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Arts & Culture

Chicago 10

Morgen, who also made

The Kid Stays in the Picture (about Hollywood producer Robert Evans), found not only transcripts of the famous "Chicago 7" trial but also heretofore unknown recordings of the proceedings. Hearing the actual voices of the people in the courtroom - Judge Julius Hoffman, defense attorney William Kunstler, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, the prosecutors, witnesses - inspired Morgen to re-enact those scenes. His method of re-enactment is something akin to bringing those courtroom sketches to life. He uses rotoscope animation (like in

Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly) to create somewhat surreal footage of inside the courtroom. Then he hired A-list actors - Nick Nolte, Liv Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo, Roy Scheider - to act out scenes based on the transcripts and the recordings. Morgen then mixes this courtroom footage with dynamic archive footage that documents the events leading up to the protests that took place in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention. Morgen cuts back and forth between the courtroom and the events that the defendants were on trial for. He employs music (but oddly a lot of contemporary rather than period music) and a variety of footage to keep the pace fast and furious. It's a visual style and pace that mirrors the energy and excitement of those turbulent times.

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If you don't know anything about the trial or the protests, the film brings you up to speed quickly and with a barrage of information. But information mostly from the side of the defendants. This is a history lesson brought vividly and vibrantly to life. The film arrives in theaters at a moment in current politics when the apathy of a younger generation stands on the brink of possible greater participation. It's energizing to see people in the movie like Hoffman and Rubin challenging the government, the establishment and the status quo with not only ideas but with humor. Hoffman was serious in his criticism of the government and the war, and in wanting to effect change, yet he could also find humor in the absurdity of things. These protesters had the intelligence to understood the value of satire and irony in attacking the status quo. Humor could be a weapon, a tool, and a way of diffusing a situation. (And with the recent death of William F. Buckley, a conservative who also understood humor and the value of a pointed ironic remark, it seems that political debate has become dry and humorless, although it is sometimes laughable.)

Abbie Hoffman looking like Lenny Bruce in Chicago 10. (Roadside Attractions)

Morgen takes his cue from his subjects and invests his film with unexpected humor and sarcasm as well. In a couple scenes, poet Allen Ginsberg is depicted floating above the ground in a meditative position. Throughout the courtroom portraits of Franklin and Jefferson look over Judge Hoffman's shoulder, reminding us both of more intelligent politicians but also ones who were slave owners, Morgen also chooses to depict Hoffman in a series of animated sequences where he appears like stand up comic Lenny Bruce spotlighted on a stage as if he were delivering a comedy routine to audiences. It's appropriate because like Bruce, Hoffman used language and humor like bombs to be lobbed at the establishment to jolt them out of their set ways. It was a revolution of sorts. At one point Hoffman characterizes the trial as one in which they were being put on trial not for carrying guns or weapons but rather for their "state of mind," they were on trial for their thoughts.

The trial becomes absurd at times, a circus in which the media was not allowed to cover as it would today. There were no cameras in the courtroom to capture the antics on both sides. So Morgen has to recreate it with the animation. There's a crazy moment when Bobby Seale, the only African American defendant, is gagged and restrained when he won't quiet down and cease requesting to defend himself. The scenes of Chicago grow absurd too but in a more terrifying way as the city enters essentially a police state. We hear Gore Vidal address a crowd that's surrounded by armed police. He looks at them and says that it's great to be in a free country where you can speak in front of bayonets. One TV reporter files a story about the kids in the neighborhood playing a game of "cops and demonstrators." The whole thing starts to become a circus, and as Rubin suggests, it would be funny if it wasn't so scary.

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Outside the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago 10. (Roadside Attractions)

But it's inspiring to see people so engaged in voicing their opinion and doing something. Even the people following the trial are engaged and we see a line of people waiting in freezing temperatures the night before the trial, waiting to get in and watch something that they feel is important. I'm not sure we have that sort of engagement any more, or maybe it has just moved to the Internet.

Chicago 10 (rated R for language and brief sexual images) marks a promising start for the year's documentaries. This one is likely to end up on my top ten for both the inventive way Morgen compiles his material and for the content he puts before us. Some may object to the term documentary because Morgen not only creates material for the film (the animated footage of the courtroom) but also because his film has such a definite point of view. It plays more like agitprop than doc but the end result is trippy fun, wildly entertaining and even at times enlightening. You do leave feeling what a long strange trip it's been.

Companion viewing: Medium Cool, Berkeley in the Sixties, Steal This Movie, Incident at Oglala &