THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7

Aaron Sorkin's THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 is the third film in fifteen years telling the story of the defendants brought up before the US court following their part in the anti-war protests at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. The trial has become a signpost event, marking a time when the establishment was crumbling and new "liberal" views were taking hold.

The other two films detailing the event are CHICAGO 10 from 2007, which uses animation to illustrate trial footage, and CONSPIRACY: THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 8 from 2011, made for television, a more traditional combination of documentary and dramatic recreation. 

If the films are distinguishing themselves with different trial numbers, it's because 7 was the number of people on trial for the protests; 8 included Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panthers, who found himself taking part in the same trial; while 10 included the two lawyers defending the eight men.

Sorkin's CHICAGO 7 trumps 8 and 10 through the firepower of its cast and the sheer pizzazz of its writing. It is crafted with Sorkin's keen ear for character and his seemingly innate sense of dramatic progression. It is often scintillating. The characters are balanced nicely in terms of screen-time and story-telling, and it's always clear what is going on.

Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne and Jeremy Strong as Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden and Jerry Rubin all give remarkable performances (It's actually exciting to see Strong as Rubin if you are only familiar with his Kendall Roy from SUCCESSION). Mark Rylance as defence lawyer, William Kunstler, Joseph Gordon Levitt as prosecutor Richard Schultz, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Bobby Seale are terrific, too. And it's easy to write-off John Carroll Lynch as avuncular pacifist David Dellinger because of a familiarity with the actor, but Lynch is rock solid and true. In spite of all this, there is one performance that somehow stands out at the centre of the film: Frank Langella as out-of-time Judge Julius Hoffman. Langella never cartoons his character, playing him instead with certainty and nuance. It's a whole man up there judging the trial of the decade and it makes the film work.

I'm interested in the increasing concern given to authenticity in film, and what that means in dramatisations that bend facts to suit the "rules of drama." 

CHICAGO 7 is as guilty of this as many others. 

Some examples: Fred Hampton's death, which happened after the trial, is shown to occur during the hearing and provoke an outburst from Bobby Seale; Dellinger, a committed pacifist, was not provoked into punching a warden; there was no undercover FBI woman forming a relationship with Jerry Rubin; the lottery system for picking draftees was introduced after the trial and therefore had no effect on whether Hayden was selected for combat in Vietnam or not; it was Dellinger who read out the list of war dead at the trial rather than Hayden, AND he included the names of Vietnamese soldiers in his reading, something the film omits. 

Anybody who has written drama based on "real life" knows what it means to bend the facts... you justify it by saying a dramatic point is being embellished and therefore a deeper truth is being told. But with all the concern over "authenticity", should we call out films like CHICAGO 7 for "getting things wrong"? 

I think Sorkin wrote the screenplay as early as 2007 and it is interesting to wonder if he would write it differently today. Or not. Is the dramatist's job to present the facts as they are or shape them into a tense and coherent story? 

And is it authentic for the film to have so many English actors playing Americans? 

There are no right answers to these questions, and things continue to evolve. What is there, though, is a very good film. THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 is on Netflix.