By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
S07 reviews: Chicago 10
“Look out, Haskell, it’s animated.” Brett Morgan’s The Chicago 10, aka Friends of Graydon Carter, continues the tradition of less-than-imperfect Sundance opening night attractions. Intercutting events on the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention and a recreation of the “Chicago Seven” trial of Yippie leaders Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin,
and others, the film makes a lurid, even fatal mistake: using crude, cheap-looking, never beautiful, merely illustrative videogame-style animation (with motion capture work as well) to capture the notorious courtroom theatrics. When you see footage of these young longhairs in all their indelicate stubbornness, especially Rubin in his red-yellow stripy jumper the colors of the Vietnamese flag, you look away from the failed anime and await the next burst of history. You can’t top the real stuff in the archival snippets: glimpses from the waterfront park of the John Hancock to the north, still under construction; a pale pair of martial shadows advancing against backlit teargas; a whip pan on Michigan Avenue that rests abruptly upon the dazed face of a pale young man with a high forehead riven and crusted with blood from his scalp; the vast jowls of the father of the current mayor, bleating about the threat of “terrorism” or smirking, “No, a snake dance never disturbed me”; Walter Cronkite, during the Convention week lockdown, stating flatly that the events are “about to begin in a police state. I’m afraid there is no other word.” It’s like seeing images from 1956 Budapest, except it’s the streets of the city I’ve lived in most of my adult life. Jeff Danna’s diverse, eclectic score stitches many rough transitions and boasts a few impressive passages of rangy guitar rock, as well as an ominous theme built on Philip Glass-like arpeggios as the riot starts to happen. The voice talent is largely mediocre and unsuited, seemingly chosen for their vantage to the reflective surface of Vanity Fair’s page including Mark Ruffalo, Hank Azaria, Nick Nolte, Jeffrey Wright, Liev Schreiber, and an unrecognizable Roy Scheider mewling as the doddering Judge Julius Hoffman. Almost, just almost, the fragments of historical material are pungent enough, iconic enough, to stand out against the underwhelming animation. It ain’t “Boondocks,” an accomplished feat of animation which is also far more incendiary and subversive while beguiling the eye. [At least one historical quibble: in a bit of testimony, reference is made to a “squadron,” when the correct word is “squadrol,” Chicago copspeak for police wagons.]
