OCTOBER RUNDOWN

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (in cinemas and on Netflix) - ***

The first major contender of 2021’s awards season has arrived and unsurprisingly it’s from Aaron Sorkin. I’ve always felt Sorkin - the man behind ‘The West Wing’ (1999-2006) - is the best at taking distinctly uncinematic materials and making them cinematic. Take ‘The Social Network’ (2010), for example. A story essentially of men in suits and boardrooms talking for 2 hours, but so suited to the big screen thanks to Sorkin’s acerbic and razor-sharp dialogue.

Who better therefore to take on the film adaptation of one of the most notorious trials in American history? ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ (2020) follows the titular “Chicago 7” - a group of anti-Vietnam war protestors who were charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intention of inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. 

Five of the seven defendants found themselves convicted for inciting riots. All were later acquitted of conspiracy and defendants Froines (Daniel Flaherty) and Weiner (Noah Robbins) were acquitted of all charges. While the jury deliberated, Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) had all the defendants and their attorneys convicted of contempt of court; sentencing them all to different jail sentences ranging from less than 3 months to 4 years. All the convictions of inciting riots and contempt were later reversed by appellate courts.

There was also an eighth defendant - Black Panther Party co-founder and chairman Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Since 1966, the Party’s central practice was monitoring police activities and protesting against police brutality within the black communities. The work of which has timely social relevance in wake of the killing of George Floyd and the #BlackLivesMatter Movement.

Over a month into the trial, Seale’s case was severed away from the other defendants which made the “Chicago 8” the “Chicago 7”. The Government then declined to retry him on conspiracy charges. Though never convicted in the case, Seale was sentenced to four years in prison for criminal contempt of court. This contempt sentence was later reversed on appeal.

The titular “Trial of the Chicago 7” is the location for the vast majority of the runtime. The backdrops are wooden courtrooms and judges’s raised desks with the pounding sound of the gavel echoing around the courtroom. Naturally this is not the most cinematic setting and the procedures and paperwork that comes with any trial can’t help, but feel rather report-like and televisual.

You would think Sorkin would solve this problem given he is the master of making material cinematic. Just think about the opening scene in ‘The Social Network’ where Erica breaks up with Mark Zuckerberg. This is a standard procedure break-up scene set against the backdrop of a fresher’s bar - often the least cinematic place on the block. But Sorkin turns this scene into a moment of Shakespearean brilliance because his dialogue is so whip-smart and funny whether that be Mark pontificating about the population of China or Erica putting it fair and simple with the line “you’re an asshole!”.

In ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’, meanwhile, the thundering sound of judge Hoffman screaming “order” or “adjourned” blots out any of Sorkin’s trademark literary flourishes. I understand this is a movie made for Netflix, but it is also playing in some cinemas. I expected at least a bit more effort in making something as mundane as a courtroom a little bit more big screen friendly. 

There are times when this veers less like a movie than a law class lecture. Thank goodness then for the flashbacks to the original riot on the hill at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. The riot scenes are incendiary and gripping with tear gas used to disperse the crowds and battens aplenty from the police side of the law. These moments are pure Sorkin, pure cinema with a touch of the docudrama, news-worthy realism of Kathryn Bigelow and Paul Greengrass.

It would be easy to forgive the lengthy courtroom scenes for being as preachy and on-the-nose as they are if the characters and performances really stood out. But they don’t. I found the titular 7, which includes star turns from Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden and Sacha Baron-Cohen as Abbie Hoffman, criminally underwritten; like pawns on a chessboard or little stick men in a legal caricature.

It’s ironic that one of the smallest, most incidental roles steals the show. Michael Keaton chomps up the scenery as Ramsey Clark - the US Attorney General during the riots. I always love a bit of Michael Keaton. He’s one of those actors who completely steals every scene even when on screen for the shortest amount of time. If there’s anyone who should get an Oscar, it’s him.

As for Sorkin, he is truly one of America’s greatest writers and a fine director if his directorial debut - the ski poker queen drama ‘Molly’s Game’ (2018) was anything to go by. But even the greatest talents tend to go sideways from time to time.

‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ was made for Netflix and - in a year where the traditional awards-bait dramas are in low demand - has a strong shot of peaking at awards glory. It’s exactly the kind of loud, shouty, moralistic Oscar propaganda the awards like. I just wish it was more cinematic and frankly more fun.

​

Eternal Beauty (in cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema) - ****

Sally Hawkins is such an odd character - in the best possible way. Her broad mouth and asymmetrical nose almost look a bit like a fish. Pretty fitting then that she last won an Oscar starring opposite a fishman in ‘The Shape of Water’ (2018).

Her unconventional looks and slightly neurotic pronunciations are put to good use in ‘Eternal Beauty’ (2020). Having won an Oscar for having sex with a fish, Hawkins is on fine, eccentric form as Jane - a woman struggling to find her place in a world that has consistently rejected her.

It all started when, as a young twentysomething girl (Morfydd Clark looking considerably prettier than in ‘Saint Maud’ (2020)), Jane was jilted at the altar. The experience traumatised her and left her straddling in and out of psychiatric wards and psychotherapy sessions.

