A Chicago courtroom in 1969 set the stage for a monumental fight: between the anti-war protestors and the city police department, the young jovial rebels and an old surly judge. Close on the heels of the civil rights movement, and during the Vietnam War, it was a fight between the two Americas. At one end was the establishment – the district court judge, the law enforcement agencies, the prosecuting lawyers – and at the other, regular citizens, eight defendants charged for crossing state lines and inciting a riot, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. A new Netflix release, The Trial of the Chicago 7, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, depicts the controversial trial that dragged for months, revealing crucial fault-lines in the country’s conscience – issues that, more than half-a-century later, still rend the US.
Sorkin’s cinematic lexicon encapsulates the spirit of revolution: it thrives on searing intensity, darts with relentless momentum, and lives on the edge of a knife – as if doing anything else would be a waste of space. But beyond everything, a Sorkin screenplay, like a romantic revolution, is heady and dramatic. His sophomoric directorial, centred on a particularly charged period in US history, has the qualities of an able, empathetic ally.
The drama’s first few minutes, blending archival newsreels and film scenes, are frenetic and economic. The introduction unfurls a carpet of information. It lists out the main protagonists: the Students for a Democratic Society leaders Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp); the Youth International Party co-founders Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong); the pacifist activist David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch); and the Black Panther chairman Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). It reveals their characters: Tom and Rennie, ambitious activists, are restrained and calm; Abbie and Jerry, countercultural icons, zing the status quo with subversive humour and flamboyant demeanour; David, a family man, values decorum and rules; and Bobby, the co-founder of a young Black Power political organisation, is assured yet fiery.
It lays out the central conflict: the protagonists travelling to Chicago, intending to protest amid intimidating security: 5,000 troops from the Illinois National Guard and 10,000 Chicago cops, including the riot squads. As Tom makes it clear in his initial speech, “When it comes to the war and social justice, there is simply not enough of a difference between Hubert Humphrey [the Democratic presidential nominee] and Richard Nixon.” The film then cuts to five months later, in 1969, when the trial has begun.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 has an eclectic mix of compelling characters, the bedrock of any fictional feature. Initially, the real complements the reel, and then the makers return the favour with ample panache and memorable wit. Cohen, by far, is the star of the film. Renowned for playing kooky characters in funny satires, he plays an anarchist protester here, high on blazing humour and, well, drugs. In a film centred on police brutality and racial injustice, Cohen’s Abbie is a blessing: an excellent comic relief and a significant voice of reason, someone whose mere presence lifts the film. He’s also an effective antidote to Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), a biased, pro-establishment figure, who interrupts the defending lawyer (Mark Rylance), refuses Bobby’s plea to represent himself, and slaps frequent contempt of court charges on the defendants. Abbie pricks his arrogance with silly stunts and biting repartee – and the end result has the thrill of a vicarious victory.
Hoffman in fact is much more than an antagonist. For someone born in the 19th century with a troubling racial attitude, the judge, representing the worst of old America, is himself a part of the problem. His altercations with Bobby, where he misuses his power to shut him down, feel discomfiting – the extreme example of that callousness comes in a scene where he gets Bobby bound and gagged in the court for ‘disrespecting’ him. Sorkin knows the inbuilt irony in this story: that a handful of activists, wanting to squash the status quo, ran into its biggest embodiment in the country’s courtroom.
The racial underpinning to this story is quite evident as well. Bobby keeps protesting throughout his trial that he has nothing to do with the seven defendants, that he was in Chicago for just a few hours. His misgivings are not misplaced: even though ostensibly a single case, he is treated differently from the rest of the lot, exemplified by how he’s ignored, handled, and dismissed. Bobby may have been fighting a separate case altogether; which mimics his experience as a Black man, experiencing discrimination and segregation, who is made to feel as if he’s living in a different country.
Poster of ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’. Photo: Netflix
Even the case’s title implies racial unease — the “Chicago Eight” became the “Chicago Seven”, as judge Hoffman eventually severed Bobby from the trial, though still charging him with 16 counts of contempt. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is aware that even revolutions have fissures: Bobby, for a good reason, is suspicious of the Chicago Seven and their lawyers; Tom and Abbie often disagree about their methods — the former can’t discard his gravitas, the latter knows nothing without humour. Sorkin’s screenplays are known for their musicality and rhythm – the wonderful, intricate ways in which dialogues sting and ring, zip and fly – and here that drama is heightened by electric editing (Alan Baumgarten) and a feverish background score (Daniel Pemberton), craving closure and crescendo, much like the young uprising and its quest for justice.
The movie couldn’t have come at a better time, when authorities have become authoritarians and dissent inevitably invites punishment. Just this year alone, two major protests have spotlighted police brutality — the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) agitation in India and the Black Lives Matter marches in the US – where state oppression reached disturbing highs. The seduction of vicious power cuts across cultures and countries: It assures the oppressors that they’re invincible, that they’re above law, that their transgressions will find no mention or record – because that’s how it’s been, and that’s how it’ll be. But when people take to the streets, the political becomes public, and muted grievances become clarion calls, leaving no space to hide because, as the protestors chant during the film, “The whole world is watching.”