Superman Returns

While doing work on The B/C-L Index—you are using it, aren't you?—I come across reviews that haven't been thrown on here. This one is an oddity. It's the first movie review I wrote after a long time of just letting movies rattle around in my head. It's rough with way Too Much Information about my personal life for me to be comfortable with it, and too much "What I Had for Dinner"-type information that just seems irrelevant to the subject at hand (that being the movie). Still, it was an interesting read (for me, at least). If I haven't improved since then, I've at least learned to stay more on track...which for a blog about movies is important.

You'll Believe a Man Can Float

Driving home from Superman Returns in 4-story IMAX and 3-freepin'-D on Wednesday night, I was listening to KIRO Newsradio. Thousands were evacuating, fearing the cresting of the Delaware River. Andrea Yates was convicted (again) of killing her kids. A public official was lost in the Olympic Forest.

"Man!" I thought. "We could really use Superman."

I knew I needed him. It had been a rough week of moving furniture and hauling myself from The Island to The Redmond. I was swamped at work and I had to take Tuesday off for the transfer of our big stuff from The Place What We're Selling to the current domicile, so my Wednesday started at 4 am (just in time for the sunrise) to get started early on due assignments. After all this, I was looking forward to seeing friends I hadn't seen...in ages, and seeing the new "Superman movie". I was really looking forward to that. I've been pretty discouraged lately, and a new Superman movie...well, that seemed just the ticket. The previews for it were great.

So, how is it?

Good! Not as good as Superman: The Movie. Better than Superman II (which I've never liked) and it's Shakespeare compared to the moronic Superman III: Wasting Richard Pryor and the incompetent Superman IV: The Quest for Peace ("You'll Believe a Movie Can Stink to Highest Heaven!").

But everyone will be comparing it to the first one. As well they should. Superman Returns should be called "Son of Superman" (*ahem* cough!) as it's so closely tied to the first film. It recycles Marlon Brando as Father Jor-El, and recycles whole sections of the first film's Mario Puzo/Robert Benton/David Newman/Tom Mankiewicz script, including my favorite Lex Luthor line: "My father always told me..." "Get out!"

But, Superman: The Movie was really three films: The deadly earnest Krypton section ("This is no fantasy" intoned Brando at the beginning); the equally serious Smallville/Fortress of Solitude section (with Glenn Ford's last great performance, and a farewell to Ma Kent scene in a seemingly endless epic wheat field); and finally, the Metropolis movie, with its antic screwball comedy pace (brilliantly achieved, by the way), it's cartoonish villains ("Otis-burg? O-TIS-BURG???!!!") with their absurdly successful attempts at stealing nuclear missiles, and at its soul the "Superman Meets Girl" romantic comedy story-line. I've always felt that lurching shift in tone was a bit out of step with the rest of the film (though you could make a case for showing that stalwart Superman is needed in such a crazy, zany world). Now, I'm not so sure. Because Superman Returns keeps the earnest tone of the first couple sections of the original throughout its considerable length. More cohesive it may be, but it's not more entertaining. In fact, it tends to bog down the proceedings, which consists of "regrets and things unsaid" which would have made Richard Donner's His Girl Friday pacing inappropriate. Which only points out how large the gulf is between that first film and this one.

Donner's Superman was a frothy entertainment, that, in the days of disco, long sideburns, and flaired pants, winked at the concept of heroics. This one is heavier, darker, meaner and less entertaining. There's less joy to it. And it takes its heroes deadly seriously. You think a guy like Spider-man has great power, thus great responsibility? Hell! Try being "Superman!"

Donner's flying scenes in the first (with a lot of credit going to licensed pilot Christopher Reeve) showed the joy of flight--the freedom of it--the grace. Who wouldn't want to fly after "Superman?" "SR's" flights are rarely graceful, and powered by stress. This Superman is always in a hurry. He doesn't stop to smell the up-drafts or do a lazy roll through the clouds. He's making a bee-line from one emergency to another. There's another quality to the SR aerial scenes--isolation. Superman is often seen as a small speck in a big, empty sky with life going on far below him. He's not a part of this Earth, and Singer drives the point home again and again. It's no fun being Superman.

