“The Whole Word is watching!”
The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a powerful and masterfully made court room drama. This was one of my most anticipated films of the year and I went into this with pretty high expectations. I’m a huge fan of The Social Network so I knew that I would most likely end up loving this film. I was honestly surprised at how fantastic this turned out to be, also I did not expect to give this a 5 star rating at all. The plot is great it’s a dramatic and powerful story. It’s sad that this story is very politically relevant although the events happened over 50 years ago.
I can’t help but love a good court room drama and this is the modern court room drama format at it’s finest. From beginning to end themes/emotions such as loyalty, racism, corruption, and frustration are expertly presented. The pacing is great my eyes where glued to the screen the whole time there wasn’t a single moment where it feels boring or slow mainly because such an engaging story is being told.
The acting is fantastic Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, and Jermey Strong give fantastic performances. Alex Sharp, Mark Rylance, Frank Langella, John Carol Lynch, Yahya Abdul-Mateen, and Jason Gordon-Levitt give great performances as well. This film seriously has a cast stacked with talent and passion. Sacha Baron Cohen steals every scene he is in and probably give the best performance of the cast though. The direction is very good from Aaron Sorkin although he is a lot better of a screen writer than he is a director his direction skills are still pretty impressive. Sorkin’s script is truly phenomenal as well.
Sorkin crafts once again a masterpiece of a screenplay. It’s a swift and incredibly intelligent script with tons of one day to be iconic pieces of dialogue. The cinematography is really good but nothing memorable or unique. The editing is phenomenal this film has some of the swiftest and smoothest editing in recent years. In terms of the Oscars I feel this will sweep most of the big categories. This will no doubt get nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor: Sacha Baron Cohen, Best Editing, and Best Original Screenplay. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this wins Best Picture and Original Screenplay. The ending is an emotional and uplifting ending that leaves you in awe of what you just watched. Overall The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a dramatic and intense film that is definitely the best film of 2020 so far.
(9 out of 10)
THE WACPINE OF 'THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7'
WRITING: 8
ATMOSPHERE: 8
CHARACTERS: 9
PRODUCTION: 8
INTRIGUE: 9
NOVELTY: 6
ENJOYMENT: 8
The Good:
Aaron Sorkin's script focuses on the flashy trial of the Chicago 7, effectively making this a courtroom drama. The pre-credits sequence provides exposition though, for those uninitiated in the historical event this film is based on and provides all the information you need to understand what is going on.
In a style true to Sorkin, the script is filled with sharp dialogue, believably delivered by the actors. Sorkin has a knack of writing dialogue that is realistic and above all enjoyable. And while most of the movie is predictable and linear, there are some delicious twists towards the end that put everything in a new light.
What makes this film interesting from the eyes of a Scandinavian viewer is the way the US judicial system works. I don’t know how well the film follows the actual trial, but the way the film depicts the events is fascinating, enjoyable and filled with tension.
With increasing intensity, the trial turns more and more dramatic, showing all of the downsides of the US court system. This film is surprisingly tense even for those who know nothing about the historical event.
We don't learn a lot about the characters, but the growing tension between them and their different beliefs and motives still works very well.
A great script, an interesting historical event and colourful personalities wouldn't alone make a film like this enjoyable. Luckily, great performances help bring dialogue and characters to life. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Eddie Redmayne stand out in particular.
Sorkin's direction keeps the film dynamically interesting, with the trial sequences cutting back and forth between interrogations and other scenes from an earlier point in time to slowly tell the entire story, piece by piece. The quick cutting prevents the film from turning stale.
Frank Langella as the judge is immensely enjoyable to watch. He makes a great impact even though I feel nothing but contempt for the character. Mark Rylance forms a great counter-force against him.
Combining archival footage with dramatized recreations works surprisingly well to show how the demonstration turned horribly wrong.
Even for a non-American like me, with no personal feelings towards the Vietnam War, that ending is incredibly powerful and emotional.
The Bad:
The scenes outside the courtroom seem a lot messier and less interesting. Somehow they brake from the momentum of the courtroom scenes.
The Ugly:
That egg catch was pretty fab (and fake).
WACPINE RATING: 8.0 / 10 = 4 stars
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-02-21T06:59:44Z
[7.9/10] It’s hard to think of a film more timely than The Trial of the Chicago 7. The film covers the legal definition of the incitement of a riot, internecine conflicts within movements and communities that pit pragmatism against principle, the threat of police violence especially against people of color, governmental bodies in a time of transition, and the ability of our institutions both legal and cultural to respond to the crises of the moment.
It’s also a piece of slick Hollywood entertainment. Whatever the thorny issues at play in the trial of the eight (eventually, as the title promises, seven) demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, this film packages them neatly and digestibly for a popular audience.
