Review--Chicago 10--Sundance Opening Night

Bobby Seale was bound and gagged.

An American citizen in an American courtroom under the watchful eyes of the Founding Fathers was bound and gagged.

Yes, Bobby Seale was bound and gagged--but what does this have to do with January, 2007?

Brett Morgen, director of 2007 Sundance Film Festival Opening Night film Chicago 10, along with civic-minded financing entity Participant Pictures, believe passionately in the contemporary relevance of the events surrounding the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. With kinetic editing, audacious animation, and a fist-pumping score featuring Black Sabbath, Rage Against the Machine, and Eminem, Chicago 10 is tellin' y'all it's sabotage.

Archival footage from Chicago is intercut with animated realizations of the courtroom transcripts, rotoscoped and otherwise, in a roughly chronological progression. Day 1 of the protest follows Day 1 of the trial, with commentary provided by animated lectures by head Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, voiced by Hank Azaria and Mark Ruffalo, respectively. There's not much more structurally going on here; Morgen's approach is strictly just the (flashy) facts, relying on the larger-than-life personalities and still-shocking imagery to keep audiences connected, engaged, and presumably applying historical lessons to current events.

Despite Morgen's best intentions and the considerable skill of editors Stuart Levy and Kristina Boden, the film never coalesces into a fresh contribution to these well-told events. Chicago 10's main weakness stems directly from Morgen's directorial choices. By eschewing traditional documentary techniques like talking heads and text slates, Morgen denies himself his best tools for presenting necessary background information and nuance. It's a daunting--though not impossible--challenge that Chicago 10 doesn't meet.

The 10 in the title refers to the original eight defendants, the most famous being Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin representing the Yippies, pacifist David Dellinger, Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis from SDS, and Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale (whose severing turned the Chicago 8 into the Chicago 7). John Froines and Lee Weiner also faced indictments. All served jail time, as did defense attorneys William Kunstler (voiced by Liev Schreiber) and Leonard Weinglass. Morgen adds to his 10 with prosecutor Thomas Aquinas Foran and Judge Julius Hoffman, (Nick Nolte and Roy Scheider, both making very obvious choices in their vocal performances).

1968 was nearly 40 years ago, if you can believe it, and what Morgen doesn't seem to realize is that the generation that will most appreciate his visual style is largely ignorant of the fact that the groups represented by the defendants weren't necessarily pursuing the same agenda. Younger audiences probably have zero knowledge of even the most basic facts of the story, and this movie isn't going to change that. The animated sequences of Rubin and Hoffman speaking to college students or in night clubs make them look like comedians traveling the same circuit as George Carlin and Lenny Bruce, only with less funny jokes.

The big question unanswered by Chicago 10 is the biggest of them all: What beliefs did they hold that were worth all the brouhaha? Uninformed audiences will have some vague awareness that non-violence was involved, and so will be confused by the incendiary statements made by Hoffman--statements that were deliberately orchestrated to provoke the police into violence against the mostly innocent protestors. The general perception of a homogenous hippie peace movement that younger audiences will bring to this movie is not challenged by Morgen, and that's the movies biggest downfall. Chicago 10 is not a movie about ideas, history, or even current events. It's a movie about wishing something this exciting would happen again, no matter the price.

If anything, Chicago 10 should teach us to beware of demagogues, catch phrases and buzzwords, of blindly following our chosen leaders into a course of action with a hidden agenda. Hoffman's cavorting in the courtroom is just another media moment, ultimately no more meaningful than George Bush's donning of an Air Force uniform inside Morgen's context-free movie.

Back to Bobby Seale, with those shackles. All Morgen shows us, through a one-note vocal performance by the usually subtle Jeffrey Wright, is a hysterical black man hollering about his constitutional rights. The actual rights he's referring to are never explained. When he's hauled off, it's almost a relief, to get an end to shouting that seems so pointless. The power of seeing a black man in chains in a courtroom is shocking, but that's all it is. The true failure of Chicago 10 is that its heroes seem ultimately no less arbitrary in their decisions and dogmatic in their positions than those the movie wishes to criticize for our own endless, meaningless war.

For all of my Sundance reviews, bookmark this page and check daily!