The Trial of the Chicago 7

The trial of the Chicago Seven on charges of conspiracy and intent to incite a riot lasted nearly five months, from September 24, 1969, to February 18, 1970, in Chicago's U.S. District Court. The Trial of the Chicago 7, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, lasts just two hours (not counting the final credits). Historians acknowledge that feature-length fictional films must inevitably take shortcuts and condense actual events—especially when so complicated and messy as was this highly controversial trial. However, even with those allowances, this film misses many opportunities to stick to facts that might have been even more illuminating in 2020, when political protests, police brutality, and racial injustice were front-page news, just as they were in 1968 and 1969. The film certainly aims for verisimilitude. It opens with documentary footage from July 28, 1965, of President Lyndon B. Johnson increasing U.S. troop strength in Vietnam, which necessitated doubling the monthly draft calls. Quick cut to numbers being picked for the first draft lottery drawing on December 1, 1969 (anachronistically in this context—but let's not be too picky). Then cut again to April 4, 1967, when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks out against the war in Vietnam. Clips of the assassinations of King and Robert Kennedy follow, as the film builds to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago by carefully introducing viewers to the principal players who will become the Chicago Seven

Context (archaeology · Democracy · Injustice · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Vietnam War · History · Law · Law in Society and Culture