Aaron Sorkin sure thinks he’s making a profound statement with his latest recounting of American History, unfortunately sub par filmmaking and a muddied message stop The Trial of the Chicago 7 from being a fulfilling movie watching experience.
Historical Background
1968 was one of the most tumultuous years in American history, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated just months of each other, the Vietnam war was at its peak and it seemed like things were reaching a boiling point. This all culminated during the Democratic National Convention where over 10,000 protestors from a variety of different political organizations came to Chicago to denounce the Vietnam war. A riot broke out between the protestors and the tens of thousands of armed police that were brought in by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. After Richard Nixon took office his administration decided to charge 7 of the protest leaders with conspiracy despite the fact that the men had little to no contact with one another. The 8th defendant was Bobby Seale, a co-founder of the Black Panther Party, his inclusion in the trial was an attempt to make the group seem more dangerous to the jury.
Hayden vs. Hoffman
The Trial of the Chicago 7 details the court proceedings that took place in 1969 and each of the defendants is present although much of the focus is placed on the leader of the Youth International Party (Yippies) Abbie Hoffman, played by Sacha Baron, and the leader of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Tom Hayden, played by Eddie Redmayne. Hoffman and Hayden are positioned as the two extremes of political protest. Hoffman calls for a cultural revolution by force if necessary while Hayden takes the more pragmatic non-violent approach that looks to combat systematic oppression from the inside. Sorkin clearly resonates much more with Hayden’s philosophy as he makes him the moral backbone of the story painting him as a revolutionary with unflappable ethical integrity. Even when it seems like Hayden’s emotions have gotten the better of him and he urges the crowd to enact violence in the streets of Chicago it turns out this was just a grammatical misunderstanding. Redmayne does an adequate job at playing Hayden, he has strength and confection while also seeming young and inexperienced. There are a few points where Redmayne tries to play angry and his American accent falters and he ends up sounding constipated.
A Sacha Baron Cohen Oscar Run?
The standout performances in the film are Sacha Baron Cohen playing Abbie Hoffman and Jeremy Strong playing Jerry Rubin. They play really well off of each other and Strong in particular has some hilarious moments, you completely believe that Rubin was stoned for the duration of the trial. Cohen is doing a spot on impression of Hoffman, his mannerisms, his accent are all perfectly honed although this should come as no surprise considering Cohen’s background playing eccentric characters. The aspect of Cohen’s performance that elevates it is his ability to portray Hoffman’s sadness, Hoffman was a manic depressive and he committed suicide when he was 52. Cohen plays the joker revolutionary with deep seeded sadness role to perfection.
Director Sorkin Underwhelms
Along with Cohen just about everyone in the ensemble cast does a good job but I think the person that really let this movie down is Aaron Sorkin. He wrote and directed this film, his screenplay, although definitely not his best is solid. Sub par Sorkin courtroom dialogue is still better than 80% of the dialogue in most Hollywood movies so the screenplay is not the weak point of this movie, the filmmaking on the other hand is really not very good. This is only Sorkin’s second time directing and you can tell his style is immature. His shot selection is basic and bland, his camera is static most of the time so there isn’t any visual movement in any of the scenes which makes it seem like the movie has no forward momentum. The action sequences that show the events of the riots are clunky and sterile they should be gut wrenching and visceral, Sorkin might have been better off using archive footage it might have made the violence seem more impactful.
I have to wonder how much budget played a role in Sorkin’s directorial decisions. This film only had a budget of 35 million dollars, it is a courtroom drama at its core so it doesn’t really need a huge budget but many parts of this film seem cheap. The overall look of the film is overly glossy, it’s shot digitally and not on film but there are plenty of movies shot digitally that look a lot better than this one. Some characters in this film seem too well groomed, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and their cohort were sleeping in a park in Chicago in the middle of the summer and it doesn’t look like anybody there is sweating. Also there were tens of thousands of people protesting in Chicago that summer and the movie shows us maybe 50 people marching down a street, the scale of the protests was completely lost.
The Music Issues
Whenever anyone makes a movie about the 1960s or the Vietnam war they feel the need to include the obligatory playing of CCR’s “Fortunate Son” or Jimi Hendrix’s cover of “All Along the Watchtower”, these songs have been used in so many Vietnam war movies they have become clichés. So what was Aaron Sorkin’s solution to this problem? Completely disregard any music made in the 1960s and just use generic instrumental rock music that sounds like someone doing the blandest Cream impersonation they possibly can. The music in this film is abysmal, not only does the soundtrack not have any era specific music the score is this cheesy background noise that’s meant to be uplifting but fails miserably.
Standout Scene
This film has a bunch of good enjoyable scenes and one really excellent sequence, and no I’m not taking about the Michael Keaton cameo as former Attorney General Ramsey Clark who seems like he’s in a completely different movie. The standout scene comes when Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Bobby Seale challenges Frank Langella’s Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation to Abby Hoffman) after being continually mistreated during the court proceeding and judge Hoffman orders the bailiffs to bound and gag Seale. This scene is the most emotionally resonant and shocking scene in the film everyone in the courtroom is appalled at what is going on and so is the audience. At that point you start to think to yourself that has to be an exaggeration, that couldn’t have possibly happened but it did.
After that incident Bobby Seale’s case was thrown out and he left the other 7 defendants and so Abdul-Mateen left the movie about half way through which is a shame because he puts in a great performance considering how little he is given to work with. Sorkin doesn’t really seem interested in exploring the civil rights battles going on at the time but then again I don’t think I can properly explain what Aaron Sorkin is interested in exploring. Clearly Sorkin thinks that this trial is a monumental point in American history. During the final statement given by Tom Hayden he elects to say the names of every person that was killed in Vietnam while the trial was going on. This is played as some triumphant moment, the music swells and the gallery stands as crazy old Judge Hoffman swings his gavel around and it seems like Sorkin is telling the audience “hey, look, look how important this is” but in reality this moment wasn’t all that victorious at all.
The Realities of the 1960s
The Chicago 7 eventually all got acquitted upon appeal but their fight as revolutionaries was ultimately a failure. Tom Hayden went into politics, Rubin went on to be a stock broker and as I said before Hoffman killed himself. There was no huge cultural revolution in the late 1960s, Nixon was elected and re-elected, the Vietnam war went on for several years after the trial, the civil rights movement lost steam with no leaders to fill the roles left by Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. The 1970s was the decade of American malaise and the 1980s was the jubilant Ronald Reagan decade. The radical left that is depicted in this film didn’t really accomplish anything so Sorkin’s victorious ending rings false.
This film seems to have a lot of parallels with today’s political climate, the scenes of police brutalizing protestors and the vilification of people fighting for equality are eerily familiar sights but this movie’s messaging is so unfocused that anything potentially profound it might be saying is completely lost. If anything this movie should be a warning to the current generation of people fighting for change, the momentum of any revolutionary movement can be snuffed out at a moment’s notice so stay vigilant and keep the course. I think had Aaron Sorkin examined this subject matter with more cynicism (albeit not his specialty) and let someone else take the helm directing this movie could have been really special but instead it ended up being just fine. I would give The Trial of the Chicago 7 a 3 out of 5 stars although I think this film has a chance to do extremely well at the Oscars whenever the Oscars are going to be.
