Writer and director Aaron Sorkin’s straight-to-Netflix The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a complete misrepresentation of history and everything the anti-institution leaders of the counterculture movement stood for. If nothing else, the film reveals Sorkin’s complete lack of understanding of a movement that defies the institutions he holds in such high regard.
On September 24, 1969, United States v Dellinger began. The trial would last five months. The Chicago seven—Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, John Froines and Bobby Seale—were charged with crossing state lines with the intent of inciting violence at the 1968 U.S. Democratic National Convention. The group did cross state lines, but with the intent of peacefully protesting the Vietnam War.
If you’re a Sorkin fan (I don’t know why anyone would be, but to each their own) you won’t be disappointed. However, if you don’t like jingoistic propaganda that holds zero respect for its audience, I wouldn’t recommend this film.
Outside the film’s historical inaccuracies and omission of the most entertaining moments from the trial (like when Abbie Hoffman repeatedly called judge Julius Hoffman a Nazi), the film technically works. There’s a beginning, middle, and end, as well as plenty of the regular quippy walking-and-talking we’ve come to expect from Sorkin.
The film fails when it inaccurately represents the 1960s counterculture movement.
The anti-establishment counterculture movement was aimed at challenging cultural norms. While the movement is often portrayed as a bunch of long-haired, promiscuous hippies who were perpetually high, the people who started 1960s counterculture were intensely political.
In a thinly-veiled attempt at making the film topical, Sorkin uses Abbie Hoffman to preach about how much he loves institutions and voting.
When Hoffman, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, takes the stand, he says that the American people “overthrow and dismember their government peacefully” every four years, implying that the most important way of influencing politics is by voting.
Hoffman was arrested for protesting, making this statement incredibly hypocritical. He was protesting the Vietnam War at the DNC, the candidate who was likely to win the Democratic nomination for president—Hurbert Humphrey—was pro-war. Hoffman would not have given weight to voting when both candidates were pro-war.
In an interview with the New York Times, Sorkin said this scene was “a serious Abbie telling us what he really thinks.” If that were true then Sorkin would have used the court transcripts from the trial, which contained a lot of what the real Hoffman believed.
Instead, Sorkin wrote what he really believed, using Hoffman as a puppet. The real Hoffman, who continued to organize and protest even while he was in hiding from the government on a trumped-up cocaine charge, wouldn’t have essentially said, ‘I know both candidates are terrible, but vote, guys!’ Sorkin would though, and he did.
This list culminates into what can only be interpreted as an attempt at a moving finale, in which Tom Hayden reads from Davis’ list at the sentencing of the seven. Emotional music begins to play as everyone in the courtroom stands in applause.
This jingoistic garbage, of course, never happened. Sorkin’s portrayal of the anti-war movement completely erases the Vietnamese population from the discourse. The counterculture figures weren’t anti-war just because Americans were dying. They were also anti-war because innocent Vietnamese people were dying.
This is yet another instance of Sorkin co-opting counterculture to further his own ideology.
While my major gripe with the film is the clash in ideologies between that of Sorkin and the seven, I also struggle with the tonal direction of the film. Anyone who has read the transcripts will tell you this: the real trial was not dramatic. After the prosecution made their case, the seven and their lawyers realized that they would likely be convicted, but would win in the appeal. So when the defense began their case, they just made jokes.
From a filmmaking standpoint, the choice to make a drama instead of a comedy was a huge mistake. The trial is ripe with comedic scenes and dialogue, only a fraction of which made it into the film. Such omissions include Abbie Hoffman impling he was judge Hoffman’s illegitimate son, Allen Ginsburg taking the stand and reading some of his homoerotic poetry, the defendants’ disrespect of the court through reading, sleeping, and frequently calling judge Hoffman a Nazi.
I wouldn’t recommend this film to anyone. If you’re interested in the 60’s counterculture movement, I’d recommend reading The Trial of the Chicago 7: The Official Transcript or listening to the three-part podcast on Abbie Hoffman from The Dollop instead. Both provide a more accurate account of the trial and the counterculture movement than Sorkin’s movie ever could.
Featured image from IMDb.