Twenty years later, she’s living alone, but has her rather distant family close by. There’s ultra-conservative mum Vivian (Penelope Wilton) who basically thinks Jane needs to grow up and slightly more passive dad Dennis (Robert Pugh). Then there’s nice sister Alice (Alice Lowe) and mean sister Nicola (Billie Piper).

Jane finally appears to make peace with her Schizophrenia when she meets Mike (David Thewlis) - a failing musician and lost soul. They begin a pitch-black comic romance…

Hawkins’ fish-like features are perfect for perfecting the jittery gait and teetering-on-unhinged mannerisms of a former Schizophrenic. She’s excellent here and really made me believe in Jane’s plight. I felt just so sad and close to tears that society and even close family had been so cruel and essentially broken one unfortunate, hapless person.

Actor-turned-director Craig Roberts (‘Submarine’ (2011)) - in his 2nd film since 2015’s ‘Just Jim’ - films the whole thing beautifully. I especially love the panoramic scene where Jane is walking sideways across the street. The camera folds in at the corners to give a distorted, fish-eye view of the world to the central character’s eccentric eyes.

I loved the choices of music; so uplifting yet equally melancholy when the situation arises. Hawkins gets a solo staccato of ‘I Will Survive’ while ‘I Will Follow You’ by Ricky Nelson plays over a montage of Hawkins and Thewlis bonding on a staircase. Then Beth Orton’s ‘Blood Red River’ plays when mum dies.

At times, the film plays like a Greek tragedy especially during the scene where Morfydd Clark’s young Jane watches a play starring her more conventionally attractive sister. Her expressions convey jealousy, envy and pure hopelessness. 

I couldn’t help, but wonder too whether this was a modern-day retelling of ‘Great Expectations’ with Miss Havisham’s role extended. In Dickens’s classic, Miss Havisham is also jilted at the altar and spends the next few decades slowly psychologically imploding much like Jane in this movie. And Hawkins would make a great Miss Havisham!

The performances are universally excellent from a topnotch British cast. David Thewlis is typically wispy-haired and deadpan with his trademark Lancashire vowells as lover Mike. Penelope Wilton delivers her propensity for clipped pronunciations and Queen’s English superiority. Alice Lowe looks as Gothic as ever as a character called Alice and Billie Piper is on pippin’ hot form as bratty Nicola.

But this is Hawkins’ show and she gives her most personal, most Sally Hawkins-esque performance to date in this nicely weird and strange little movie. I beg she gets BAFTAs…

​

On the Rocks (in cinemas and on Apple TV+) - **

I’ve always been slightly off-message on the subject of Sofia Coppola. Not least because she killed ‘The Godfather: Part III’ (1990) stone dead with her atrocious performance as Mary Corleone. 

I never liked ‘Lost in Translation’ (2003) even though that was a movie everyone loved and made a star of Scarlett Johansson. I just found it pretentious and unbearable in the extreme.

Since then, Coppola has divided her time between true-crime comedies like ‘The Bling Ring’ (2013), self-indulgent family dramas (‘Somewhere’ (2010)) and bizarre career choice period dramas such as ‘The Beguiled’ (2017).

Her latest film ‘On the Rocks’ (2020) is Coppola’s least pretentious, but most bland. It stars Rashida Jones as a recently married novelist with two young daughters who begins to suspect that her hunky husband might be cheating on her for another woman. Her source of comfort ironically comes from her sleazy, playboy father (Bill Murray) who she is trying to reconnect with after he too had an affair with her mother. They do so against the backdrop of modern-day Manhattan.

Like ‘When Harry Met Sally’ (1989), this is an anti rom-com. Characters don’t fall in love - they fall apart and the central “drama” at the heart of this movie is whether Jones’s husband is cheating on her. Not a typical case of man meets woman and then make a baby…

I love “anti rom-coms” and love ‘When Harry Met Sally’. Unfortunately Sofia Coppola doesn’t have Nora Ephron’s lightness of touch nor her very real and witty insights into cross-gender issues such as why there seems to or is expected to be some sort of attraction between man and woman even in a friendship.

To make a film about adultery and old-aged chauvinism like this work, you need a lightness of touch. Coppola doesn’t have that. She has a clunky, po-faced touch that reeks of over-seriousness. It makes ‘On the Rocks’s treatment of these issues terribly self-regarding and frankly depressing.

Bill Murray is always good especially at deadpan and he gets a few good scenes and laughs out of all this superciliousness. I especially liked the bit where he flirts with a former Russian ballet dancer turned waitress. His pronunciation of the Russian greetings “Spasiba” and “Na zdravie” are particularly sleazy and retrograde. I certainly believed him as a womanizer and an old guard flirtboy.

Rashida Jones, meanwhile, just looks bored in every scene and I can’t blame her, to be honest. This movie really needs a bit of cheerful *wink wink* absurdity to lighten the mood of its po-faced treatment of relationship breakdown. 

‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’ (2020) - another anti rom-com - had this in spades and was enjoyable as a result. There’s some nice New York locations here, but also a lot of blandness and a lot of unnecessary dramatic baggage...

​