The Trial of the Chicago 7
Aaron Sorkin takes on the famous trial of activists who organized an anti-war protest during the 1968 Democratic convention.
Aaron Sorkin, most known for portraying a strainingly idealistic vision of American politics in The West Wing, takes on a story from American history, the famous trial of activists who organized an anti-war protest during the 1968 Democratic convention. In The Trial of the Chicago 7, politics, politicians, the judiciary, the police, and the military all inspire righteous contempt from young people outraged that the government is shipping many of them overseas by force to kill and be killed. Sorkin being Sorkin, he still manages to dredge from it a lesson about the importance of voting.
If you need your history-based storytelling to be true to the complexities of the real events and characters, this will disappoint. But Sorkin wanted the movie to illuminate the current moment, and it does so. Black radical Bobby Seale points out that white kids' reasons for rebellion are less deeply rooted than his, and a villainous government meets peaceful protest with maiming force. Piles of named war victims here make the cause difficult to gainsay; those seeking sympathy for protesters are smart to focus on the evils they want to overturn rather than the desire for more government control of the economy and the culture that drives many rebels, yesterday and today.