THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 (Aaron Sorkin 2020)

[Chris Knipp]

Hope you do.

The Climb. (Covino)
There's also a new US fiction feature I think is brilliant and hilarious that comes out next Friday, Nov. 13. I have a review waiting. It's Michael Angelo Covino's THE CLIMB. I just watched the whole film last night for a second time. Don't watch the trailer. See it whenever you can.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8637440/

They've been holding it since April because they wanted it to be in theaters. It did get to open in Paris in theaters in July and got great reviews. It has some significant nods to France and premiering at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section it won the Jury 'Coup de Coeur' award. AlloCiné 3.9, Metacritic 82. Sony.

[cinemabon]

I remember following this in the Tribune, almost every day. I was there... in Grant Park, on (I think it was) August 28, 1968... I suppose I could Google it but I'm doing this from memory. We were just hanging out in the park all afternoon when the pigs arrived in force and surrounded the park. A friend of ours came over and told us there was a way to get out of the park without intersecting with the police. We cut through next to some large TV trucks parked along Michigan Avenue and started walking up an alley when a cop came running after us, screaming for us to stop. While he had a pot belly and we were 16. Guess who won that race? When we made it out to the street, we beelined for the "L" and hopped on the next train. We changed trains and headed out to the western suburbs as we were staying in Oak Park. That's when we heard all hell broke loose. It was a crazy week... we went to see 2001 at the Cinestage in 70mm. But when the movie was over, they had padlocked the front doors and made us all go out into the alley. A huge demonstration passed by with one guy waving an enormous North Vietnam flag. There were armed soldiers on the street corners, rifles and everything. This guy almost ran me down, walking past so fast. It was Roger Mudd of CBS News! Imagine. Crazy week. Saw lots of S - H - I - T! Oh, the stories I could tell...

[Chris Knipp]

Great stuff, cinemabon. Welcome back. How did you like the Netfilx film?

[cinemabon]

I thought it represented a very good depiction of what happened at the time. They always employ dramatic license and that's to be expected. That Cohen, who is already outspoken, should play Hoffman sounds almost type-cast. It's difficult to make a trial movie effective entertainment in this age of superhero movies and action films. I thought the writing helped to sell this film (as we would probably agree, if its not on the page, it's not on the screen). Great review, Chris, as always. I've been reading your reviews and try to chime in to let you know I care, I'm interested.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks, cinemabon. There have been many good reactions to the film and people are watching it a lot. I think if anyone today could make a good courtroom drama it's Sorkin, and he could even have gotten by with more courtroom and fewer background scenes. Sacha Baran Cohen is just the most noticeable of a bunch of eye-popping, fun casting ideas.

[Chris Knipp]

Mike D'angelo privately pans Sorkin's new film, citing factual distortions.

In an unpublished Patreon subsribers' "review" (or more like rating with commentary) Mike D'Angelo is highly critical of TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 as follows (whole text below, sent as an email to subscribers today, Jan. 29, 2021, three months after the Netflix release). I do not think it is fair or good reviewing to omit mention of the film's many good features, and it's not sufficient to say he "generally enjoys" "the man's [Aaron Sorkin's] zippy bandinage," but if all these facts are falsified, one must take notice. Further I will grant that a thoroughly recorded event like a trial may be more questionable or trickier to "Sorkin-ize" than a series of events less known to outsiders like the creation of Facebook.

D'Angelo:

49/100

Not a subject that needed Sorkin-izing, as Brett Morgen's far superior Chicago 10 demonstrated 14 years ago. We get snippets of the same (or similar) documentary footage here, interspersed with dramatic re-creation; Sorkin apparently fears that younger, historically ignorant viewers might think he's exaggerated what went down at the convention. Any such suspicion would be entirely justified, though, since he blithely, needlessly distorts so much else. Bobby Seale alone demands a lengthy fact-check: Not only does this film skate past Kunstler having briefly represented Seale in pre-trial motions (which was Judge Hoffman's stated justification for insisting that Kunstler was still Seale's attorney), it also pretends that Fred Hampton's murder (on 4 December 1969) inspired the outburst that got Seale bound and gagged (on 29 October 1969). And then, incredibly, Sorkin downplays that horror, having the judge instantly declare a mistrial rather than conducting three full trial days with Seale shouting muffled objections through the cloth in his mouth. I'm by no means categorically opposed to tweaking history for dramaturgy's sake, but each of these decisions weakens rather than strengthens an inherently compelling story. So does shameless claptrap like Rubin whining about having fallen for an undercover FBI agent (Sorkin made that up), and ultra-pacifist Dellinger striking someone in anger (Sorkin made that up), and Ramsey Clark executing an elaborate fake-out when asked to testify (Sorkin made that up), and jesus the cornball ending with Hayden (it was actually Dellinger, but let that one slide) reading the names of soldiers killed in Vietnam as everyone including the sympathetic prosecutor (Sorkin made that up) rises to their feet while Judge Hoffman keeps banging his gavel and shouting for order. Performances are fine, apart from Baron Cohen obviously being way too old, and there's plenty of the man's zippy badinage, which I generally enjoy in wholly or at least primarily fictional contexts. Here, he chose a context I already know well and added little of value.