Weekend Watch: The Trial Of The Chicago 7
Aaron Sorkin gets historical, and the result is timely
Image Credit: Netflix
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Aaron Sorkin finally brings The Trial Of The Chicago 7 to screens, and it couldn’t be timelier despite its 1968 setting…
It’s very much an Aaron Sorkin week, between the West Wing voting special I wrote about here, and his long-awaited courtroom drama The Trial Of The Chicago 7, which is now on Netflix after a limited run in cinemas. Sticking with a political theme, this follows the infamous 1969 trial of seven defendants charged by the federal government with conspiracy and more, arising from the countercultural protests in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The trial transfixed the nation and sparked a conversation about mayhem intended to undermine the US government.
Originally planned as a project for Steven Spielberg (with Sorkin scripting), the film, unlike its central protagonists, just couldn’t seem to get arrested. Ben Stiller and Paul Greengrass came and went, and then Sorkin agreed to step up and direct in 2018 having made his shot-calling debut with Molly’s Game. Despite the known name behind the camera, and a starry cast that includes Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Jeremy Strong, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Frank Langella and Mark Rylance, Paramount got cold feet about a big cinematic release and, like some of its other movies in the past, sold it off to Netflix.
It’s certainly not a quality issue, as Trial represents an excellent example of the courtroom drama. The emotional energy of the protest, the trial and its fallout were more than enough fodder for a watchable film and Sorkin’s script certainly doesn’t let the cast or his audience down. As a director, he chose to stay more straightforward, letting the acting and his words do the heavy lifting beyond one or two stylish sequences at the protest.
The cast is also uniformly great – Strong so convincingly turns himself into Jerry Rubin that it actually took me a moment to figure out that it was Kendall Roy from Succession under the curls (L to the O-G!) Sacha Baron Cohen also works well as Abbie Hoffman, while Redmayne and Rylance prosper in less showy roles. Credit also to Abdul-Mateen II, who, as Bobby Seale, simmers and lets speeches fly in a smaller part that is no less vital (and features a show-stopping moment where he is bound and gagged in the court).
As a film, this speaks to both the politics of the time and our own, peering into the political turmoil that swept through the US (and the world) in the 1960s and the issues we’re facing today. Sorkin can occasionally get up on a bully pulpit with his words, but here he largely lets the real events do the talking, pointing a spotlight at injustice and the powerful peoples’ casual indifference to it. Sure, some dramatic license is taken here and there, as is usually the case with any feature film chronicling real events (those after a firmly factual account can seek out Bret Morgan’s 2007 documentary Chicago 10, which blends animation, archival footage and music to tell the story).
This is Sorkin in full flow, and the result is often electric without overhyping the twists and turns of the trial itself. Outside the court, protestors chant “The whole world is watching!” There’s a reason for that, both then and now.
The Trial Of The Chicago 7 is on Netflix now.