A film from development hell finally makes it to our
screens (albeit our small screens through Netflix). With previous directors attached
including Steven Spielberg, Paul Greengrass and Ben Stiller, along with
castings and re-castings including Will Smith and Heath Ledger for Spielberg’s
iteration, along with a Seth Rogen re-cast for this final product, the film has
often been touted as one of “the greatest films never made”. The film is even
included in Simon Braund’s 2013 book 'The Greatest Movies You’ll Never See: The Unseen Masterpieces by the World’s Greatest Directors', ultimately giving the film a 5/10 chance of ever being made,
noting that its links to so many stars “stands a chance of resurrection”. So we now finally have the film, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin. There’s
only one question: does it live up to its insurmountable developmental hell
hype? Well, in many ways it actually does do just that. In many ways, I feel
that the film has come out at a particularly apt time, with the world of
what does and does not make a peaceful protest very much at the front of
everyone’s mind.
It’s fair to say that I’m definitely a fan of Aaron Sorkin’s
output, with his earliest filmic efforts still remaining my favourites; A Few Good Men, Malice and The American President. Whilst also genuinely
adoring his later masterwork efforts such as The Social Network, Steve Jobs and his work on re-writing Moneyball. At current, I don’t exactly
know where his 2020 effort falls into the ranking, but it is yet another excellently
written, wickedly well acted delivery of a high concept and highly verbose
piece of text, brought to the screen with great flare. This is certainly a
better go at things than his previous directorial effort Molly’s Game, which I ultimately found
to be a rather dull film. The Trial of the Chicago 7 bristles
with energy, power and drama from its immediate opening and never really lacks
the drive of its first ten minutes for the rest of its remaining two hours. The
film follows the story of the trail of the 7 people accused with inciting
violence at a protest at the 1968 democratic national convention in Chicago,
Illinois. Sorkin manages to deliver this story with an ungodly talent for
delivering exposition in an entertaining fashion, but for these film he takes
on a new challenge of having to juggle entertaining courtroom banter with genuinely
tragic drama and the severity of the truth of this real life story. Much of the
courtroom dialogue is taken verbatim from the genuine transcripts and this
actually leads to a tighter realism in what we are seeing compared to what we are
sometimes faced with in other scenes, where Sorkin has more of a chance to throw in
a few irresistible witty comments. These comments are usually funny - always
smart - but sometimes do feel like Sorkin speaking, rather than the characters.
This is what I have always felt to be Sorkin’s biggest issue.
The film is exceptionally cast and everybody involved does a
marvellous job. Although Eddie Redmayne’s accent and delivery didn’t
exactly grab me at first, I ultimately believe that this is the best work he’s
done so far in his filmic career. Jeremy Strong, John Carrol Lynch and Joseph
Gordon Levitt build a strong ensemble, all delivering very nuanced characters in
a world with a few caricatures painted. To put it plainly, a few of the villains
of the piece twirl their moustaches a little too much for me. I remove from
this comment, however, our lead villain, with Frank Langella as the supremely biased
judge Julius Hoffman, who is so unbelievably wicked that we can’t help but want
to scream aloud as we watch. Langella is similarly nuanced and hence his pure
evil seems realistic, and hence means it is even more harrowing to watch. Michael
Keaton shows up a few scenes, but isn’t really given much to do and, although at
first I was disappointed at this and felt as if it was a waste of talent, I do
feel after watching the rest of the film that this was a very interesting subversion
of the usual courtroom film tropes. Much has been made Oscar-wise regarding the
performance of Sacha Baron Cohen and I simply have to get on this train. Cohen’s
performance is wonderful and just as dramatically compelling and endearing as
he is humourous and outrageous. I do hope that people don’t lump in his
previous (BRILLIANT) contributions to the world of comedy and instead look at this
performance as a wholly embodied character, as he has such an impeccable talent
to do. I also think that this is the
best work I’ve seen on screen from Mark Rylance, who is genuinely sublime as
chief of the defence, William Kunstler. But one of the lead standouts for me was
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Bobby Seale, whose brief stint in the film stays with us
more than certain actors and characters who appear for the entire running time.
But Sorkin’s talents as a writer are not the only thing on
display here, we also get to see his great aptitude as a director, and this is, in all regards, a very accomplished film to say that it’s only his second
feature he has directed. However, it is clear where those he has worked with
before has rubbed off, with many score-swelling goosebump-inducing moments that are
pure Reiner. There are also many exceptionally edited sequences utilizing different
film stocks, as well as real footage, all of which is very much in the style of
Danny Boyle’s work on his script for
Steve
Jobs. There is even a touch of Fincher about the film, with many extreme close-ups
and focus on the smaller details in the story, that seem very much in tune with
how Fincher made
The Social Network. In
all these regards, I must give more credit to the editing of Alan Baumgarten,
who ultimately has had the biggest hand in making the film as propellant and
visually interesting as it is. Whilst with
Molly’s Game I wondered whether or not the film would have been better in
a different director's hands, I feel confident in saying that the film sits best
as a piece both written
and directed
by Sorkin. Sorkin also does excellent work in bringing us into the world of the
late 60s and early 70s, without any cheap song choices or lazy re-use of
stock footage. As a matter of fact, the use of stock footage is one of the film’s
most interesting aspects as a matter of fact, with them often being used in
direct juxtaposition to other events occurring in the film, never just to set a
scene. Every cutaway makes a point. The film’s multiple montages, particularly the
opening and the middle depiction of the riot are the film’s peak moments,
exceptionally building to unbearable climaxes of violence and drama. This is
all underpinned by Daniel Pemberton’s great score, which does have its moments
of heart-wrenching cliché come the final scene, but also has lots of moments of
darkness throughout, adding further to the drastically changing tones of the
film as the trial develops and moves in wholly different directions.
-
A sturdy and very entertaining 8/10. Sorkin delivers yet another obnoxiously watchable film of supreme intelligence, whilst never getting in the way of the inherent seriousness of the plot, or the power of the real people he is depicting. I have no doubt that this will be a serious Oscar contender for the popular crowd come next year, and when it comes to "popular Oscar bait fare", this is a far sight better than many of the other films that could be described as such.P.S. It feels very good to be in the courtroom again with Sorkin, but if you’re looking for the superior piece of Sorkin courtroom fiction, you’re still not gonna beat
A Few Good Men. A hard task, as it is after all one of the finer films of the 90s.
-Thomas Carruthers
 - Review ){kind=link}
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