A Different Take on "The Trial of the Chicago 7"
Tuesday, October 20, 2020 at 11:30PM by Eric Blume
We embrace respectful differences of opinion here at TFE, so with all due respect to my fellow staff writer Tony, who just gave Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 a rave review, I offer a dissenting opinion. Fortunately thanks to Tony’s great synopsis, I can cut right to the chase. I love Aaron Sorkin as much as the next guy, thinking his scripts for both The Social Network and Steve Jobs are essentially masterpieces, and even thinking more favorably upon Molly’s Game than most: it had its own mini-sweep of energy and he tapped into all the things that make Jessica Chastain special.
But there’s not a frame of Sorkin’s new movie that felt authentic or assured to me...
I’ll break it up by the elements:
Design: The costuming and wig work on this movie feel like they’re out of an SNL skit. After the deep, simple work done in this area on the recent Mrs. America, where the actors looked so natural and effortless, the cast of Chicago 7 looks like they’re playing dress up, and like the makeup staff was too short-changed to give everyone enough time before "Action" was called.
Cinematography: After the film was over, I went to Wikipedia not to see who the cinematographer was, but to see if there was one. Let’s kindly say this is not Phedon Papamichael’s finest hour. His courtroom scenes look flat, out of a TV movie from the 80s, with no apparent specific visual take, and his exteriors have that weird Netflix brightness that’s an alarming trend. There just feels to be no overall conception of the film visually, just cameras and standard-issue lighting set up to capture the lines the actors are saying.
Writing: The script features some occasional Sorkin corkers, and of course there are all the present-day parallels that give Sorkin’s writing extra verve and purpose at the moment. But Sorkin has not developed any of the Seven titular characters. They’re all given one personality quirk, usually obvious and pandering, that helps us glob onto them. And it's not just the seven men on trial. The judge (played by Frank Langella) is written as a blustering old, cliched bureaucrat type (defenders will say “that was really what that guy was like!” to which I say that’s fine, but part of a film’s artistry would be to bring texture to that human, either in the writing, or if not, in the acting, but Sorkin has Langella playing one note on the piano in scene after scene). There’s no complexity in the themes of the film, either: our heroes are heroic, our bad guys are bad guys, and you’re told how to feel about every character and every situation at every moment.
Acting: While I’ve been reading articles about which of the actors will be getting an Oscar nomination, to me it’s more about which of the actors is the least terrible. Again, it’s not the actors’ fault: they’re trying their best in the tight confines of their roles. But are we really meant to laugh at/with Jeremy Strong? I get it! He’s a stoner! He’s stoned! That’s so funny! Except, really, it’s not. Surely Sorkin is above this kind of audience-baiting? You don’t feel like any of these characters live lives off the page …they all just exist to come in and say Sorkin’s lines. There’s no messiness or tattered ends to these characters. They’re one-note mouthpieces set in a vacuum, and there’s never a moment where the actors catch fire together. You yearn for moments where these fine actors go at each other, but those moments don’t come, or when they do, they fizzle. Essentially there's no conflict between the actors and no powerful unity either.
Directing and Editing: I can’t remember a film in recent memory by a major artist where every moment is more designed for audience response. In a more egregious example, Sorkin sets up a scene with John Carroll Lynch’s family, in which we learn his son is a Boy Scout, only to then have an excruciatingly amateur moment later where Lynch has a physical altercation in the courtroom so Sorkin can cut to his son witnessing it, in surely the most embarrassing tribute to The Bicycle Thief ever attempted. The courtroom scenes are edited to always land on the actor who is doing the most obvious thing that will tell the audience how to feel. Sorkin gives us no ambiguity here, no sense of a developing intricacy. We never have to feel anxious about the characters or the situations, because everything is delivered to us in such a facile package. Sorkin tips us off to when he’s being comic, cueing us to laugh, and even to when he’s being “subversive” (a scene where they go to visit Michael Keaton, which I think is supposed to be a cunning surprise but is set up so flatly, and then clarified so obviously, that it just lays there). Everything is telegraphed in advance, so you don’t have to think on your own.
Readers, please know I take less than zero joy in writing this review. Watching this movie made me mentally and physical depressed; it made me deeply sad. I couldn’t believe what I was watching, and kept trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Sorkin is one of our major talents and it's probably fair to say one of the best dramatic writers alive. It’s because of that that we hold him to the high standard he invites and merits, and unfortunately this is not a step forward for him. It was as if he didn’t trust his natural instincts and felt the need to deliver something overtly commercial, and in that effort, he lost his way. D+
Please sound off in the comments as always!
