Acting, writing propel ‘Trial of the Chicago 7’
If you’re old enough to remember the chaotic, violent events that took place during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and the tumultuous, seemingly endless trial that followed it, there’s still plenty of reason to watch this terrific narrative of that unsettling time.
If this is a story you’re unfamiliar with, don’t go Googling it first, don’t even watch the trailer. It’s a film to get wrapped up in, to get involved with. It’s so much more interesting if you don’t know how it ends.
So why bother with it if you do know? Three words: writing, directing, acting. Kudos to Aaron Sorkin for the first two, and to (must choose carefully here) Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne and Frank Langella on the third.
The trial— which is the focus of the film, with the Chicago riots shown in flashbacks— was a political and cultural event that took place in a time of social upheaval. The war in Vietnam, its American casualties and the draft were in the headlines every day. The call to protest in Chicago was a demand for the end of the war. But it did not play out the way anyone had planned or hoped, at least on the part of the 10,000-plus protestors.
The question remains, all these years later, of what was on the mind of
Mayor Richard J. Daley and what orders he gave to his police force. History records that the result was pandemonium. Crowds of protestors were anxious and angry; frustrated cops were at the ready with clubs and tear gas. Overreactions ensued, on both sides.
Five months later, the trial of the group that became known as the Chicago 8 (later, due to courtroom circumstances, reduced to seven) began.
The charges against them were of conspiracy to cross state lines in order to incite violence. The main players were Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, from the Youth International Party; Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis, from Students for a Democratic Society; Dave Dellinger, from the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam; Bobby Seale, from the Black Panther Party; defense counsel William
Kunstler; prosecuting attorney Richard Schultz; and Federal District Judge Julius Hoffman.
The film consists of a fast-moving series of character studies of all of the above, and quite a few more. Most of the spotlight is grabbed by Cohen as Hoffman, who is portrayed as funny, reckless and outrageous in the courtroom scenes, yet is shown to be serious about revolution in the name of ending the war. Redmayne gives us a Hayden who believes that his very different approach to revolution is the one that really matters, and tries to be the group’s voice of reason. The character of Judge Hoffman will go down in movie lore as one of the best roles Langella has been given.
It’s Sorkin’s method of putting the film together, with different scenes from different places and time periods, that results in the compelling and engrossing way of getting the story told.
“The Trial of the Chicago 7” premieres on Netflix on Oct. 16.