Film
Critic Notebook: Random
Screenings: A Modified Preview of 2007, Woodstock Film Festival
by
Jay Blotcher
...I
pointed out that Morgen managed to scare up film images of the cops
that showed them not as fascist robots but as frightened men thrown
into a situation for which they were unprepared.
“The
few shots that you reference of the cops are two of my favorite
shots of the film,” he adds. “You can interpret their
look as either postcoital, or completely ashamed, which I think
sums it up pretty well.”
Chicago
10 has been playing at film festivals across the world, and people
with either long memories or a disdain for Bush’s current
America have applauded the film. At the European premiere in early
August in Locarno, 6500 people watched the film al fresco. “The
reaction was tremendous,” Morgen wrote. “At a pre-screening
press conference, a number of journalists asked me questions like
‘Were you thinking about Tiananmen Square when you made the
film,’ or ‘[W]ere you thinking about Geneva or Seattle?’”
I realized that audiences were able to view the film as an epic
struggle between an oppressive government and a public that is demanding
to be heard, to exercise their constitutional rights. When I made
the film, I didn’t want it to be a film about 1968, I wanted
it to be a fable for all times.”
BOTTOM
LINE: While the computer-generated animation that recreates the
court trial is distracting and the resemblances of the real-life
men dicey at best, Morgen corralled top-shelf actors to supply the
voices: Hank Azaria, Mark Ruffalo, Dylan Baker, Liev Schreiber,
Nick Nolte, Jeffrey Wright and Roy Scheider. This powerhouse dream
cast surmounts the rickety court sequences. But the compilation
of real footage that dominates the film is both sublime and gut-wrenching...
CONTINUE...
|
