The Trial of the Chicago 7

I both admire and despise Aaron Sorkin in much the same conflicted way I feel about Leni Riefenstahl. I delight in Sorkin’s rat-a-tat dialogue just as I thrill to Riefenstahl’s breathtaking visual compositions and exquisite sense of montage. As a lover of cinema and theater, I enjoy being manipulated by masters of their craft, but in the case of these two filmmakers, I always come away from their work feeling a little bit [MB1] poisoned as well. I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to compare Riefenstahl, infamous for directing Nazi propaganda like The Victory of Faith, Triumph of the Will, and Olympia—all brilliantly crafted documentaries despite their subject matter—with Sorkin. As the writer of films like A Few Good Men, The American President, and The Social Network—and the creator of the detrimentally influential political TV show The West Wing—Aaron Sorkin has done more than anyone else in Hollywood to transform the Democratic Party. In my youth, the Democrats were known as the party that focused on crafting policies in service of a more equitable society. Today, they are a corporate-owned, center-right party, known for selling out their ideals and valuing lofty but empty rhetoric over getting anything done. So, it is especially upsetting that Sorkin got the call to write the docudrama The Trial of the Chicago 7, a movie about a seminal moment in the anti-Vietnam War and countercultural movements of the late ´60s.

The film centers on a group of protesters led by Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), founding members of the Youth International Party known as the Yippies. Hoffman and Rubin were charged with conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Key co-defendants in the case were Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), a leader of the Students for a Democratic Society, David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), leader of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, and Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), the national chairman of the Black Panther Party who was not involved in planning the protest but became a defendant in the trial anyway. These men and their compatriots were charged with and acquitted of conspiracy. Most of the defendants and their attorneys—William Kunstler (Mark Rylance) and Leonard Weinglass (Ben Shenkman) of the Center for Constitutional Rights—were convicted of contempt of court and sentenced them to jail sentences. All of these convictions were later reversed on appeal.

The film depicts the preparations for the DCN protest and much of what transpired there, including violent skirmishes with police who covered their badges and beat the peaceful protesters. It shows how Nixon’s Attorney General, John N. Mitchell (John Doman), appointed Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Tom Foran (J. C. MacKenzie) to prosecute the case five months after the fact as a way of demonstrating the new administration’s commitment to “restoring law and order.” And it follows how Kunstler and Weinglass came to represent all the defendants except Seale, who was forced to stand trial even though his lawyer was not present. Much of the action takes place in the courtroom of Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) who, clearly prejudiced towards the prosecution, did not hide his contempt for the defendants.

Apparently, Sorkin got the call to write this movie from Stephen Spielberg, who initially planned to direct. Despite his status as the bard of Democratic policymakers for more than the past twenty years, Sorkin has confessed that had never heard of the Chicago Seven prior to this assignment. This lack of awareness should not come as a surprise to anyone who studies the writer’s work. The fact that this incurious, misogynistic, pro-military, anti-union, elitist screenwriter is considered the bastion of the Left simply because he’s so good at crafting smugly condescending speeches is perhaps the biggest indicator of why the progressive movement in America is in such desperate shape.

Sorkin’s prior work invariably paints the Left as annoying, small-minded fringe-dwellers of little consequence except when they get in the way of the heroic pragmatic Liberals who run the Democratic party. And his earlier work invariably depicts members of the GOP as the honorable opposition who will ultimately be won over or defeated by the brilliant rhetoric of smart, sensible liberals. So for Sorkin to interpret the events surrounding the trial of the Chicago 7, as both writer and director, means that future generations (and even people who actually lived through these events) now have another heavily Sorkinized version of an important chapter in American history. I wouldn’t care about this distortion so much were it not for the precedent set by the influence that The West Wing had.  That long-running show shaped the understanding of how American Government works for so many of the Ivy-leaguers who went into the Obama administration and who are currently crafting unsuccessful policies for the Democratic party.

No one should ever begrudge a filmmaker for taking liberties with the truth when depicting the specific of the historical events they dramatize in a two-hour film. Accuracy of facts, details, and the literal truth is far less important that capturing the essence of the history, the spirit of the times, and the way the events of one era reflect on the period the film is made. The narrowing of perspectives, compositing of characters, and rearranging of timelines and specific details are all but required when crafting a fictionalized docudrama. That Sorkin alters a host of particulars and dialogue of this well-documented (literally transcribed) event would not be an issue if it were in an attempt to represent the ethos of the subject. But he’s far more interested in making reductionist and misleading parallels to the political issues of today than in encapsulating and contextualizing these messy events of the past for contemporary audiences.  

I’m sure if I had been an adult in 1968 I would not have been a huge fan of Abbie Hoffman, but that doesn’t mean I want a major film ostensibly about him and his legacy to pervert what he stood for in order to make it more palatable for today’s neo-liberal audience. This telling of The Trial of the Chicago 7 has its Abbie Hoffman when asked on the witness stand during the film’s climax if he has contempt for his government, say, “I think the institutions of our democracy are wonderful things that right now are populated by some terrible people.” That line is 100% Sorkin and the total antithesis of everything the lifelong anarchist Hoffman believed, spoke about, and stood for.

Jerry Rubin is painted as nothing more than a buffoon who gets easily seduced by an undercover FBI agent (Caitlin FitzGerald), a character entirely made up for the movie because it wouldn’t be a Sorkin script without a duplicitous female character or a woman he can have his male characters lecture at. Tom Hayden is played as a humorless milquetoast who will become a pragmatic, neo-liberal politician after this experience firms up his convictions.

