Sobering Intoxication

If the Oscars were awarded by courtroom verdicts, and I was selected for the jury for The Trial of the Chicago 7, I’d have to recuse myself for at least seven reasons.  No, not one for each defendant, but for a variety of personal quirks:

1) It was a private showing given me–and 14 masked, socially-distanced friends–for my birthday by the new owners of the Newburyport Screening Room.

2) My son-in-law edited the sound for several scenes, including Defense Attorney William Kunstler’s riveting mock cross-examination of defendant Tom Hayden that convinced Hayden why he could not take the stand.

3) When Kunstler came to speak at Salem State College (now University) 50 years ago, I was his chauffeur from and back to Logan Airport.  “You’d make a great stock car driver,” he declared from the back seat of my Dodge Dart during a quick sweeping curve to avoid a double-parked bus as well as on-coming traffic in Lynn.

4) Playing Kunstler was Mark Rylance who played Hamlet–not just in Hamlet, but Hamlet, the guy himself–on the stage of the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge back in the Nineties, a performance my daughter and I relished.

5) One character gives his two small daughters a dollar to give to street musicians.  Wish they lived in Newburyport. That’s at least $6 today.

6) On the day after the guilty verdicts for five of the defendants, I was in the “TDA” demonstration in Boston.  Knowing what the verdict would be, activists from coast to coast organized to have people in the streets of all major cities.

Don’t recall hearing any numbers for TDA, but I’m quite sure it was the largest of the Boston demonstrations I attended.  The spirit was much like that of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin at the trial.  For a full city block we marched to the chant of “We want Santana!” singing “Oye Como Va!”

While Chicago 7 captures that spirit, it focuses more on the defense’s antiwar purpose of the trial.  There are many laughs at the one-liners of all the defendants and their two lawyers, but the occasional look at Rennie Davis jotting down the names of casualties in Vietnam is sobering no matter how intoxicating we think the Sixties were.

The shuffling of courtroom questioning answered by flashback scenes, and of bloody re-enactments with black-and-white archival footage, are fast-paced despite the sobering effect.  The pace slows only to frame a few quiet, purposeful scenes like permanent pictures on our memory.  For instance, Kunstler grilling Hayden was followed by Abbie Hoffman’s surprisingly calm testimony that fades to black after he tells a prosecutor who presses him for an immediate answer:

“Give me a moment, would you, friend? I’ve never been on trial for my thoughts before.”

Chicago 7‘s opening scene, much like Bombshell‘s two years ago, gives us all the characters already in full swing–the defendants in the streets, government lawyers in a DC office, all of them in a Chicago courtroom.

That includes prosecution attorney Richard Schultz, chosen by incoming AG John Mitchell.  For all the well-deserved accolades given Sacha Baron Cohen for his “mesmerizing” Abbie Hoffman (complete with a Worcester accent, not bad!!!), Frank Langella for Judge Hoffman, Eddie Redmayne for Hayden, Rylance for Kunstler, and Michael Keaton so upbeat in a cameo as outgoing AG Ramsey Clark that he verges on bumptious, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Schultz would be an Oscar choice from which I would not recuse myself.

Back in the day, we had no way of knowing it while waiting for the verdict and listening to Carlos Santana, but Schultz was a conflicted character who advised Mitchell not to pursue conspiracy charges.  Nevertheless, he has a job to do, daughters to raise, buskers to tip.  You can see the embarrassment on his face when he hears rulings from the bench that make it all too obvious that the trial is rigged in his favor–reminiscent of Ralph Fiennes as Carl Van Doren in 1994’s Quiz Show.

With his supervisor at his table, he asks to approach the bench when a bound and gagged Bobby Seale is led back into the courtroom, asks for Seale to be separated from the other defendants, and for Seale’s case to be ruled a mistrial.

His supervisor is irate, but Schultz’s reflexive shush is adamant.  The judge complies, and Schultz returns to his roll–which includes preventing Ramsey Clark’s testimony that would have easily exonerated all of the defendants.   Gordon-Levitt is strong and credible on both sides of Schultz’s conflict.

That includes the final scene when he rises to his feet, also against his supervisor’s objection, along with the defense and most of the spectators as Hayden reads Davis’ list into the record and Judge Hoffman bangs a gavel that made nothing stop.

And that, in case you were waiting, brings us to:

7) Nothing has stopped.  The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a story of today.  A story told in blurred lines: Demonstrators or rioters? Law enforcement or rogue cops? Conspirators or patriots? Objective journalism or advocacy? Courtroom or stage? Cynicism or faith? Question remains: Will democracy once again refuse to back down?

Since, on all counts, in both eras, I’m on record declaring which side I’m on, I’ll leave any cinematic verdict to the Academy. I rest my case.

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