Reader Comments (15)
I don't think the film is bad in any way... however I neither think it is a masterpiece at all, not even in the screenplay... I think acting is very good (save for Redmayne, who I didn't believe beyond some antics) and only Oscar-worthy in the cases of Rylance and Baron Cohen and to a minor extent, to Langella (but his character was so one-note and poorly described beyond a "he's evil/disturbed")
I don't hate it as much as MOLLY'S GAME, but it's just such a flat movie. The editing is appalling, specially in those weird montages it insists upon putting to aggressive music. I just don't understand what Sorkin wanted from this movie. Or, I should say, why he wanted to make it this way. Why does he try to make Eddie Redmayne more important than he was, shifting the name-reason sequence to the end and from Lynch's mouth to Redmayne's in an ending that was embarrassing. Why is there no sentancing scene -- those two boys just appear in the galery? And it has no interest at all in Abdul-Mateen's character.
Worst of all, people are going to want to give it an Oscar for one-liners that he's poached from his own screenplays (https://twitter.com/KevinTPorter/status/1317595206502371328).
Despite all of that, I think the thing I'm most upset about is that they didn't just go ahead and cast Jason Mantsoukas in the Jeremy Strong role since that's clearly who he's imitating.
Oh boy, I see where this awards season is going...
(Baron Cohen's dialect work is so bad it should disqualify him from any awards consideration.)
You are not alone Eric. It's a dissapointing film for me, although not that bad. I think the weak point is the screenplay and some dialogues that make the film not convincing at all. In a normal year it wouldn't be Oscar potential, but this year is so weird than anything can happen. Some actors will be in the conversation but only in terms of nominations, I hope...
I'll probably be hit by a Jeremy Strong's stan, but I really think he's overrated both here in THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 (no charisma at all... he paled in comparison to all the other cast members) and SUCCESSION TV series (I can accept an Emmy nod, but not an Emmy win when Brian Cox was right there)
I always think there's something lacking in his performances....
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Ufff! I said it!!!
This is pretty much how I felt about it too. While by no means a disgrace, the film never came together and felt thin, rushed and perfunctory - and I really hated the ending. The actors were all good - I'd give Rylance best in show, and I did like Redmayne - but that's all, for which I blame Sorkin. Maybe the movie would have been better if it had been an hour longer? Whatever, it felt like a wasted opportunity.
I've seen a lot of criticisms of Baron Cohen's accent, but nothing about Redmayne's accent, which continually took me out of the movie. He sounds like he's trying way too hard to sound like a Midwesterner and failing. He was easily the worst in the cast for me.
I wholeheartedly agree. The film is very clumsy and amateurish, especially the structure and editing. Nearly everything about it was mediocre at best. The only time the film came alive for me was in the two scenes with Michael Keaton as Ramsey Clark. I found it funny that Clark was encouraging Kunstler and the defendants to truly take a risk....and that was how I was feeling the whole movie: c'mon Sorkin--take a risk, swing for the fences.
I simply liked it!#!! So I must have no taste??!#
It wasn't terrible and it wasn't great. It was just OK. Sorkin isn't keen on nuance, and as his own director there is no one to modify his broad, bombastic side. I found it entertaining nonetheless but I wasn't truly moved.
For the most part, I love Sorkin’s work on TV. He was amazing as a writer for Sports Night and for West Wing. But I thought this movie was pretty bland and faceless. I got so upset by the way Bobby Seale was treated that it wasn’t until after I finally finished this rather bad movie that I realized none of the characters were anything but characters. None of them felt real, I didn’t care about any of them (except Bobby, and even then, it was more that I cared that he was treated so ridiculously horrible).
This isn’t a movie I would recommend to my friends.
I had a great time with it, find the actors work and the screenplay great. Can't get the backlash.
The most important thing about this film is that it was made. Without it, these historical events run the risk of being forgotten, rewritten or worse yet, omitted from history.
rdf & patrick-- that's why we posted two reviews. There's room for multiple opinions on any movie!
I thought it was terrible and am mystified by any Oscar talk. Writing was sub-standard. SBC and Strong's Cheech & Chong schtick - thoroughly laughable - and Redmayne totally unbelievable and miscast. Rylance and Langella saved it from being unwatchable.