It was counterculture Sunday for me last weekend, starting with The Trial of the Chicago Seven. Then I went down the tube through Prague Spring, hippies & flower children, LSD & peaceniks, protestors and poets, civil rights leaders' and Kennedys' assassinations, Kent State and Jackson State and the great divide of Vietnam war - the timelessness of it all chokes me up. Half a century later those years that I have never lived except through grainy pixels on a flickering screen is deja-vu material.
There was so much anger, frustration and helplessness seething under the surface and erupting as protests in the last four years that I thought we were living through the worst of times with no end in sight. It felt like the America I knew was unraveling. Then I used to remind myself of the only opening lines I remember, of any novel I have ever read - from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, set before and during the French Revolution. People were feeling the same kind of angst and helplessness as Dickens' opens his novel describing the tumultuous last years of the 18th century, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us..."
The 1960s in the United States was not much different from those last dozen years of the 1700s for France. 1960s takes the prize for Revolutionary Years with the Best Music, with their rocking BGM. Compared to the great anthems that straddled the summer of '69, it has been all downhill for music ever since then.
The Trial of Chicago Seven takes place during a brief, rebellious and beautiful interlude before most of the Seven grew up and went on to live staid lives in suits as yuppie stockbrokers or unoriginal academics. IMHO, the massive cultural and political uprisings that characterize the decade from 1965 to 1975 was the only time any kind of meaningful change was affected through people's protests in the United States.
Unlike India where I was born and brought up or the UK which has close historical/political ties to India, where people's protest movements brought down sitting governments and modulated the course of the Future, the world's oldest democracy in modern history - the United States' protests movements are weak sauce. The U.S has rarely seen any administration overthrown or have had sustaining and meaningful change happen through people's protests movements, except during the Civil Rights-Vietnam War-Nixon era.
With the advent and encroachment of social media in our lives, we have become mostly keyboard warriors and slacktivists who dutifully discharge their political advocacy duty through signing online petitions. This is not just the scene here in the U.S but the world over. But in a nation where most of the adult population is classified as "interested bystanders" it has now become even more easier to be an activist. Wonder what the Chicago 7 or Black Panthers or MLK or Malcolm X would say about our activism?
But there is something that United States' does for protest movements at home and all over the globe, that no other country does (nowhere close) - the Americans make or fund great movies/art/music documenting, giving and extending the voice of ordinary people rising up against broken systems. Watching The Trial of Chicago 7, I was happy for the existence of art, movies and other forms of output of creative minds. They immortalize and provide an account of the times, the events and the people and the struggles and beauty of their lives. I am glad art exists.
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| An original poster in support of the Conspiracy 8/ Chicago 8 |
Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, The Trial of Chicago Seven (originally Eight, including Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers) is a very Sorkin subject. The 1968 protest at DNC at Chicago has unconventional leaders breaking new pathways. Sorkin showcases these guys while they are in the midst of creating turning points in U.S history. Sorkin's characters are charismatic and articulate to the point of bringing a collective frisson of optimism and hope in the audience. Sorkin is the writer behind exceptional movies like A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson's War, The Social Network and Steve Jobs.
The Trial of Chicago Seven has eight intense characters on trial in a courtroom with an unreasonably acrimonious judge presiding. All the eight are the kind of people who are at ease on a podium with the ability to draw people through their words. My favorite is Abbie Hoffman, played by Sacha Baron Cohen. There are some incredible retorts from Hoffman in the movie, during his court room testimony. I found the transcript of the real testimony here and realized that Sorkin has summarized and retained the lines with the most impact without diluting the narrative.
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| Six of the real Chicago 7 - Front row, from left: Rennie Davis, Rubin, Abbie Hoffman. Back row, from left: Lee Weiner, Bob Lamb and Thomas Hayden. |
Steven Spielberg almost made this movie in 2007, Sorkin was the writer at the time too but the effort was canned due to the Writers Guild of America strike. Coincidentally Sacha Baron Cohen was slated to play Hoffman back then as well. Heath Ledger was to play Tom Hayden and Philip Seymour Hoffman was to be the defense attorney William Kunstler. These roles were played by Eddie Redmayne and Mark Rylance respectively in the 2020 movie.
As a lover of words and history with a fondness for cheeky one-liners, Aaron Sorkin's interpretation of the Chicago Seven/Eight's trial is edgy and larger than life. If we read the real history of the trial you would be able to see that the director has taken plenty of liberty interpreting the real incidents for dramatic effect and to shore up certain characters like Eddie Redmayne's Hayden and Joseph Gordon Levitt's prosecution attorney, Richard Schultz. Still it is a movie worth watching because as per the quote attributed from people ranging from Edmund Burke to Santayana to Churchill, if you don't learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it.
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