Film
Critic Notebook: Random
Screenings: A Modified Preview of 2007, Woodstock Film Festival
by
Jay Blotcher
LOCAL
ANGLE: Director Brett Morgen, who also directed the ball-busting,
perceptive, entertaining and laugh-tragic The Kid Stays in the Picture
about Paramount wunderkind Robert Evans, had a second home in Rhinebeck
from 2001 to 2006. Asked whether the locale had an effect on his
work, Morgen responds via e-mail that he edited The Kid Stays…in
Rhinebeck, and wrote the script for Chicago 10 there during the
summer of 2005. “Rhinebeck is an amazing place to work, particularly
for a writer.”
BACKSTORY:
Chicago 10 posits that as soon as Mayor Daley’s cops began
busting heads in Lincoln Park, the 60s were officially over. The
ensuing court trial, where Black Panther Bobby Seale was bound and
gagged in his chair, was the last nail in the coffin of the counterculture’s
dreams for a new world. Nixon’s election was mere insult added
to mortal injury.
But
Morgen does his best to delve into the grey areas of this landmark
political fiasco. The establishment is pilloried for its use of
excessive force, but the organizers are far from deified: the Yippies
come off as both visionaries and undisciplined clowns who did their
best to exasperate the already-constipated Judge Hoffman who presided
over the trial with an undisguised sneer for the hippies in his
midst.Morgen says that this evenhanded dissection was intended.
“By
the end of the film, it’s clear that no one triumphed in Chicago,”
he writes. “Everyone lost. It was the end of innocence for
many Americans. At the end of the riot that closes the film, I searched
out shots of both the cops and demonstrators that showed the strain
and confusion of the week.” CONTINUE...
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