I submit The Post (2017), which is all about a fabulously wealthy, heroic girlboss newspaper executive taking on a crooked president threatening our democracy (take THAT drumpf)
I submit The Post (2017), which is all about a fabulously wealthy, heroic girlboss newspaper executive taking on a crooked president threatening our democracy (take THAT drumpf)
Trial of the Chicago 7 has to be up there as an all timer. It uses a historical incident that is a clear indictment of the system and was intentionally used by the defendants to make a mokery of that system, and Sorkin turned that into a film about how great American institutions are. The troop worshipping ending is almost too incredible to believe until you see it yourself.
As a point of comparison 12 Angry Men is also an extremely lib take on the justice system. In this case it's how a single strong willed individual can, through their own moral convictions, uphold truth and justice within the just institution of the American trial. This film however isn't so hamfisted in its ideology and is actually extremely well crafted for what it is.
Definitely not the vibe I got from Trial of the Chicago 7. It seemed to repeatedly shit on American institutions as oppressive (portraying the courts as racist and the charges as an attempt to stifle political opposition, not to mention calling cops bloodthirsty pigs). The end didn't seem like troop worship at all, seemed much more like "this is how many Americans are fucking dying while you prosecute those trying to save them". Would've been way cooler if they read a list of Vietnamese casualties as well though.
Maybe I would've interpreted the film differently if I didn't already view American institutions as oppressive.
Which is what actually happened in the court room that day, for what it's worth.
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It did give that impression sometimes, but it also had a character sum up his key argument by saying, "I think the institutions of our democracy are wonderful things that right now are populated by some terrible people." This undercuts any message that American institutions themselves are oppressive and instead suggests that simply putting good people in charge would be enough to stop institutional abuses. It's a fundamentally reformist thesis that belies not only the film's radical veneer, but the actual politics of the real-life radicals into whose mouths Sorkin is putting his own lib-ass words.
Libs love polite criticism of their system though, as long as there is no positive case to replace it with anything.
That movie is lib as fuck.
I got the same vibe from the movie but my lib parents praised it for "not being too political" so I think like you said you have to already see the oppression of American courts to see it as a harsh critique of the system
I'd recommend watching the first film of the Small Axe series that came out on Amazon recently, Mangrove. It's a great point of comparison between two very different approaches to filming trials centered around injustice. For me it's the perfect antidote to what Sorkin did with Chicago 7.
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