Sorkin's magnificent seven shine in courtroom drama

 

If you had to pick a defining sequence for Aaron Sorkin’s work it would probably be the first eight minutes of the first episode of The Newsroom (2012). It’s the bit in which right-of-centre news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) is lobbed a softball question at a college debate about why America is the greatest country in the world.

There is an interminable pause before he launches into an impassioned rant about what is wrong with the current state of affairs in his country and how different it used to be – ‘we made war on poverty, not the poor’, is a personal highlight. America is not the greatest country in the world, he says, but it sure as hell used to be.

This Damascene moment for McAvoy sets the tone for the series and crystallises Sorkin’s work. His reverence for the Greatest Generation knows no limits, it can be seen in this speech as well as in his biggest hit The West Wing (1999) which harks back to Kennedy’s Camelot. He can always find a moment in the past in which America was better. Which is why it is so shocking to see him come up empty handed in the comparison stakes with The Trial of the Chicago 7.

 Sorkin looks back at 1968 and he can find nothing but similarities with contemporary America, in a film which seems like one long cry of despair. There is rioting in the streets, people of colour are being shot and killed, the country seems poised on the brink of open revolt as a whole section of society decides it has had enough. This manifests itself in the titular trial with a series of egregious abuses of the legal system – defendants bound and gagged in a US courtroom, for example - which are played out on television every night.

This is dark, angry, ferocious stuff from Sorkin and this new bleak edge suits him. There isn’t that honeyed retrospection to save us here; this is where we were, he seems to be saying, and this is where we are again.

The Chicago 7, although for part of the trial there were eight of them, were a disparate group of radicals, activists, and protesters ranging from a Boy Scout leader to one of the founders of the Black Panthers. They were brought before the court on trumped up charges surrounding protests at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago in 1968 and faced sentences of 10 years in jail if convicted. The government is determined to get a conviction and the borderline corrupt but completely incompetent judge seems determined to do all he can to help.

Sorkin’s storytelling is superb. He weaves the narrative back and forth from the Convention to the trial with a deftness which makes the story completely compelling. He is telling a tale with at least a dozen principal characters and he does justice to them all.

Juggling all these stories is hard enough but Sorkin gives us nuance and insight too. The two clowns, as characterised by the establishment, were Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. But as played by Sacha Baron Cohen, Hoffman is a provocateur but a thoughtful one, Rubin (Jeremy Strong) meanwhile turns out to be a gentle romantic to provide some much needed light relief. Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), who appears to be something of a stuffed shirt ends up giving the film its powerful moments.

There are showier performances too. Mark Rylance is superb as the gadfly lawyer William Kunstler, and Frank Langella is shockingly hateful as the judge. There is also a memorable cameo from Michael Keaton who is in that fortunate career purple patch where each new role is better than the one that preceded. He is plainly enjoying himself.

But even for all these wonderful individual moments this is first and foremost an ensemble piece and it is the craft of Sorkin’s direction, as well as his writing, that holds the film together. Those of us old enough to remember the trial recall the verdict but Sorkin still manages to develop a degree of suspense.

There is some doubt about whether the Oscars will take place this year. I am fairly certain of two things; the first is that the Academy Awards will go ahead in some form, the second is that, so far, The Trial of the Chicago 7 is the film to beat.