Okay. Wow. I just finished. My heart is literally pounding and I need to walk around my apartment but I also can't move. I'm just staring at the black screen on my TV where Netflix is now asking me if I'm still watching The Trial of the Chicago 7. YES, NETFLIX, I'M STILL WATCHING, I'M LIVING IT. My hands are actually shaking a little bit.
I wasn't ready. I thought, "Oh, a historical courtroom drama. Sorkin dialogue. Nice." I put it on, curled up on the couch, threw a blanket over my legs, and was prepared to be… I don't know, entertained? Stimulated? This was not entertainment. This was a two-hour and ten-minute adrenaline shot straight to the soul. I had to pause it three times. THREE TIMES. Once just to get a glass of water because my mouth was so dry from the tension. Another time because my cat knocked a book off my shelf and the sound was so jarring in the middle of a courtroom shouting match that I jumped out of my skin. And the third time… the third time was because I just had to stare at my wall and process what I was seeing. It's 2 AM and my brain is firing on all cylinders, replaying every scene.
That scene. That one scene with Tom Hayden. Eddie Redmayne. He's on the witness stand and they're trying to make him admit he hates America, and he just… he doesn't. Instead, he starts reading the names. The names of the soldiers who died in Vietnam. Just a list. Name after name after name. The camera just holds on his face. And the courtroom, which has been this chaotic circus for the whole movie, just goes silent. You can hear a pin drop. Judge Hoffman (this incredible, rage-inducing Frank Langella) is telling him to stop, but he keeps going. And the camera pans across the other defendants, and they're just… broken. And I'm on my couch, leaning so far forward I'm practically on the floor, and I realize I'm holding my breath. I wasn't breathing. I had to physically gasp for air. It's not a big, showy, explosive moment. It's quiet. And it's the most devastating thing I've ever seen. Why is that stuck in my head? Because it's not about politics anymore. It's just about loss. It's about the human cost of everything. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks.
It's making me think of that one time in college, we had this protest. It was so stupid in hindsight. It was about the university cutting funding for the campus radio station. And we all felt so righteous, marching around the quad with our little cardboard signs, chanting these terrible rhyming slogans. We thought we were changing the world. We really did. And for a second, watching these guys, I felt that same flicker of… solidarity? But then it hit me how utterly pathetic my little protest was. They were facing decades in prison. They were up against the entire federal government. They had the National Guard and the media and the whole system stacked against them. And I was worried about my indie rock show on a Tuesday night. God. It's not even close. It's not even in the same universe. I feel like an idiot just for thinking about it. Never mind.
Honestly, the whole cast is a force of nature. Sacha Baron Cohen. I'm still trying to decide if he's a genius or if I just watched Ali G in a wig for two hours. Abbie Hoffman was a clown, a provocateur, and Cohen plays that perfectly, but there's this… this flicker of real pain and strategy behind his eyes. Is it an amazing performance that disappears into the character, or is it just Sacha Baron Cohen being a brilliant, chaotic weirdo? I thought it was brilliant at first, but now that I'm typing this… was it actually kind of distracting? I don't know. I can't decide. Mark Rylance as William Kunstler, though. No debate. That man is a wizard. He just… exudes this calm, tired integrity. He's the anchor in the middle of the storm. When he's just quietly sitting there, taking notes while everyone is screaming, you feel this immense sense of relief. Like, okay, *someone* here is an adult.
And the dialogue! It's like a machine gun. Rat-a-tat-tat. Sorkin doesn't let you breathe. Characters are talking over each other, interrupting, making jokes in the middle of a constitutional crisis. I had to rewind a few times because I'd laugh at a line and then miss three crucial plot points. Watching it on Netflix, I had that power. I could just hit that little 10-second rewind button and go, "Wait, what did he just say?" If I'd seen this in a theater, I would have been completely lost. But here, in my living room, with the remote clutched in my hand like a lifeline, I could keep up. Mostly. It's overwhelming, but it's supposed to be. It puts you right in that chaotic room with them. You feel the claustrophobia. You feel the injustice boiling in your gut.
The cross-cutting between the courtroom and the 1968 protests in Chicago was giving me whiplash in the best way. One second you're in the stuffy, wood-paneled courtroom, and the next you're in the middle of a tear gas-filled street with cops beating kids with batons. The sound design is insane. The screaming, the sirens, the gavel banging… it all blends together into this symphony of rage. I had to turn the volume down at one point because I thought my neighbors were going to think I was having a domestic disturbance. It was that loud. That visceral.
I'm just so angry now. Not at the movie. At the history. At the fact that this happened. At the fact that the judge was a real person who was that biased and that cruel. It feels so relevant, which is the most depressing part of all. You watch it and you think, "Wow, things were so crazy back then," but then a little voice in your head whispers, "...are they really that different now?" And I don't want to think about that at 2 in the morning. I really don't.
I'm drained. I feel like I just sat through that trial myself. My brain is fried. I need to watch something stupid now. Like a video of a cat falling off a table. Just to reset. But I know I won't. I know I'm going to be lying here thinking about Tom Hayden reading those names for the rest of the night.
9/10. - solid
-alex