I'll bet audiences have a problem with that: if they were Superman, of course, they'd enjoy it. It brings to mind the Superman scene I'd like to see. Howard Chaykin, of "American Flagg!" comics fame said in an interview how he'd like to start off a Superman comic. Lots of panels of ordinary Metropolitans going about their day only to have them interrupted by a blue-red streak going by their window. BOOM! Another about to sip his coffee. BOOM! A couple more of those until you get to the "splash" page: Superman, over the ocean, wearing a pair of shades, and popping his fingers, listening to "I Believe in You" (from "How to Succeed in Business (Without Really Trying)) on his Walkman. "You have the cool, clear eyes /of a seeker of wisdom and truth."

Yeah. I'd love to see that Superman.

But despite Returns' seriousness, there are joys. Brandon Routh looks and sounds so much like Christopher Reeve that it doesn't take a big leap (or a single bound) to accept him in the role. He exhibits a bit more life as Clark Kent than the more stalwart Superman, breaking into a goofy grin at the slightest provocation, and restraining the klutz routine (he doesn't constantly punch up his glasses the way Reeves' CK did). I also like the fact that his performance doesn't have the same "I'm sharing a joke with the audience" quality that Reeve brought to the role. Kate Bosworth is damned cute as Lois Lane** (as a blonde, she barely registers on the screen, but here, her hair darkened brown, she seems to have a bit more depth) and has little of the Margot Kidder neuroticism and (here's a plus!) I don't remember hearing her scream once. I do miss Kidder's whiskey baritone cracking on "Clark!," however.

There could be a bit more life to Frank Langella's Perry White and Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor. Spacey's Luthor is self-contained malice and only sparks to life during a confrontation scene with Lois. Gene Hackman expertly tred the mine-field of jokes in the first film, but it was tough to buy him as a real threat to anybody but his cronies. Spacey's Luthor is a villain who does bad things...and enjoys doing bad things. Unfortunately, here, you mostly see him prepare to do bad things, and so there's no real pay-off for the character until 2/3 of the way through the film.

There is one cracker-jack sequence involving a doomed airliner that shows that it's pretty darned hard task to stop a plane in free-fall. It's note-perfect, right down to showing the skin of the craft buckling from a lurching halt. The movie has a good bead on the concept of heroism, too. There are a lot of heroics in this film (not just from der Ubermensch) where people who could take the easy way out, go against their better judgement and do What Must Be Done, despite the jeopardy it may put them in. It makes a statement that heroism doesn't come from powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. It comes from the heart, the conscience and the will.

Good movie/bad movie? Thumbs up/Thumbs down? Hard to say at this point. There are some movies that are merely okay while you suffer through them, but are better in memory (Napoleon Dynamite is one of those films: I can laugh at parts of it in retrospect, but I'd have to be kidnapped and a gun placed to my skull to watch it again***). Superman Returns was just the opposite: enjoyable while sitting through it (though I was aware of just how long it was, I didn't quite get to the point of checking the time), but the farther I get from it, I remember what's wrong with it more than what was right. If I had my "druthers," Superman Returns would be lighter than the Batman Begins, the "X-men" films, Spider-man, certainly lighter than Ang Lee's Hulk. At least it wasn't as frivolous as the Fantastic Four. My opinion of it is evolving, and that brings up another issue.

I've noticed an interesting trend in on-line reviews over the weekend. Initially, they're scathing, criticizing every aspect of the film..and harshly, to a ridiculous , often hysterical level. Second viewings produce a more favorable response, even admiration. I suspect that folks go, expecting to see the first film or worse yet, their idealized memory of the first...or second film. In that regards, this one will fail, but it can't help but fail. You can't fight a cherished favorite, or the memory of a cherished favorite. My advice: Go, expecting Superman IV. I know I'm going to see it again. Through the double exposure of the 3-D glasses, I couldn't tell whether the cribbed...sorry, the "homage"...final shot of Superman flying up, up and away past the audience had its Superman smile benignly at the audience. Like the George Reeves wink at the end of some of the TV shows, and Christopher Reeve's shared smile, it would have been nice to see it in this one. The fact that I didn't disappoints me, and makes me wonder why a decision not to include it, was made. Don't we want Superman on our side? I'll have to see it again. *

My favorite sum-up is by The Stranger's Andrew Wright who grumped: "For a movie featuring a hero who can conceivably give God a wedgie, there's precious little zowie to be found." "Zowie!" as in Adam West clobbering Ceasar Romero "Zowie?"