One of the worst injustices in this picture comes via how Dave Dellinger is portrayed. Like many Liberals born at the tail end of the Baby Boom generation who were too young to fight in Vietnam, Sorkin fetishizes the military as the most solid and well-run institution of a country made up of wonderful institutions that are just sometimes run by bad people. Sure, Sorkin can understand why someone would refuse to fight in the “unjust” Vietnam War, but clearly the pure pacifist philosophy of a man like Dellinger simply does not compute. Sorkin even has Kunstler berate Dellinger for refusing to fight in World War II, which was, of course, a “good war,” and pacifists should make exceptions for wars when America is 100% in the right, right? The climax of Dellinger’s character arc, invented for this picture, is that the quiet Quaker finally gets so fed up with the injustice of the trial that he grows a pair and punches one of the court officers in the face—you know, like a real man would!

Even worse is how Sorkin treats Bobby Seal. Abdul-Mateen plays the co-founder of the Black Panthers as an emotional showman. In reality, Seale was a patient, cool-headed activist who believed that persistent pursuit of goals would ultimately win the day.  But it’s so much easier to paint him as a man filled with righteous anger. His outbursts in the courtroom are meant to tap the viewer’s sense of outrage at the sham trial and how the overtly racist judge treats him. The result is that when the movie’s Judge Hoffman orders Seale to be gagged and bound for several days, it is because of his out-of-control emotions, not his consistent and deliberately measured insistence that his constitutional rights be respected and upheld.

While we learn about the differences between Abbie Hoffman and Tom Haydon’s political philosophies, this movie has no interest in presenting what Seale and the Black Panthers stood for, nor what their goals were, nor that both the aspirations and the treatment of Black activists then actually have far more relevance to contemporary times than anything else in the picture. Then again, the delineations Sorkin draws between Hoffman and Haydon are so reductive that we should maybe be thankful he didn’t attempt explore the nuances of Seale and the Panthers. Most of the exchanges between Hoffman and Haydon are written as two ideologies arguing rather than two flesh-and-blood human beings. And these guys sound like they’re debating the stakes of the Bill Clinton-Bob Dole election of 1996, not the Richard Nixon-Hubert Humphrey election of 1966.

Sorkin’s simplistic view of politics always boils down to the idea that there are only two sides of every argument; both sides are honorable and have their merits, but whoever has the best verbal argument always wins. This demonstrably naïve belief is best exemplified by the way federal prosecutor Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, giving a laughably inept performance) ultimately sides with the defendants because he sees their integrity and the capricious actions of the judge. In this fantasy, Schultz is a decent guy who would never tow the party line or violate his commitment to justice and fairness. This approach and behavior is not the way this man conducted himself at this trial; it’s the way we all would like to believe the agents of our system operate. After all, it would be wonderful if the guys on the “other team” had the same devotion to the rules as we, “the pure-hearted party of goodness and right do.” After all, America is a near-perfect union where the two sides can disagree and quarrel respectively, but they will ultimately yield to whoever has the best argument, and they will end up shaking hands and agreeing that we all live in the greatest country in the world, so nothing to worry about here. Such a pattern of collegial, rational, rhetoric-based resolutions has never been the norm, but in the year 2020, to present it as a true way that things happen amounts to absurd and dangerous propaganda, beguiling Liberal Americans to relax and go back to sleep as much as Riefenstahl enticed German Nazis to wake up and get to work. 

In Sorkin’s view, electoral politics represent the ultimate expression of noble American democratic progress, not the messy cultural revolutions people like the members of the Chicago 7 advocated for. His dismissive view of social activists is on full display in this film, as he lauds polished mouthpieces that articulate platitudes not backed up by any real actions. In any Sorkin script about politics, the hard work of organizers is dismissed with contempt. His world celebrates the eloquent, hyper-educated, charismatic leaders who take what on-the-ground activists spend years working for and water it down to palatable policies that might get passed or, more often than not, won’t get passed but can be used as talking points for the next election. This perspective is always shallow and destructive, but in the case of a movie about the Chicago 7 it’s utterly despicable.

But still, even I cannot deny that most Sorkin scripts are downright entertaining. One thing this writer excels at is the last-minute arrival of a deus ex machina with an eloquent speech. In this case it comes via Ramsey Clark, who was the Attorney General during the riots under the previous administration. Embodied here by Michael Keaton, Sorkin takes appropriate liberties with the truth in his depiction of how Clark came to testify, and the facts, suppression, and ultimate resonance of his testimony. Keaton is an ideal actor for this type of Sorkin situation, and the few minutes he’s on screen are so exciting it’s a wonder he didn’t score a Supporting Actor Oscar nom.

That nomination went to Baron Cohen, and it’s not undeserved. The Borat star does an admirable job playing the Sorkinized Hoffman. His performance captures traces of the real man, who is available to watch in plenty of TV footage from the time, and those welcome moments of authenticity peak out from behind the fictionalized façade. But one can only imagine what Baron Cohen, a go-for-broke political provocateur and unbridled social commentator himself, could have done with this role were he not reined in. Instead, the movie takes the position that depicting Hoffman with accuracy—as the revolutionary he actually was—would send the wrong message to audiences of today. 

Maybe there is a valid argument to be made on that last point, but Sorkin is not the one to make it. He cannot help converting the legacy of the trial into the same kind of soft neo-liberal fantasy he always peddles.  In reality, the proper genre for a movie about the Trial of the Chicago 7 would be farce. Sorkin only does pretentious, but indisputably absorbing drama, so that’s what we get.