1/12/2024 0 Comments The trial of the chicago 7![]() With the Trump administration now itching to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court - likely removing any semblance of balance from the highest juridical body in the land - the spectacle of a biased, authoritarian judge who has made up his mind about the defendants before the trial even gets under way is sobering food for thought. And the manipulation of specious conspiracy charges has horrifying reverberations in the age of QAnon. Tear gas, riot clubs and militarized federal troops have given 2020 an uneasy resemblance to 1968. The very basis of the court case, which is stacked against the protest groups while evidence points to police as the antagonists escalating the violence, has stinging relevance given the unrest that has shaken the country in recent months. Just witnessing Chicago cops remove their badges and name tags as tensions mount in a clash with protestors sends chills down the spine. 28, 1968.Īs has often proven the case with films grounded in history during this turbulent year, events of a half-century ago have an uncanny way of reflecting the bitterly polarized America of today, as neoconservative power plays grow ever more aggressive. Sorkin comes closer to the approach of documentaries spawned by the case, cogently dramatizing events in and around the trail in a fluid back and forth structure that gradually pieces together what went down in Chicago’s Grant Park on the night of Aug. The Chicago Seven chapter has inspired numerous films, from Haskell Wexler’s docu-fiction treatment of the DNC protests, Medium Cool, through Woody Allen’s satirical take on the trial in Bananas, to Brett Morgen’s mix of archival footage with animated scenes based on court transcripts, Chicago 10. But it avoids the qualities often perceived as flaws by his critics, namely the tendency toward unwieldy exposition and soapbox grandiloquence, the latter remarkably so given the courtroom setting. Those flaws have been conquered here in a movie that’s as dense with witty dialogue, significant characters, factoids, time shifts and multiperspectivity as anything Sorkin has written. That film was a mixed bag, its crackling writing and sharp performances undercut by its windy excesses and cumbersome flashback structure.
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