 

* And, sad to say, there is no smile on the final fly-by of 2006 Superman. He merely scans the audience with his eyes on the way past, ever vigilant. He probably isn't smiling because of the relatively few bodies he sees in the seats. And the ones that were there are already heading for the Exits. Not exactly what a super-hero expects when he sets out to "watch your back." 

 

** Hey, c'mon, younger me: Lois Lane shouldn't be "cute".  Lois Lane would curl her lip if you called her that.

 

*** Yeah, I don't know what my problem was here. I watched it a few years later and fell in love with it and regard it fondly.

A bit of hind-sight from here in 2024: James Gunn is making a new Superman movie with a new "from-scratch" cast and I just read the Internet News says that the "CW" is making a Superman series with Brandon Routh playing the role again—although as it's from the Internet, I'll believe it when I see it on my TV screen. I like Routh. He's gotten looser and more charismatic with age and I bet he could do a fine performance as "Supes" these days (as he did on those recent CW shows).

But, my long-distance memory of Superman Returns tilts it to a "bit of a drag" movie. There WAS no "ZOWIE!" to it. It was dark, dispiriting, mean and vengeful. It lingered on the negative and dismissed the positive. It should be bright, three-colored and direct. It should take pride in the right and look down on the wrong, not dwell on it. Bad guys shouldn't be taken so seriously; they should be ridiculed...but not by Superman. That would be mean. But, they should be dispatched so that life can go on positively.

And no brooding. Zack Snyder spent so much time having Henry Cavill doubting himself and "his way" that he never got around to showing a good portrait of Superman. And I, for one, am glad he got stopped before he could carry out his "Superman-as-villain" scenario for his planned Justice League series. That would have been just a dreary exercise. As dreary as making Superman a "fair-weather father" as he is in Superman Returns. Not to mention a serial-peeper. The crux of Superman is he's a good guy. Just because he CAN do something, doesn't mean he does. There's a thinking, moral filter there...that the recent incarnations have forgotten about.

Maybe it's because all I see these days (because they're the loudest) are politicians as "anti"-Supermen who don't believe in "Truth" (that's for damn sure!), "Justice" ("Delay, Delay, Delay") and I don't know what the Hell their idea of "The American Way" is (but it probably involves a lead pipe). It would be nice to have that...as an alternative for what America supposedly stands for now.

Dracula (1979)

Dracula (John Badham, 1979) A Tony Award winning Broadway revival of the 1924 stage version with stage design by Edward Gorey and a much-heralded performance by Frank Langella in the lead* was the inspiration for this late 70's version of the Bram Stoker story. By the time Universal Studios decided to make another version of the play,** Gorey was out, but director John Badham wanted to make the film in black-and-white to better reflect the Broadway version, but the studio wouldn't have it monochromatic.***

The film, adapted from the 1924 Deane-Balderston play by W.D. Richter, would boast some high-end talent. Badham has just come off the success of Saturday Night Fever and he was able to secure Gilbert Taylor as cinematographer, Bond alums Peter Murton as production designer and Maurice Binder—who was experimenting with laser effects at the time—for the title sequence (and as "visual consultant), John Williams (at the time the hottest film composer after his work on Star Wars and Superman) for the score, and the services of Lord Laurence Olivier (during his Germanic acting phase) as co-star.

We skip Transylvania and Castle Dracula and the hapless Jonathan Harker visit to start off with a dark and stormy night, which lashes the unfortunate ship Demeter, bearing a cargo of dead men (and, apparently, a wolf) and sends it into the shoreline of Whitby, Yorkshire. The local head of the sanitarium, Dr. Seward (Donald Pleasence) examines the bodies and determines that all aboard the death ship have had their throats slashed. Mina Van Helsing (Jan Francis)—who is visiting her friend, the doctor's daughter Lucy (Kate Nelligan)—finds that a man has washed ashore, miraculously saving him from the fate of the others. He is Count Dracula (Langella), who has purchased a nearby mansion-in-ruins, Carfax Abbey.

