The Trial Of The Chicago 7

I've been waiting for this film for a long time. It's been gestating for years--at one time Steven Spielberg was going to do it. But it ended up in good hands--Aaron Sorkin, who wrote another trial film, A Few Good Men, and can stitch together dialogue like nobody's business. This is his second directorial effort, and it is most accomplished.

I'm a little biased, as this topic fascinates me. It concerns a trial of eight, and then seven men in 1970 for conspiracy to cross state lines to incite a riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. It was a flimsy charge, as even the lead prosecutor (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) realizes when he is given the case by Attorney General John Mitchell. The Johnson administration had declined to indict anyone, and came to  the conclusion that the riots were caused by the Chicago police

But the Nixon administration wanted some scapegoat, and also didn't like radical liberals, so they put a kind of all-star lineup of left-wing activists on trial: Students For A Democratic Society's Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp); Youth International Party's (Yippies) Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong); pacifist organizer David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) ; Black Panther Bobby Seale (Yanya Abdul-Mateen II) and two others, John Froines and Lee Weiner, who aren't given much screen time, almost as a joke, because the two always wondered why they were there.

The lawyer for seven of them is William Kunstler, who was famous for representing radicals (I once saw him on the subway), and he's played by Mark Rylance. The judge was the old and clearly biased Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), and the resulting trial was a circus from the beginning.

To start with, Seale had an attorney that was in the hospital, and thus had no counsel, which Langella ignores. So Seale makes several protests. He was only in Chicago for four hours to make a speech, and was nowhere near a riot. Finally Langella has enough and has him bound and gagged, which shocks even Gordon-Levitt, who motions for a mistrial. Seale is removed from the trial and thus it's down to seven.

Sorkin includes a lot of the trial, which mostly consists of Cohen clowning (he and Rubin wear judicial robes one day), Kunstler objecting, and Langella overruling, while also citing numerous contemtp charges. This is entertaining but also troubling. Though this happened fifty years this abuse of power by the government still rankles.

We also see behind the scenes, at a house which serves as the defense's headquarters. There is tension between Redmayne, who is clean cut and believes in the democratic process (Hayden would later be a state legislator in California and, more famously, would marry Jane Fonda). Cohen is a provocateur, a comedian at heart (much of the story is told as he regales an audience--I saw him speak when I was in college and can testify to his chops as a comic). One of the juicy details left out of the film is that the Yippies nominated a pig to run for president.

Redmayne believes that Cohen just uses the war (that's what everyone is protesting) to grab the limelight. Cohen actually finds this accusation hurtful.

This is a wonderful film, and Sorkin is to be commended for juggling this many characters from this many points of view. The editing is crisp and makes for a suspenseful film--forget what you know about the result of the trial and let yourself get lost in the mystery. It's also a wonderful reenactment of a time long gone, when long-haired freaks and beret-waring black men scared white America, and the idea of revolution was in the air, and taken seriously.

A couple of things bothered me, One scene has Cohen and Strong run into Gordon-Levitt at a park. The prosecutor has his two daughters with them. It gives the participants a chance to talk to each other like humans, but I didn't buy it, and I doubt it happened. The ending is also problematic. It's a feel-good ending that seems out of some other movie, like Miracle on 34th Street. I'm also sorry Sorkin didn't include the testimony of poet Allen Ginsberg, who recited his poem "Howl" on the witness stand.

The acting is superb. If there is an Oscars this year, the Best Supporting Actor category could be filled from this movie. Cohen is the standout--he stuck with the project for ten years, and of course playing a larger-than-life character like Hoffman gives him the juiciest bits  Rylance and Redmayne (interesting that so many British actors are here) are terrific, as are Langella, who convincingly plays a grotesque monster, and Abdul-Mateen II as Seale.

I'm so happy that this long-awaited film satisfied my expectations. The only people who should avoid it are old crabby white guys who hated hippies.