Sundance Film #8: Chicago 10

Chicago 10
As one of the seminal political events of the 1960s, the Chicago Seven trial seems to come from another era, but filmmaker Brett Morgen, in his third trip to the Sundance Film Festival, has created a film that is much more than a look back. Indeed, Chicago 10 takes a stylized, innovative approach that gives contemporary history a forced perspective. He boldly mixes original animation with extraordinary archival footage to explore the buildup to and unraveling of the infamous conspiracy trial. Set to the music of the revolution then and now, Chicago 10 is a parable of hope, courage and challenge as it portrays the struggle of young Americans attempting to confront an oppressive and armed government...their own.

The 1968 Democratic Convention was a watershed event in the ongoing opposition to the Vietnam war. Protestors clashed with Chicago police, and the ensuing battles were witnessed live on television. In an effort to find a scapegoat, eight protestors were charged. The trial became a circus, and the abuse of individual liberties made this event one of the era's most significant.

But this is not the focus of either the film or our choice to have it open this year's Festival. Chicago 10 is much more than mere historical drama, and its creative artistry and inspiration are at the core of what makes this documentary and its subject as relevant today as it was 40 years ago.
(Geoffrey Gilmore, 2007 Sundance Film Festival catalog)
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From an early age, I have always had a taste for history that wasn't limited to wars and political boundaries. I like knowing how normal people lived, what they thought, and how the events of the time affected them. Chicago 10 set the events surrounding the 1968 Democratic Convention and the trail of the Chicago Seven in the context of the people in and around Chicago and other places where Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin spoke to people. At one point, in a piece of archive footage, a reporter asked a young black woman how she felt about the events going on uptown (the Yippie protests were held in Lincoln Park in Chicago, not in the poorer [and more predominantly black] south side), the woman squinched up her face and expressed her opinion that she was glad it was happening in someone else's neighborhood, and that she didn't feel sorry for the white guys getting beat up by the police.

The director apparently went through hundreds of hours of archival film and audio and tens of thousands of pages of court transcripts, but because the courtroom portions of the movie are stylized animation, it's hard to tell how much is true and how much is "dramatized," especially since Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were pretty dramatic already.

Abbie Hoffman, being the biggest clown of the group, ends up getting the most screen time in both real archive footage and animated footage. He said more than once that politics, and his trial in particular, were theater - this movie took his words and turned them into performance art.

I want Peaches to see this movie, just to give her some context in American history that she probably won't get otherwise. The Pirate and I had a long discussion (on our way to the next movie) about what lessons were learned as a result of the events of the late 60s, and much has changed - but for the worse. Democrats and other people more liberally inclined have decided to try taking the moral high ground - not once are you going to hear Barack Obama yelling "Fuck you!" at Bush or any of his supporters - but they've also decided that they have too much to lose by speaking out. Tom Hayden was carted off to jail at least once, and every protestor in Lincoln Park knew that they had a very real chance of being taken out of the park by force, and they accepted that. In the trial, the Chicago Seven were labeled as terrorists, but after the trial every day they left the courtroom without guard, boarded planes, and went on speaking engagements.

If the same sort of thing were to happen today, there would be no public trial because they would have been branded "terrorists," making them "enemy combatants" and stripping them of their legal rights. They would have been held in jail while their trail by military tribunal went on without them, and they would have been unable to tell anyone about what they were going through. Knowing that, liberals today cluck their tongues at the antics of the current administration and talk in hushed tones about how they could do better.

If Abbie Hoffman were still politically active in the same absurd way today, he would point at the current regime and say loudly for all to hear that not only does the emperor have no clothes, but that he thinks it's a great idea and everyone should join him. And then take off his pants for the camera.

The Pirate says: It was interesting, engaging; it made the whole thing very exciting.