Seemingly none the worse for wear, The Count accepts a dinner invitation from Dr. Seward at his residence in the sanitorium. Badham gives him a great entrance where he's announced, strides in and with a perfect flourish takes off his cape and hands it, unseeing, to the butler. Langella's Dracula is handsome, Byronic, and has a way of focusing all his charm through his eyes. Langella also has a condition called nystagmus, which creates involuntary movements of the eye, but here it's an advantage rather than any sort of hindrance; his eyes vibrate in close shots that provide a certain focused attention that seems a bit feral.

The evening goes quite well, and if the pairings are uneven, with Lucy Seward attended to by her fiancee, the solicitor Jonathan Harker (Trevor Eve), the Count is only too willing to give his undivided attention to Mina (who looks quite pale). Before too long, she will be dead, and her father Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Olivier) will arrive with questions and a fear that his daughter has joined the Undead. Meanwhile, Dracula turns his attention to Lucy.

Where this Dracula has changed over previous incarnations (or reincarnations) is in Dracula's impression as a romantic hunk, as opposed to a creature of the night. Perhaps, it was Hammer's focus on Dracula's effect on the nubile women in those films, or the portrayal of vampire Barnabas Collins as a doomed romantic figure in the 1960's TV soap "Dark Shadows." As opposed to other versions, there were probably a fair amount of audience members who sided with The Count here, rather than with Seward and Van Helsing. Certainly, the character of Lucy has more than sympathy for him, flashing an enigmatic smile at the film's ambiguous ending.

And, as opposed to Hammer, this Dracula can turn into wolves and bats. In fact, Badham stages a shot where Dracula jumps through a window and emerges as a wolf. And there are several instances of "bat-cams" that parallel a prop-bat as it flies through the air. Binder's laser effects seem a bit irrelevant in the scheme of things, like they were tacked on for effect. But, the most unnerving thing about this Dracula is the way he approaches Mina's room early on, the camera looking up the edifice of Seward's hospital to espy the vampire on the roof, and then he moves down the wall like a cat, emerging upside down in the window and flicking away at the molding with his finger nails. Very creepy.

He also seems less vulnerable to crosses and the other religious paraphenalia and garlics Van Helsing uses against him, and as for only appearing at sun-down, he dismisses it entirely: "It's always daylight somewhere on Earth, professor. After my rest, I only need stay in darkness." Good to know. Universal, the studio that released this version—and other iterations of the 1924 play—as part of their promotional material, put out a poster with handy things to know about vampires in order to "know the facts." I can hear the voice of Agent Scully saying "Well, first, they don't exist..."

All in all, it's not bad. A little hysterical. A little silly. A literal bodice-ripper. But, at least it's a record of Langella's approach to the character from his Broadway run. And there's gratitude for that.

* When Langella left the production, Raul Julia took over. In the touring version, Jeremy Brett and Jean LeClerc played Dracula.

 

** Universal had a major hit (and franchise) with the Bela Lugosi version in 1931. Before the Langella-Gorey run, the previous Broadway performer had been...Bela Lugosi. While the novel is in the public domain (which is why Francis Coppola could make a film of it) Universal owns the film rights to the play, commissioned by the Stoker estate to combat imitations...like Murnau's Nosferatu .

 

*** Universal won that round, getting a golden, richly colored film, but when the film was remastered in 1991, for widescreen laserdisc release, Badham had the colors de-saturated. The 2019 "Shout Factory" DVD release has both the theatrical and laserdic versions.

Robot & Frank

Future Tense: Past Imperfect
or
Wiping the Memory

Frank (Frank Langella) is a "retired" jewel thief, and getting old. By day, he sits around the house, getting up late and reading a book—that old, antiquated form of reading in the future. When he has half a mind to, he'll wander into town and visit the library, and flirt with librarian Jennifer (Susan Sarandon), and do a little light shop-lifting. At night, he indulges in some light lock-picking...a man has to have a hobby.
But, living isolated, 30 years divorced with two grown kids with their own lives, he's solitary...and failing. It's tough for son Hunter (James Marsden) to keep an eye on him, so he gets Frank the latest thing...a robot caretaker (performed by Rachael Ma, voiced by Peter Sarsgaard*) to get Frank on a regulated schedule, cook him healthy meals, clean, and program some beneficial activities.

