Criticism of The Trial of the 7 of Chicago, nominated for best film at the Oscars 2021

The year 1968 was one of the most turbulent in recent United States history: on April 4, Martin Luther King was assassinated and on June 6, Robert Kennedy, brother of the also assassinated John F. Kennedy. At the time, the Vietnam War was in full swing and protests were taking place in the streets against a conflict in which the deaths of American soldiers were multiplying. Protests like the one that gives rise to The Chicago 7 Trial, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin (Molly’s game as director; Some Good Men, The Social Network, Steve Jobs, The West Wing of the White House as screenwriter). Sorkin likes a trial movie more than a comic to Tarantino, so he puts his mark back on one, The Chicago Trial of 7, which has been voted one of the ten best films of 2020 by the American Film Institute and is nominated for six Oscars in this edition, including best film and best original screenplay. Aaron Sorkin, the highest-paid writer in Hollywood – earning four million dollars per script and one more if filmed – returns behind the camera after his debut in Molly’s game, with a story based on true events and dialogue that carries the recognizable Sorkin hallmark: rhythmic, dynamic, powerful, complex and ingenious. The film narrates the judicial process between 1969 and 1970 in which the organizers of the protests against the Vietnam War at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago – which ended in a pitched battle with the Police and the National Guard – were accused of conspiracy and crossing state borders with the intention of provoking a riot. The subsequent trial was one of the most notorious and eventful in American history.The script was written by Sorkin in 2007 and was to have Steven Spielberg as director, hell-bent on working with the writer ever since he heard a furious and unhinged Jack Nicholson yell, ‘The truth? You could not bear the truth! “, After confessing that he applied the red code in Some Good Men. But that year, the famous 100-day writers’ strike that would change Hollywood brought down numerous shootings, this one among them. In subsequent years, Sorkin modified his text to try to find parallels between the events of 1968 he recounted and today. And he never got as close as with the story that he has finally rolled himself. “I never wanted this film to be about 1968, I always wanted it to dialogue with the present, but I did not want our present to be so similar to that of 1968”, Sorkin pointed out in this regard. Trial rigged The Chicago 7 trial tells how the process was a grand rigging led by Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who tasked his prosecutors to “destroy” the defendants. The film has three memorable moments: the argument between two of the defendants, Tom Hayden, played by Eddie Redmayne, and Abbey Hoffman, recreated by Sacha Baron Cohen, which amounts to the moment “You couldn’t bear the truth!” in this film; the brief, but devastating appearance of Michael Keaton as Ramsey Clark, attorney general of the United States confronted his predecessor Mitchell, ensuring that the investigation concluded, precisely, the opposite of what the hearing was judging. The judge’s performance is so lacking in objectivity that he comes to accept a protest that is not made during the interrogation of Clark.And finally, that epic ending of Eddie Redmayne that infuriates the judge and that we will not reveal here, but about which we will only say that, in real events, it takes place towards the beginning of the 150 days of trial. Sorkin puts it as the climactic finale before a voice-over reveals the sentence and the subsequent appeal. Memorable and captivating work, without a doubt, that the Academy will look favorably on, taking into account the parallels referred to by the director between the events of 1968 and the recently ended current affairs led by Donald Trump in the United States. Although the latter has not inspired songs like ‘The Chicago Seven’ did to Graham Nash -of Crosby, Still, Nash and Young- or to the famous band that was born in the same city, Chicago. FILE: The Chicago 7 trial. 2020. 129 minutes. Director: Aaron Sorkin. Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Rylance, Frank Langella, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeremy Strong, John Carroll Lynch, Alex Sharp, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Michael Keaton, Ben Shenkman, JC MacKenzie, Noah Robbins.