12 Angry Men

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S.Constitution guarantees the right to trial by a jury. In case of a criminal trial, the jury consists of 12 people, citizens drawn from all walks of life, who decide the verdict of the case. 12 Angry Men is Sidney Lumet's first directorial venture, shot entirely in a New York city jury room where 12 middle-class white men decide on the fate of young teen (maybe Puerto-Rican, maybe Italian, definitely someone from the wrong side of tracks) who is charged with murdering his father.

The movie while it garnered 3 Oscar nominations was not a commercial hit at the time.  Over the years it has gained quite a following and is often taught in high school business law classes, film schools and Youtube videos purporting to teach the art of persuasion.

I've always wondered how juries reach unanimous decisions, considering most of the jury members are ordinary people whose closest brush with law might have been when they walked in front of a TV set playing Law and Order. More importantly the State has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is either guilty or innocent and all the members of the jury have to have be on the same plate. Beyond a reasonable doubt” is the universal standard of proof for criminal prosecutions in state and federal courts in the United States. O. J. Simpson would definitely thank the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment which requires the State to prove that every element of a charged criminal offense is beyond reasonable doubt.

In 12 Angry Men, at the start of the jury deliberation there are 11 jury members believing the accused is guilty and one person and the 12th man, Juror #8 (Henry Fonda) is not convinced the accused is guilty. There goes the unanimous verdict and starts the 1.5 hr real-time deliberation which forms the 96 minutes of movie show time.

The tight script by Reginald Rose is supported by  phenomenal actors like Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, E. G. Marshall and others.  It is a film that is totally reliant on dialog and performance and does a great job on both. As a film that is shown for the students at film schools, law schools, sociology and psychology departments,  there is something for everyone whether it is camera and writing techniques or a study in confirmation bias or methods of persuasion.

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Flowers For Algernon : Bouquets or Brickbats?

Flowers for Algernon, the Nebula award winning 1959 sci-fi novel by Daniel Keyes is a crowd favorite for the last half century. There were several reasons I should not have tried reading it, starting from my inability to read fiction as years progress being the main one. It did not help that the book belonged to category of 'scientific fiction' and was not written by a couple of SF writers that I could understand, namely Douglas Adams or Philip K. Dick. Nevertheless none of these stopped me from attempting to read this book, as the whole internet is ga-ga about Flowers for Algernon, I caught a case of FOMO. 

Little did I know this book is the American cousin of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, another novel that has been anchoring the book shelves around the world with un-shakeable gravitas and giving their readers self importance and reading participation trophies since it came out in 1993. 

While The Alchemist has a global following like soccer, Flowers for Algernon is very American like 'American football' (the one that uses hands to play.) Keyes went as far back as Mark Twain to adopt Huckleberry Finn's lingo, which had made reading Huckleberry Finn a torture for a non-native English speaker like me, who had to read aloud the mis-spelled words to understand what Huck Finn was saying. It is the same with Charlie, the protagonist in Flowers for Algernon. The first several chapters, the one dimensional Charlie jots in his journal is torture for speed readers, grammar-nazis, spell-checkers and me. 

The novel also has a distinct fifties-sixties anti-feminist vibe to it, like the Catcher in the Rye or One  Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. A few chapters in, Charlie is seen progressing through his Holden Caulfield phase - a moody, self-absorbed, misogynistic male. There are archetypal female characters propping Charlie up as he goes up and down the slippery IQ slope.  It was probably an edgy read in the sixties and seventies. It reads very dated as in outdated and uni-dimensional now. I was expecting a good cry at the end as this was supposedly the reaction most readers had in the end, after being profoundly moved by the plight of Charlie. I almost cried over the time I wasted reading Daniel Keyes essential soft-core reading for sixties dudes.

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