To Frank, the robot is one big rectal thermometer, and he spends the initial first few days trying to find a way to turn the thing off or, at least, a way to get under its metal skin (those lock-picks might come in handy!). Frank grouses, kvetches, protests and Robot (he never gets around to naming it) re-directs, gently persuades, all according to a program that looks for improvement, adjusts its approach and gently pushes. It is altogether clear that Robot is more capable of change than Frank. But, they're stuck with each other, in sickness and in health, until the old thief notices the precision and flexibility of the robot. Maybe they might be of some use to each other, after all.

It's a great idea for a story, and the capacity for old dogs and programs to learn new tricks. It might be a little too "out there" to make Frank a jewel thief, as the tale would be just as compelling, the interactions (the best part of the film) as interesting without it, but without that angle there wouldn't be much of a plot.  And the movie falls flat in the same area most speculative movies fall flat, the sociological aspect. Oh, they get little technology details fine (there's one futuristic electric car, all the others are very contemporary) and the fashions are a little forward (but not hysterical ala The Hunger Games), but everything feels exactly the same as now. There are no details, beside the talk of "brain-centers" and the demise of the bound book, about what the effect of these mechanical man-servants on people's lives, or the plight of the mentally challenged in this world. This future does not look compelling, and after saying the film is set in "the near future," the idea is pretty much abandoned.**

But, that's the details. For the most part, Robot & Frank clanks along, with a nicely done performance by Langella, the central interaction between the titular characters being the heart, soul and well-greased gears of it.

* Sarsgaard's performance is in the same soft, reedy, solicitous manner that, I suppose, is de rigeur post-HAL 9000—Kevin Spacey did the same thing in Moon—but one wonders if one can do anything else with it, besides, of course,  fussy butlers.

** I could also quibble about one relationship being a little too neatly tied together, but to say anything else would be spoiling things.

Good Night, and Good Luck.

Good Night, and Good Luck. (George Clooney, 2005) There had been talk about an "Edward R. Murrow" movie for a very long time, and there'd been quite a few actors who fancied the role—Roy Scheider and Daniel J. Travanti being two that I know of—but nothing had ever been done beyond the script stage. That was the issue; where would you start? The man who had been such a cornerstone of journalism through its transitions from print to radio to television, and had a personal hand in how those mediums affected the form and presentation, had a multi-storied career. Like Lincoln, where would you start and where would you end? What was the section that you would concentrate on that would make the boldest, most informative statement about the man, his principles, and how he fought for them? His work as a radio broadcaster in London during World War II? His ballsy documentaries running in primetime on CBS during the 1950's? But, the seminal moment—his greatest moment and the one that started the end of his career—was when he took on Joe McCarthy.

Clooney (who also co-wrote with producing partner Grant Heslov) begins his film with another "Murrow Moment"—October 25, 1958, to be exact—when he took his broadcast journalist cronies in the RTNDA* to task for letting their values slip in a speech where he was to be given an "honorarium" three months after his last documentary for CBS News. Murrow started the speech with what would amount to him as a prep-joke: "This just might do nobody any good."

It didn't, other than to pass Murrow into Legend. It was seen by his former boss at CBS, William Paley (played by Frank Langella in the film) as a final stab in the back, after years of back-and-forth about the value of Murrow's "brand" of news at CBS. But, Murrow was never afraid to speak truth to power. He was never afraid to put out both sides of an issue. He was never afraid to share bad news. He might have hoped that his reputation would save him, and in a less corrupt industry that might have been true, but Murrow was too well-read, even if it was just the hand-writing on the wall.

At the time of the McCarthy broadcast, the prevailing attitude at CBS is fear, with a healthy dose of paranoia, as described by the film: reporters Joe Wershba (Robert Downey Jr.) and Shirley Lubowitz (Patricia Clarkson) are constantly looking over their shoulders—they haven't told anybody at CBS they're married as its against company policy; anchor Don Hollenbeck (Ray Wise) is facing crises both personal and professional—he's just been divorced and he's being smeared in the press as a "pinko"—not quite a "red", but just "red" enough; CBS News director Sig Mikelson (Jeff Daniels) is concerned about a piece Murrow (David Strathairn) and his producer Fred Friendly (Clooney) are doing about a U.S. Air Force officer recently discharged from the military for suspected members of the Communist Party in his family—at the officer's hearing, the charges were sealed, a clear violation of legal and constitutional rights. If the story is pursued, there is concern of a backlash from Senator Joe McCarthy, conducting a red witch-hunt, that could hurt CBS, and Alcoa, their sponsor with government contracts, might get hurt even more. And William Paley has to negotiate broadcast licenses with the government; controversy and criticism won't help at all.

