seem to have a distinct voice as a director, mainly because he is first and foremost a good writer, with his dialogue as a highlight, which, even though fired continuously (almost tiring), is never hard to follow, very rarely pretentious and often elegantly funny. As Sorkin once said himself, good film dialogue should sound like music, and his sure does.
Film, by nature, is all about conflict, and this particular film thrives on throwing conflicts at us, one after the other, internal, interpersonal, political, even among our anti-establishment, system loathing liberal heroes. This film has got five, seven or hell knows how many protagonists and tons of minor, supporting characters, and it works marvellously only because of Sorkin’s phenomenal writing. He sure knows how to build a story, because this one, like a couple others written by him, is structurally impeccable, in short meaning that every plot choice makes sense for the intended story and, as a result, every significant character ends up going through a transformation, evolving in a more obvious or subtle way, in this case leaning towards the obvious.
As regards the nature of the story, we have all heard, in fiction or in real life, about cases of police brutality (or other legit or non-legit authorities) on protesters. Events of this kind are heavily fictionalized, but nonetheless real. This one in particular has been adapted and screened many times by Hollywood, and deservedly so. No matter what really happened, who’s right and who’s left, this is an important piece of American history, one that makes you understand some of the founding principles of that country a little better, especially in the case of non natives, such as myself.
However, and there is a fairly big however, as is the case with every political film out there, there will always be some bias in the writing, there is no true political objectivity. This is not a mistake or a misstep, just a statement, and for the cinematic feats accomplished here, the bias works perfectly, since the only characteristics to be judged here are, of course, the cinematic ones.
As proof of this, some facts about the case were invented specially for the film, more facts were partially or fully embellished and some were entirely omitted. This was all done for the sole purpose of making the aforementioned statement while fleshing out some well-rounded characters, more or less similar to some real people. These changes, which you can find online, so there’s no need to list them here, were mostly wise and do not deserve much analysing.
What I do find intriguing is the fact that some real life events could have been introduced in the film and they would have helped the story, but they weren’t, and so they didn’t. For example, at some point, the judge had some of the defendants cut their hair in order to look more presentable for the court. This is exactly the kind of force that our heroes actively fight for a living and this move would have been perfect to further characterize the flawed system these people are living in. Still, it wasn’t introduced and I’m guessing it’s because it would have made it harder for us to easily recognize the characters, so that’s definitely a missed opportunity.
One of 2020’s most socially conscious films (and that’s saying something), I think ‘Chicago 7’ is important for this era, it will be remembered by a few people other than film nerds in a few tens of years and it will connect to anyone who has ever seen an injustice and could not act upon it for any reason.
In the end, ‘Chicago 7’ delivers exactly what it’s expected to deliver, a comeback from a great writer who once shook the world with one of the last decade’s best films, ‘The Social Network’. The comeback, though, doesn’t feel like it’s rising to those heights, because, I think, it’s not trying to. Clearly a passion project, it goes to great lengths to make a point, and it’s working perfectly. It’s executed with great calculations, but never cold. Yet, it feels somewhat predictable, but such is the case when experience overshadows a beginner’s great energy. Rating-4/5.