That’s not a knock, by the way. If you’ve seen other Awards-friendly historical dramas, particularly ones set in and around a courtroom, then The Trial of the Chicago 7 will look pretty familiar. It dutifully sets up the societal tumult of the 1960s, dramatizes the conflicts of the time through historical figures made larger than life and impossibly articulate, and finagles plenty of opportunities for camera-ready drama. There’s nothing the movie does that’s especially new.
But what it does, it does well. It’s well-acted, well-written, and all-around well-made. What’s more, it’s funny. Maybe that’s why I’m more willing to cut it a little slack over similarly traditional Oscar movies. As much as The Trial of the Chicago 7 hits the usual beats of adapting a historical event and Making an Important Statement:tm:, it’s not afraid to throw in some levity to help the medicine go down and take itself a little less seriously than it might. That means smart remarks, real life disruptive but humorous antics, and the occasional moment of self-aware absurdity about the whole thing.
That comes with the style of writer-director Aaron Sorkin, of The West Wing and The Social Network fame. The movie carries the strengths and weaknesses and tics of his signature style. The characters all speak in a showy but sharp patter, with lots of back-and-forth, multi-player conversations that allow the writer to pack in plenty of clever jibes, pointed recriminations, and faux-profound statements that sound just good enough to pass muster.
That’s the thing about Sorkin. He’s a deeply cheesy (and sometimes trite) storyteller, but he’s so good at the form, particularly on a scene-to-scene basis, that he makes you forget or ignore that. It’s a hell of a trick, one The Trial of the Chicago Seven uses to full advantage. Sorkin and company assemble a who’s who of talented actors, load them up with witty repartee, and let the film roll merrily along on the strength of those two elements alone.
But the movie also reflects his usual blind spots and favorite tropes as well. For one thing, there’s few female characters in the piece; they have drastically less to do than their male counterparts, and the moments they do get hinge on their sexuality in some way shape or form. It is also, true to Sorkin’s predilections, a movie centered on how taking a moral stand is both the right and effective thing to do, with that stand almost always taking the form of delivering some bit of stirring oratory, occasionally paired with a dramatic gesture.
Again, I’m not knocking the latter part of that. It’s a simplistic view of politics and life, but also crowd-pleasing and easy for audiences to process in a story for cinema. At times, you can see the strings, feeling how history’s bent to serve the needs of the good guys scrapping with one another but coming to appreciate each other’s passions or talent, or the opposing prosecutor turning out to be a man of principle as well just doing his job, or how the racial dimension of all of this is firmly present and yet made to fit familiar narratives. But all of this does the job Sorkin intends to do in crafting an accessible, if didactic, piece of prestige filmmaking.
The resulting film contends, in talk-y splendor, that those protestors were railroaded by a Nixon-appointed Attorney General with a personal axe to grind and a power-tripping judge riddled with bias. It maintains that they were standing up for a just cause and were unfairly antagonized by law enforcement and authority figures writ large. While the main figures dicker about tactics and respectability, the film suggests that their efforts to end the Vietnam War, to effect change and justice and equality in this country, were noble, regardless of polite society’s view of them as little more than an unruly threat culminating in a riot in a Chicago park.
The smartest move Sorkin makes in dramatizing that riot is a structural one. He dances around the key events of the film until it’s time for them to be dramatically experienced in the third act. He jumps between the incipient lead-up and the aftermath of those riots, creating a sense of anticipation for the unseen center of gravity between them. In plenty of scenes, editor Alam Baumgarten cuts between trial testimony and stand-up comedy and flashbacks that help put these events into context and guide the audience through the emotions and intensity of a given sequence.
It’s slick filmmaking and screenwriting, adopting a non-linear approach and frame story that let’s Sorkin parcel out the important details of these events when he needs them dramatically. There’s times when this feels like his version of 12 Angry Men, but the stylistic flourishes and cross-cutting story structure give it some additional flair beyond Sorkin’s usual bubbly banter.
That banter is more in favor of revealing character than giving his characters arcs, or otherwise put in service of major players announcing the point rather than letting it arrive organically. But whether through stylistic embellishment or ping-ponging chatter, The Trial of the Chicago 7 holds your attention throughout, provides plenty of actors their Oscar reels, and imparts its message of mutual understanding, righteous causes, and injustice allowed to reign.
The timing of it is fortuitous, but the slick presentation is deliberate. It’s the latter that’s likely to land the film plenty of awards attention, but the latter that’s going to give the film value once this moment of extreme salience has passed. I don’t know how close Sorkin’s film hews to history; I suspect not terribly closely. I don’t know how faithful or deep his morals are here; I suspect not very. But I do know how, taken solely as a piece of filmmaking, The Trial of the Chicago 7 hits its marks better than the usual Awards season historical drama, and that’s worth recognizing too.