Murrow's instinct is to follow the story, and one of his team recuses himself because his wife had been to Communist meetings before they'd even met, It only solidifies Murrow's commitment: "We're going to go with this story because the terror is right here in this room." When the Air Force story is aired, the officer is re-instated, but Wershba is button-holed in the halls of Congress and told by a source that his boss, Murrow, was once on the Communist payroll. Murrow and Friendly run another piece, hitting closer to home, over a McCarthy hearing of a Pentagon code room employee where the evidence is questionable at best. Murrow offers air-time to respond to the questions raised and McCarthy uses it to attack Murrow. Murrow offers a reply the next week, focusing on McCarthy's rebuttal, his tactics, and lack of clarification or defense of his actions, using McCarthy's own words against him, the result of which is a Senate investigation of the Senator himself. Although it all has the tacit approval of Paley, the result is that Murrow and Friendly's positions at CBS are undermined.

Clooney, in directing, makes a couple of critical choices: he shoots in black-and-white, so there is no disruption between the archive footage and the drama going on; he shoots in documentary style to lend the conversations a fast pace and a seeming verisimilitude; and he uses the real footage of McCarthy, so as not to betray any prejudices through casting or directing choices. McCarthy is shown, warts and all, with his failings intact to be judged. He also punctuates the film, approximately every 23 minutes with a jazz song (performed by Diane Reeves) to serve as a "greek chorus." The songs—ironically or suggestively titled—are "TV is the Thing This Year," "You're Driving Me Crazy," "I've Got My Eyes On You," "One for my Baby," "How High the Moon," and (most pithily) "Who's Minding the Store?"

The casting—apart from McCarthy, of course—couldn't be better: Downey, Daniels, Donovan, Clarkson, Langella...and Clooney...give particularly attention and devotion to the words in a screenplay where the words matter. And, in the plum role of Murrow, Strathairn gives a performance that, while not imitating the man, evokes him, the gravitas, and the emotional reserve where someone reacts with thought before feelings—because feelings can be seen on "I Love Lucy." More than anything, he evokes the image of Murrow as we want to remember him—the television knight with a typewriter, not a sword, and a shield of cigarette smoke, that makes him vulnerable, but no less chivalric or prepared to engage because of it.

 "It is my desire if not my duty to try to talk to you journeymen with some candor about what is happening in radio and television, and if what I say is responsible, I alone am responsible for the saying of it. Our history will be what we make of it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred year from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes of one week of all three networks, they will there find, recorded in black and white and in color, evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and complacent. We have a built in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information; our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses, and recognize that television, in the main, is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture, too late."

* The Radio-Television News Directors Association, although now it's The Radio-Television-Digital-News Association—RTDNA—and every year the give out the Edward R. Murrow Awards

The Trial of the Chicago 7

"'Fictionalizing History and Sorkin It Out"

 or

"Give Me a Moment, Would You, My Friend? I've Never Been On Trial For My Thoughts Before" ("It's a Revolution. We May Have to Hurt Some Feelings")

The Trial of the Chicago 7 has been in the works since somewhere around 2006 when Aaron Sorkin was introduced to the idea of writing it by Steven Spielberg, who wanted to make it as a directing project. Seemed like a good fit; Sorkin is the "dean" of writing compelling court-room dramas and has a knack for putting emotional juice into "wonk" arguments. That work results in some rapturous writing, even if one feels like opposing arguments are given short shrift for the "slam-dunk" moment. With him, it's a—you know—"a thing"

One wonders what Spielberg would have done with it. One knows it would have been a much more precise directing exercise. One hopes that Spielberg might have taken the script and roughed if up a little, textured it with a bit more grit, and thus friction, and thrown in some ambivalence to make the thing more of a courtroom "shit-show" (as it was) than anything too neat and tidy. Maybe an "anti-polish" of the script by the Coen Brothers could do that.

