The Trial of the Chicago 7
I don't know if it is the 13 years that have passed since the release of Chicago 10, a rotoscope animation telling of these events, have changed me or if it is a contrast in filmmaking, but I would say I was much more sympathetic here. I'm still broadly speaking protest-skeptical in terms of the efficacy of protest under most conditions, but my level of skepticism of levers of state power have certainly declined in that spell. Aaron Sorkin's star-studded Netflix film is a more exhaustive look at the events and the broader context of the trial, making clear the overtly political nature of the prosecution. Where Chicago 10 had me more exasperated by the behavior of the defendants, which was in many cases I'd say still bad, Chicago 7 emphasizes the judge's own biases. Chicago 7 (at least to my recollection) does a lot more work drawing the philosophical distinctions between the different groups on the left who assembled at the protest. I am decidedly Team Tom Hayden, pumping my fist at his defense of electoralism. You focus on winning power first because without power you don't get to do anything else. But as the characters evolve in the film, there is a certain appreciation of how the various ideologies have a role in a movement.
The cast here is quite strong, with Eddie Redmayne as the more square Hayden, Sacha Baron Cohen disappearing into his role as Abbie Hoffman, and the great Mark Rylance perhaps outpacing them all as their attorney, William Kunstler (though I want to make it clear, not Bobby Seale's attorney). With this being based on real events, it's hard to know Sorkin's influence as the writer. The courtroom scenes in any event would likely be taken straight from transcripts, and Sorkin's work is in selection rather than creation. The line I nominated for best line "You posed your question in the form of a lie" is presumptively not a Sorkin flourish but rather from the actual interview given by Hoffman and Rubin. I suppose one can have some of the same questions about The Social Network, but only a few scenes there were taken from moments that would be on the record.
It all gets down to the fundamental question of the balance of peace and order. On the one hand, anarchy is not an acceptable place to go, and we should not welcome "protestors" who demand truly limitless freedom of expression. Probably reasonable to say no to public fornication. Probably not reasonable to limit the location of a protest, as they did here, on account of not wanting the protestors to be seen. Ultimately, as we see here and as we've seen this summer, the police so often play the instigator of chaos than the responder to chaos because they don't draw reasonable lines. On the balance, this film does seem to craft this moment of history in the right way to speak to the moment, even if it doesn't fully rise to cinematic greatness.
ETA: Upon further research, Sorkin very much did not stick to trial transcripts and reality was mere suggestion. I guess that explains why I like this so much more than Chicago 10. Sorkin's normie liberalism is my lane, and he polishes off a lot of the rough edges of the radicals that I'm not on board for.