When I was younger, I never went to sleep before midnight. The older I get, the earlier that time falls back as I seem driven to wake up at 5am for some reason. It was after 1am last night when I finished watching Aaron Sorkin's superb THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 on Netflix.
It's a startling watch.
Centered around events at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, it's a history lesson and courtroom drama that resonates all too loudly today.
Going into the film, I had few memories of the actual events, all of those filtered through my parents eyes and their opinions of the time, filtered to me as a 7 year old.
In 1968, all I "knew" (through the adults around me) was that hippies and counterculture were bad, the Black Panthers were violently anti-American and every Policeman was good.
What makes Sorkin's film so fascinating for me personally, in the same fashion that Spike Lee's "Malcolm X", is that it takes your perceptions from that time 52 years ago and stands them on their head.
After a fast paced, comprehensive and sweeping recap of the world in 1968, mixing mostly real footage with brief introductions of the players, we are set down at the start of the trial.
The 7 are quite a mix of protestors. A moderate college group, Students for a Democratic society led by Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp) are in Chicago to protest the war and Democratic candidate & Vietnam War supporter Hubert Humphrey.
Famous counter-culture yippies Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong) have called their followers to Chicago for a sex, drugs and rock & roll gathering in Grant Park.
Suburban dad and lifelong pacifist David Dellinger (John Carrroll Lunch) has promised his son and wife that there will be no violence. He invites the members of his group to mobilize against the war.
Pulled into the trial is Black Panther leader Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), who was only in Chicago for four hours the day of the event and had never met any of the men.
Sorkin brings his patented fast paced, overlapping, intelligent dialogue, but weaves in enormous amounts of actual trial transcripts to recreate the pivotal moments of the contentious, absurd court proceedings that unfolded for over three months.
As key pieces of the story unfold, there are more than a few jaw dropping moments, one horrific sequence with Seale that is startling to have occured in an America court of law and moments of triumph unconnected to any verdict.
Frank Langella is excellent and infuriating as Judge Julius Hoffman. Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) is likely heading for another Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the 7's trial lawyer William Kunstler and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is terrific as the hand picked government lawyer prosecuting the case. He's caught between his duty and a dawning realization of the travesty that the trial is becoming.
Ben Shenkman (Angels in America) is Leonard Weinglass, attorney for the 7 and Michael Keaton delivers a powerful performance as Attorney General Ramsay Clark.
The cast is fantastic. The writing is classic Sorkin, inspiring and infuriating you.
Cohen was the biggest surprise for me. I love his subversive comedy. The role of Abbie Hoffman gives him the most complete range of emotions that I've seen him play and he delivers.
I'm inspired by filmmakers that allow us to revisit moments of our youth or past that were completely lost on us at the time. As a 7 year old, I was never going to understand what was happening at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Decades later, those events and their aftermath are strangely relevant to today and our contentious, fractured society. The lessons are just as valid and important today as they were in that courtroom.
Smart, tragic, funny and horrifying, THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 earns an A+.
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