Because the way Sorkin tells it, it's all very neat and tidy with a wildly "boo-yah" finish, where the defendants are convicted on one of the charges—to incite a riot (rather ironic post-01/06/2021)—but their post-conviction statement is such a rousingly heart-felt protest that the crowd in the court-room (and even the prosecution!) gets up to applaud in solidarity.

In a word..."Nah!"

To be fair, trying to organize the ramshackle case number 69 Cr 180 The United States v. David Dellinger et al. into a coherent timeline of pertinent facts that has "a wow finish" is an almost impossible task. Yes, the case was a slap-dash collecting of "usual suspects" at the behest of the Nixon Administration, so that a consistent charge was specious at best. Yes, the trial went on despite one of the defendants not having the benefit of counsel. And, yes, that defendant ended up being bound and gagged for a good section of the trial. Yes, Judge Julius Hoffman was out of his depth trying to juggle the cats involved, ending up charging 175 combined contempt charges among the defendants and their lawyers, indicating not so much that there were violations, but rather that the judge had no control over his court.

What actually happened, you can find here and here. There are so many feints, fibs, and sleights of hand in Sorkin's "portrait" (rather than "a picture" he's said about the script, something he also said about his script for Steve Jobs) that I could write the rest of the review going over them. But, they're well-documented (the least of which is that there were eight defendants counting Bobby Seale, not seven—the man was only in Chicago to give a speech, but he was lumped in with the others because putting a Black Panther on trial was "good optics" for a cynical Department of Justice, until the optics turned horrifying).

It is a "given" that, unless someone is making a documentary, film-makers will swerve away from the facts (and even documentary film-makers will cherry-pick from their sources). No one was there in the room taking down notes for dialog (although, in this case, Sorkin did have the trial transcripts), so we don't know what was said behind closed doors. There's a writer's term/cop-out for making things up: "Writing to Silence," because there is no one around to object.

Except, of course, the audience.

What is the creator's responsibility—to the audience or to truth? Tough question. It should be kept in mind by any discerning audience member that when the line "Based on a True Story" appears that it is a hedge against accuracy: the actual Perdicaris taken hostage in The Wind and the Lion was a man, not a plucky widow, and we don't know what Neil Armstrong was doing by that moon crater, even though First Man has him completing an emotional story point in the film. It might be some dramatic license to make a better story, to tie up a dramatic loose end. Or, changing the facts might be some cathartic wish-fulfilment as Quentin Tarantino provided in Inglourious Basterds or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

John Ford famously used the sentiment "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend" even as, in his later films, he sought to negate it.

Sorkin is not above re-writing history for the perfect dramatic punch-line...he did it quite a bit in "The Newsroom," blending real-life events with a parallel universe news organization. And one can't forget the point in A Few Good Men when he ginned up false drama by making Tom Cruise's defense attorney appear unsure and faltering before delivering his final gavel blow. It makes no sense, other than to show his protagonist at his lowest point before his turn-around to triumph. He "had" to get one more dramatic beat in to make the ending suitably triumphant. Audience manipulation. Nothing more.

But, now—after this particular Inauguration Day—perhaps we should reflect on the responsibilities to Truth. Even if it makes the side you favor look bad...or less righteous. False narratives and wishful, even magical, thinking does not make it so. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, but that art has to stand on the fundamentals of truth. Not just how we want the truth to be. No matter who's side you're on.

Well! "Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

Sorkin does a good job mixing in contextural news footage (and some of Haskell Wexler's footage from Medium Cool) from the times, with his DP Phedon Papamichael. Given the amount of material he has to cull from, Sorkin, as both writer and director manages to keep the personalities he's interested in—that is anybody except John Froines and Lee Weiner, who are given short shrift—engaged and sparring. Acting stand-outs negotiating the dialogue are Eddie Redmayne's Tom Hayden and Mark Rylance's William Kuntsler (Jeremy Strong's Jerry Rubin is a bit of a buffoon, unfortunately). But, the stand-out is Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman, not so much in how good he is portraying the trial's Merry Prankster, but in how good he is in the dramatic scenes, when the veneer drops and the words become measured and sharp as a knife.