OVP: The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

Film: The Trial of the Chicago 7

Stars: Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Alex Sharp, Jeremy Strong, John Carroll Lynch, Noah Robbins, Daniel Flaherty, Yahya Abdul Mateen II, Kelvin Harrison, Jr., Mark Rylance, Ben Shenkman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Frank Langella, Michael Keaton

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Oscar History: 6 nominations (Best Picture, Supporting Actor-Sacha Baron Cohen, Original Screenplay, Original Song-"Hear My Voice," Cinematography, Film Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I have said many, many times on this blog when it comes to biopics, I think they are one of the most limiting of film genres, because they are so intertwined with reality.  Their story structure is therefore more routine (the good guys almost always win, if not within the confines of the film surely within its future, because otherwise why would you make it into a movie?), and kind of dull.  Aaron Sorkin apparently agrees with me on this point, as is evidenced by The Trial of the Chicago 7, based on real-life events following the 1968 Democratic National Convention.  Unfortunately for anyone watching the film, Aaron Sorkin's idea of how we should bend real-life is to make the entire world be modeled on Aaron Sorkin.

(Real Life Doesn't Have Spoiler Alerts) The film, as I mentioned, is centered around the Chicago 7, seven leaders in the anti-Vietnam War protests who were charged with conspiracy and the intention to start a riot during the 1968 DNC in Chicago.  As the film unfolds, the movie alternates between flashback & the present-day court trial, in which Richard Schultz (Gordon-Levitt) is winning, largely due to Judge Julius Hoffman (Langella) basically indicting the seven men without the benefit of the jury helping him, harming any attempts from attorney William Kunstler (Rylance) to defend these men in a way that might actually win the case.  While the case is waging, behind the scenes three of the men involved with the trial (Abdul-Mateen's Bobby Seale, Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman, and Redmayne's Tom Hayden) are debating the merits of their movement, and where they go forward with it.  The film has its climactic moment when former Attorney General Ramsey Clark (Keaton) takes the stand, and basically accuses the prosecution of this being a revenge attempt against him by current-Attorney General John Mitchell.

In real life, five members of the Chicago 7 were indicted, though charges were eventually dropped and several of the men went on to great success in the public sphere, particularly Hayden, who was a longtime member of the California State Legislature & at one point was married to actress Jane Fonda (a fact that somehow wasn't mentioned by notorious name-dropper Sorkin into his script).  The trial itself definitely makes sense as a film-it's dramatic, has lots of colorful characters, and some truly astonishing moments (while it didn't happen in the same way that it did in the film, Bobby Seale really was bound-and-gagged at one point by Judge Hoffman, a true low point for the American justice system).

But much of Chicago 7 is fiction, to the point where it should probably come with a "loosely-inspired events" tag.  In real life, Ramsey Clark (who deserves his own biopic-not many former Attorneys General ended up counting Saddam Hussein & Muammar Qaddafi as their clients) didn't call the trial political, and Tom Hayden didn't read the names of the fallen soldiers of Vietnam.  Much of the film is heightened to try and increase the drama, and quite frankly I don't have a problem with that-I think film needs to be loose in order to work, and sometimes real life is too chaotic or formulaic to be interesting.  Sorkin is not pretending the film is a documentary, and I can get behind this.

What I can't get behind is how egotistical the film becomes without someone like David Fincher or Bennett Miller to reign in Sorkin's worst impulses.  All of the characters in the film speak in Sorkin's fast-talking, hyper-intellectual dialogue, but as a result they all sound the same-the personality work that someone like Sacha Baron Cohen or Jeremy Strong is putting into the film doesn't matter when, closing your eyes, you can't tell them apart.  It makes for a really bad movie, almost laughably bad after a while, because the film feels grounded in a partisan reality where everyone agrees with each other, and has out-loud debates more to show they agree than to actually talk about anything.  The script, which Sorkin could win an Oscar for, is its worst asset as a result.  The film looks good (it's very handsome, and has some bouts of good acting, though that also is more miss than hit), but the script is just insufferable, the worst thing I've seen Sorkin put to the screen, as it's drenched in ego that sinks the movie.