Hattaba
The trial of the Chicago 7, written and directed by Alan Sorkin, is a lesson about the history of the United States in 1968 and about the politics of the United States in 2020. It focuses on civil rights, which is why the film abandoned theaters and switched to online streaming media in order to be released before the voting day of this year's US presidential election. In the words of the creators – freedom can never be taken for granted.
Poster for The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago
The film brings together Eddie Redmayne, Sasha Byron Cohen, John Carlo Lynch, Mark Reirance, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and many other Hollywood actors, and the broadcast platform Netflix has confirmed that the filmmakers are working hard to make the "Seven Gentlemen" actors in the film shortlisted for next year's Oscar For Best Supporting Actor.
Indeed, the theme of this film, which recreates the infamous political trial of 1968, is very much in line with the tastes of the judges at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who face an unjust trial for their ideas.
"The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago" has a strong Sorkin color, dense line volume, so that the viewer is easy to think of his other screenwriting works, such as "Social Network", "Newsroom", "White House Storm", etc. Saukin romanticized the political ideals of the characters in the play through a series of long dialogues.
At the same time, between Sorkin's cannon-like lines, he also interspersed with many real historical images, especially in the opening minutes of the film, where president Lyndon Johnson signed the Vietnam Act, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, and the demonstrations of radical anti-Vietnam War organizations.
Stills from The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago, Bobby Sear (front left), who is not counted as one of the Seven Gentlemen, but some scholars consider him to be one of the Eight Gentlemen of Chicago
Then, the voice of Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Meiding) rings out in the film: "Martin (Luther King) is dead, Malcolm (X) is dead, Medgar (Evers) is dead, Bobby (Robert Kennedy) is dead, Jesus is dead, they've all tried peacefully, we're going to try other means." "As soon as the camera pans, he will attend the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, and that's what caused that trial."
Group photo of the seven gentlemen of Chicago and the team of lawyers in history
"Chicago Seven Gentlemen Trial" film texture poster, Chicago Seven Gentlemen
Peaceful protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention evolved into violent clashes with the police and the National Guard. Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), Abby Hoffman (Sasha Byron Cohen), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), David Dellingjet (John Carlo Lynch), Lee Wiener (Noah Robbins), and John Flores (Daniel Flatty), all seven of whom are accused of plotting to incite riots. As the trial progressed, they were given the title of "The Chicago Seven." In fact, if you count Bobby Searle, there is also the saying "The Chicago Eight."
Stills from The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago, where Hoffman and Rubin fight in court in a hippie manner
From historical sources or the recollections of the parties, the seven or eight gentlemen were not originally connected, Hayden and Davis were the leaders of the Democratic Youth Organization of the United States, Dai Linjie was the founder of an organization to end the Vietnam War, and Hoffman and Rubin were members of the hippie Youth International Party, although they went to Chicago to attend the National Convention of the Democratic Party of the United States with the same purpose, that is, to oppose the Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey (because there was no option to withdraw troops from Vietnam in his campaign platform), but it is difficult to say, They all tried to fight violently, only to have the demonstrators clash badly with U.S. federal law enforcement agencies and the National Guard, and the Seven Gentlemen accused of conspiring to incite violence.
Stills from "The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago", where law enforcement officers take off their badges
A detail in "The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago" evokes the emotion of this night and night - in the film, Hayden suddenly recalls that during the conflict, the Chicago police and members of the National Guard deliberately took off their police badges and rushed into the crowd - and in the large-scale riots in many parts of the United States caused by the "Black Lives are Also Lives" (BLM) in 2020, a number of American media broke out that federal agents deployed to Portland, Oregon, repeatedly deliberately disguised themselves as civilians to blend into the demonstration crowd and maliciously escalate the conflict.
Stills from "The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago", where two white men on the left verbally provoke demonstrators
There is also a plot in the film that can't help but make people sigh, the provocative acts taken by the far-right "proud boys" (PB) at the parade site in 2020 were staged in 1968.
Not to mention that the film also involves the fishing law enforcement of the US law enforcement agencies, the fabricated charges of the NIXON administration in the United States, this kind of history corresponds to reality, paraphrasing the words of a black female comedian in the United States "Saturday Night Live" (SNL) - thanks to President Trump, let me experience the affirmative action movement in history textbooks this year.
The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago was published in a special commemorative edition for 50 years, originally titled The Story of Hoffman, with George McName in the picture
The story of "The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago" survived to this day thanks to a young man of the year, George McNamee, 74. In 1969, the anti-war youth, a Yale history major, spent his entire savings — $2,500 ($18,000 today, in inflationary terms) — to buy a 22,000-page transcript of the proceedings from an Illinois court stenographer.
Shortly after the pre-publicized trial, McNam and others co-published "The Tales of Hoffman," which became a bestseller, and was popular not only because the trial was in the spotlight at the time, but also because the idealistic young men turned the trial into an absurd and dramatic courtroom drama.
Sorkin (center) on set at the filming of The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago
In the foreword to the recently published 50th Anniversary Edition of the Chicago Trial of the Seven Gentlemen, Sorkin wrote: In 2006, Spielberg asked me to write a film script about the "Chicago Seven Gentlemen", and a year later, just as the American Writers Guild was on strike, I gave the first draft of the script to Spielberg... The project was later postponed several times. Until one day Spielberg said to me, "You might as well direct it yourself." ”
Sorkin writes: "Although my script differs greatly from the trial at the time, the United States of 2020 is very much like the United States of 1968. ”
Recently, with the approaching voting day of the US presidential election on November 3, Hollywood can be described as a collective contribution, in order to allude to the incompetence and chaos of the Trump administration in reality, many film and television dramas have been changed in a "costless" way, with only one purpose, hoping to meet with the audience before the voting day, in order to affect the voters' voting intentions, in addition to the "Chicago Seven Gentlemen Trial" mentioned in this article, as well as "Comey's Rules" and "Completely Controllable" and so on.
Stills from The Trial of the Seven Gentlemen of Chicago
However, film and television dramas may be able to change the direction of an election, but they still cannot solve the chronic diseases of American society, the US defense industry system dominated by the military-industrial complex needs to create profits from war after war, and the issues of racial discrimination and gun control behind the violent law enforcement of the US police are equally difficult to solve at the legislative level.
Sadly, change may only come in Hollywood movies and TV shows.
Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Zhe
Proofreader: Yan Zhang