CR: Chicago 10

Here it is, my first coverage of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, a review of the opening night film, Chicago 10, a fast-paced, loud, and at times nerve-racking film that is part-documentary, part courtroom drama, part music video, written and directed by Brett Morgan (The Kid Stays in the Picture).

The short version: tens of thousands of lives, both U.S. and Vietnamese, are being exterminated in Vietnam’s jungles on a daily basis, U.S. involvement is escalating, and student deferment from the draft has been revoked. The counterculture (who label themselves ‘Yippies’), filled with ideas garnered from rock music, books, and drug-experimentation, is outraged by the war and the capitalist system in general. A demonstration is organized in Chicago to go head to head with the Democratic Convention, the demonstrators and denied permits, they demonstrate anyway, and the Chicago PD and National Guard is put to the task of ridding the city of the Yippie problem. Violence and rioting ensues, and when the smoke and teargas clears, eight men are charged with deliberately organizing and inciting the riots (their lawyers add the 2 to make it an even 10).

The story moves back and forth between the events prior and during the demonstration, and the trial. Morgan combines archival footage with reenactments rendered in trippy A Scanner Darkly-esque animation (and sometimes both within the same frame). This film is a testament to the power of photography – even with an animation studio at the filmmakers’ fingertips, the most jaw-dropping visuals in the film are archival footage of a city in a state of anarchy.

This is an excellently made and entertaining film, though there are some problems with it. For instance, the animation is uneven at points, making it hard to recognize characters from one scene and the next. But the animation has its high points. Early on in the film a character’s face (animated) is superimposed over shifting imagery of the war in Vietnam (actual footage manipulated and combined with animation, and reminiscent of the opening of ‘Apocalypse Now’). The music selection too is a bit uneven: Rage Against the Machine doesn’t seem to fit well in an early courtroom scene, but later in the film, footage of mayhem and anarchy is cut perfectly in tune to Black Sabbath (and somewhere between the two, a demonstration scene to Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage”). As a filmmaker, Morgan has both an eye and ear for what grabs an audience’s attention.

The cast does a phenomenal job of lending all but their faces to their characters. Hank Azaria (The Birdcage, “The Simpsons”) is nearly indistinguishable from the real life defendant/counterculture leader Abbie Hoffman and witness/poet/icon Alan Ginsberg (one of the funniest moments in the film is when Ginsberg is asked to recite one of his poems while on the witness stand). Mark Ruffalo (Collateral, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) plays defendant Jerry Rubin, Liev Schreiber (The Painted Veil) plays the defendants’ lawyer, Nick Nolte (Hotel Rwanda, The Beautiful Country) the Prosecutor, and Roy Scheider (Jaws, The French Connection) plays the antagonizing and feeble-minded elderly Judge.

Morgan also does a good job of remaining objective. The Yippies’ behavior and language seem slightly ridiculous at times (this may be the result of a new generation gap – I’m 23), but morally, you cannot help but agree with them and be taken in by their ideas – war is not the problem but the symptom of a society; we do not need to end war, but build a society where war is not a possibility.

I shamefully admit that I know very little about U.S. History. I barely did any reading assignments in high school (though I did plenty of independent reading), and I took exactly one history course in college (World History, in which I gave a gruesome and informative powerpoint presentation on Vlad the Impaler). So a lot of what happened in this film was new and exciting to me. A hardcore history buff may not open her/his eyes as wide as I did, but regardless of your prior knowledge of the subject, this film will hold your attention.

This is the perfect film for opening night at Sundance – engaging, aggressive, and honest. In a time when the U.S. is facing global criticism for its military policies, Chicago 10 reminds audiences that freedom and revolution are still possible.